Pickle juice is used for what?

Clip art

Yesterday at work we got into a discussion about minerals and cures for leg cramps.  Yes, sometimes we talk about the darndest things.

Rubbing pickle juice on leg cramps in the middle of the night came up.  Apparently, an older lady who works with us uses this on her Charlie horses that strike in the middle of the night.  In fact, she keeps a jar of pickle juice on her nightstand.  Who knew?

This information was confirmed by a second employee passing by and overhearing the conversation.  What a curious thing to learn.  I just had to google this when hubby told me about it.  According to the lady’s, this has to be dill pickle juice.

After getting on my computer today, I found that it’s the mix of salt, water and vinegar in the pickle juice that stops the cramps.  Supposedly you can drink a shot of this before bed, or rub it on the muscle that is cramping in the middle of the night, or at any other time.  The older lady, who keeps the pickle juice on her nightstand, says it can also be rubbed through clothes and will soak into your skin.  The clothes can be washed, so no worries there with the pickle juice. 

The internet says that rubbing mustard on the cramps will also help but I can see this being a lot messier and perhaps something that would stain your clothes, or the sheets.  I wouldn’t recommend amassing those mustard packets from fast food restaurants on your bedside table. 

I’ve alleviated most of my cramps though by adding a magnesium tablet to my nightly regimen, but I’ll try this pickle juice also because I’m on a low sodium diet and may not get enough salt on the nights the cramps wake me from a dead sleep.

So who knew relief was just as far away as your refrigerator?

The Icebox

Growing up on the farm, this is what we called the refrigerator.  I’m not sure why.  Perhaps this comes from older times when people really did use iceboxes for keeping things cold before the invention of the refrigerator. 

 Root cellar

 

Before even the icebox, people stored food in underground cellars.  Iceboxes were invented just before the nineteenth century.  People would purchase huge blocks of ice and put them in wooden boxes equipped with drip pans for the melting ice.  Anything that needed to be kept cool was placed in the box and the ice replaced periodically.

There was an old, red brick icehouse in the small town near the farm when we were all growing up.  Daddy used to get ice from there occasionally.  They sold it in huge square blocks (similar to ice cubes but a hundred times bigger.)  Large silver colored picks were used to hoist the ice from the icehouse to the waiting transport.

German engineer Carl von Linde developed the first refrigerator in 1876.  By 1920, over 200 companies were producing refrigerators, but due to the cost, most people continued to use the icebox.  Freon was invented to cool and freeze foods.  This was effective but caused the release of chlorofluorocarbons into the environment.  In the 1980s, Freon was discontinued.

Did you have a refrigerator or an icebox growing up? 

When we moved into the sharecropper’s shacks when I was about six, we had a small rounded fridge, similar to a Philco, and it could have been that brand.  Kids don’t really pay attention to things like brand names.  We had too much playing to do.  The whole time I was growing up we all called the refrigerator the icebox.  I think people in the south still use this term today.