To beat all, it was Sunday when this happened.

I'm a Wednesday's child and trust me, that woe thing? Is accurate. It's not a nursery rhyme...it's a prophecy. I especially have woeful experiences in my kitchen, I've noticed. I love to cook and I'm a good cook, but I'm also willing to jump in and experiment, often with...well, woeful results. So, today I tackled a culinary experiment I've read about in several places online and I knew going into it that the results would be iffy, at best. I still stand by that, although we'll not know for a fact for a few Wednesdays yet. As I stood back and looked at the finished product, I had to laugh and I suspect anyone reading this will, too. I also see lots and lots of syrupy, inedible woe in this project. But hey, I tried. What did I make? I made Koolickles and I double-dog dare you to not have dirty thoughts cross your mind when you see that picture in the link.

I initially decided to make lemon and tropical punch flavored Koolickles, figuring that, worst case scenario, there are nastier things than a lemony pickle. But I wanted that red color in some, too, so I knew I'd accomplished something and cherry pickles sounded vaguely obscene, so I went with tropical fruit. Here is my initial batch of ingredients. Fairly simple, no? Please ignore my bowl of lemons and garlic back there. They were innocent bystanders.

Pretty much the recipe I settled on was a combination of several different recipes and it involved using the drained pickle juice from one ordinary sized jar of pickles, one pack of Kool-Aid and one cup of sugar per batch. This essentially makes the Kool-Aid part double-strength since the fluid part is about half of what the packet calls for. Or something like that. I suspect these aren't worth stressing the details over.

It turns out you get 1-1/3 cups of pickle juice, sugar and Kool-Aid, or at least I did.

I wasn't happy with the yellow color left by the lemon Kool-Aid, though. It looked like pickle juice, only cloudy, so I dragged out my food coloring and after seeing that neon green didn't change it much, I added 10 drops of normal green. I got green. Wooo. I have no idea what I expected from this, but I was sort of disappointed and considered adding some blue, but restrained myself. Oh, yeah, the black bowl you see? Isn't needed in this whole deal if you have a 2 cup measuring cup.

At this point, I decided to taste the mixture and frankly, it just tasted like slightly more sour dill pickles. Dammit. So, I decided to make lemon-lime Koolickles and added maybe 4 tablespoons of lime juice. Another taste confirmed it didn't taste exactly like dill pickles anymore. That wasn't bad, but I'm not sure it was good, either. Whatever, I'm done with this flavor/color. I'm over it.

I poured the liquid back into the jar and wound up with extra left over. What the hell? I guess maybe the sugar, even dissolved, added bulk but this still was disturbing to me. It still is.

I followed the same procedure for the tropical punch Koolickles and at least I'm excited about the color I got. This was without food coloring! I thought it was kind of pretty with the seeds and at least it looks like something big might happen here.

Again with the liquid left over. Why?
Now, in the background, please note yet another jar of virgin pickles...where did those come from, you might wonder? Well, I was so inspired by the pretty color of the tropical punch Koolickle juice that I ran to Publix and got a third jar of pickles and a pack of grape Kool-Aid. Yeah. *That idea was short-lived. By the time I got home, and bear in mind I live within walking distance of Publix, I'd decided I better wait and see how these 2 batches turn out. I will eventually give that jar of pickles away and throw out the pack of grape Kool-Aid.

I will say, the final result is awfully pretty, isn't it? I'll update in two weeks, the time it apparently takes for the real flavor to begin shining through. I will make Jake eat one first.

Lordy, I suspect this was a wasted afternoon.