New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
A pickle is a pickle, unless it tastes like fruit punch
Anyone can make a dill pickle. But to make strawberry-flavored pickles, or Fireball whiskeyflavored or hickory sweet hot bacon-flavored pickles — that takes a specific kind of talent.
Aliska Walker is the owner and creative genius behind Aliska’s Amazing Pickles, a pickle company that is as unusual as some of its flavors. Jars of her pickles, from jalapeno hot to sweet garlic to bubble-gum, can be ordered online through Walmart and her own site, aliskasamazingpickles.com.
But the retail side of Aliska’s Amazing Pickles is almost mundane, compared to some of its other offerings.
You can arrange a pickle party, at which the guests get their own jar and label, cucumbers and a buffet of ingredients to choose from. They create and jar their own unique flavors of pickle. They play pickle games, sing karaoke and then eat pickle-related foods.
The pickle-related food is another part of what makes Aliska’s Amazing Pickles stand out.
Walker is a teacher by trade, which is a story in itself. She did not finish high school, but eventually went on to earn her GED. After that, she picked up an associate degree from St. Louis Community College at Forest Park, a bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a master’s degree in elementary education from Missouri Baptist University.
She is a substitute teacher in the St. Louis Public School system.
It was in that capacity on the first day of school in 2018 that she came up with a creative way to help first-graders get over their first-day jitters. Instead of playing the usual icebreaker games, she brought in ingredients to make flavored pickles.
As a girl, she said, she and her friends loved to make flavored pickles, dropping candy canes and Jolly Rancher candies into pickle jars. Walker brought the same items into class for her first-grade students, and they had as much fun with them as she did when she was a child.
The success she had with the first-graders was the inspiration for Aliska’s Amazing Pickles. Though she had considerable experience as a manager of fastfood outlets and a food service department at Walmart, she had a learning curve and other obstacles to overcome.
“I had no idea you had to get state certified,” she said. .
She initially rented time at the commercial kitchen at a church to make the pickles according to health department standards. Soon, she was ready to open the business. “I was there, and then the pandemic hit,” she said.
Now she has a distributor and a few other wholesalers.
Meanwhile, she continues to experiment and expand the boundaries of ordinary pickles.
Recently, she’s been baking cupcakes with flavored pickles.
Aliska’s Amazing Pickles are available at aliskasamazingpickles.com.