Pickle Me This

The most important job of all that everyone in Avalonia must work towards the entire year, is to prepare enough of food to last them through the next winter. One of the ways to prevent certain food from spoiling is to pickle them in big ceramic jars and enjoy them many months later almost as they would be fresh.
Immerse whatever you want in a liquid salty brine, it can be vegetables, fruit and even meat and sausages. Everything can be a pickle if you try hard enough and get a big enough jar.
It is ever incresingly popular to enrish the brine with all sorts of spices to give the food a unique new flavour that could not be enjoyed otherwise. Whatever food gets pickled is able to absorb a lot of the flavour the longer it stays in the jar if the seal does not get broken. It is very important to seal your jars tightly or else pickling will not be enough. In some regions certain food are also boiled in the brine first to help with the preservation. And each village or family usually have their own recipies promising not only the food to last through the harshest of months but also that the flavour will be much better than whatever their neighbour is offering to you.
Pickling could be considered the new favourite sport that is possible to enjoy during the winter months without much risk and with a lot of flavour to boost. It is probably the most popular way of food preservation in all of Avalonia and is slowly gaining importance along with ale brewing. There are also a lot of local pickling competitions that many people participate in to try out new recipes from nearby settlements. Alchemist tend to be banned on those as they do get some weird ideas as what to pickle and no one wants to have another... incident. Stay clear of their jars for your own safety.