Pickles by Brian Crane for December 27, 2020

Earl found a much better way to use it than as a doorstop Opal.

Nice try in burying the evidence, Earl!

Today is National Fruitcake Day. I’d say this is a pretty good way of observing the day.

Well, it’s dense, and it’s sticky… but it is also water soluble (at least sort of).

PS: It’s a base canard that fruitcake is always awful. I’ve had some awful fruitcake… enough to have turned me off forever is I hadn’t already had really good fruitcake. The main trick is to avoid the fluorescent “candied fruit” entirely. The other trick is to make it with less than 40% “cake” compared with 60%+ of dried fruit and nuts.

if the pothole were bigger than Nelson’s grandaunt’s fruit cake, what would Earl use?

Ants might eat it. Then again, maybe they won’t.

Remarkable that she was able to still recognize it

Goodbye, Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben. Goodbye, Redskins. How long will it be before we can say goodbye to anti-fruitcake prejudice? Down with fruitcake jokes!! JUSTICE FOR FRUITCAKES!!

I prefer plum pudding over fruitcake any day. In my family for years we used to top the pudding with rum sauce and then would pour 150 proof rum on top of that. Then we would light it. It was the perfect ending to our tradtional turkey dinner. Anyway most fruitcakes I have found around here have nuts in them and that is a no no for me. If Earl and Opal’s fruitcake gift had nuts in it I can think of no better place than a hole in the road. Smart move Earl! :-)

Nothing wrong with A good Fruit Cake , I look forward to them every year !

It will probably outlast the blacktop surrounding it.

Be careful what you wish for ! The Fruitcake gods are watching !

I think discarded fruit cakes are what they use here to fill the potholes, because by spring they are back!

That patch would probably be more durable than the asphalt

Worked like a charm!

I make my own with non-neon dried fruits like apricots and dates. I also add booze to the mix.

I always agreed with Johnny Carson, who said that there was only one fruitcake in existence, and people kept passing it around.

The dislike of fruitcake is obviously greatly exaggerated. Why, they even have at least one in the White House. . . .

And it will last better than the “cold patch” used now.

“I have to go now” illustrates the fact that BPH has its uses.

Gasp!

I make the best! No cake….just fruit and nuts and it’s to die for, not die from! LOL

The Christmas season where I live brings the ubiquitous Pan de Pascua – the South American answer to fruit cake. Like a good Italian Panettone, Pan de Pascua can not only be delicious but highly addictive – one slice is never enough!

Most fruit cakes can fill a pot hole very nicely!

key to fruitcake? should be served warm

That fruitcake will still be there when the rest of the road falls off…

Just make a Fruit Cake like a Snickers bar, and it will be fine!

Priceless

I happen to like fruitcake.

Send the city that recipe.. and Earl would be wise to stay in the basement for a time.

Fruitcake is reputed to last forever. It should out last the old Roman Roads.

It’s National Fruitcake Day! Help the highway department out.

That is a good place to put a fruitcake. I read about 2 brothers mailing the same fruitcake back and forth for over 20 years

Fruitcake is a perfect filling for a pothole.

your way sounds delicious

That’s where most fruitcake belongs.

Sweet, satisfying, please excuse me I have to use the little boy’s room.

Finally, a use for fruitcake.

Small town newspaper published a letter from a local dentist offering to show the street crew how to effectively fill a cavity. Never heard whether his advice was followed.

DIY road maintenance is not recommended and usually illegal. I knew a woman who complained to the city where her beach house was located that there was no crosswalk in front of her house to get the beach, and eventually painted one on herself, the only one in over a mile of Beach Drive. It’s still there 50 years later. She also made a citizen’s arrest on a speeder. She’s still alive and kicking at 98.

A nearby town does a fruitcake toss every year. Some years have involved catapults and pneumatic cannons.

https://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/14561#:~:text=Contestants%20hurl%20one%20and%20two,many%20characteristics%20with%20artillery%20shells.&text=Directions%3A,the%20east%20side%20of%20town.

" We never eat fruitcake because it has rum/ and one little bite turns a man to a bum!/ Now, can you imagine a sorrier sight/ than a man eating fruitcake until he gets tight? "

“We wish you a Merry Fruitcake, We Wish you a Merry Fruit Cake, We wish you a Merry Fruitcake and a Happy New Year!”

from Away With Rum – Chad Mitchell Trio

Strip is a rerun, wonder if most like to do that with a fruitcake?

And for love’s sake, each fruitcake

Ah, you forgave

And soon both of us filled the hole

Not eat away, it was no time to play

We drug it up and dug it up and filled it up

And now it’s solid

Solid as a rock

That’s what this cake is

That’s what we’ve got, oh

Am I the only person who adores fruitcake?

Mr. Keesterman once used Lena’s brownies, given to him by Ed Crankshaft (the brownies were really HARD), to make a mailbox that Crankshaft wrecked(?) his bus hitting it.,

I recommend the Free Range Fruit Cake by Alton Brown. It contains only dried fruits that are soaked in rum. You can find the recipe at https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/free-range-fruitcake-recipe-1926833. I make two every year and one of them is just for me.

My wife made several. Some she soaked in bourbon, the others with wine. They are amazing.

Just what Indianapolis needs!