True Caring and Nurturing in BDSM

[Dy****]

You name it; I can pickle it.

Beets, garlic, pineapple, asparagus, brussels sprouts, tomatoes, strawberries……if you have something you want to be pickled, I probably can figure a recipe out that will wow you.

I didn't learn pickling from either parent. Not a family member, not a friend.

I learned it, by myself, in my kitchen…….in a far-off, usually dark, isolated corner of the world.

I pursued this skill for the same reasons I followed BDSM.

I was curious, felt a sense of challenge and ownership, and as I started researching and discovering, I found that I had a real knack for caring about the product I presented.

I've seen many people address what it means to be Dominant and what it means to be Submissive. I see many more that speak a good chunk of the terminology but don't apply it very well.

And if you've read my posts before, I firmly believe in the power of reading and reflection as means to enhancement (that's a fancy way of saying one can halt ignorance and become educated).

I digress. Pickling, and my passion for it.

For a long time, pickling was becoming less and less relevant in our modern society. As the 1970s came about, commercialized pickling had soared, putting "Mom and Pop" pickle businesses out on their ear. And as home pickling goes, it can be arduous, tedious, tenacious, and all kinds of O-U-S words that will have your tongue doing gymnastics.

At that time, it was all about better living through chemistry and having a kitchen that provided easy food. It was an inching into the idea of "The Jetsons," if you remember that old cartoon. (Did I date myself?)

How I came about pickling is simple. I came across a baked chicken recipe that required pickled garlic. Where or where does one buy pickled garlic?

I looked in my refrigerator and saw that my two jars of pickles had a couple of garlic cloves. But I need more pickled garlic than that.

I went to the grocery store in the dreary slice of the US Midwest I was in then, and nothing. So, I had to put the recipe on hold. On my next day off, I went to the big city east of me. I checked all their grocery stores. NO PICKLED GARLIC!

It appeared that I needed to buy eight jars of pickles to get the number of pickled garlic I would need.

That wasn't going to happen. So, I looked online. And everyone's favorite online retailer had jars of pickled garlic……for $85! That wasn't going to happen either (Sorry, Bozos!)

 

I could not believe the limited options and high costs associated with pickled garlic. I bought garlic plenty of times from the produce section, and I could purchase ten cloves for about $2 in those days (a decent time ago, stop judging me!)

That's it! I'll buy all the garlic I need, and I'LL PICKLE IT MYSELF! How hard can it be, right? Vegetables, vinegar, coarse salt, maybe some spices…..got it in the bag, BABY! How funny that thought seems now.

First, there are grave sanitation matters in pickling. Glasses, lids, and seals must be thoroughly sanitized to food-grade standards. You're not getting away with wiping a paper towel soaked in bleach around everything. And EWWW! You must heat things to a boil to kill passive bacteria that can occur just by having your equipment sitting around. Typically, you must blanche the items you intend to pickle; otherwise, they won't accept the brine because many things we pickle are too dense when left raw.

You must create a brine with a suitable vinegar, water, and salt ratio. And sometimes sugar. Do you know how much can go wrong when you add four things together while trying to maintain the correct balance?   (For all my math people, that one's for you.) And, if that's not enough when adding spices, you can't just throw whatever you want in the jar. It would be best if you researched how different flavors bond or not. You haven't lived until you've created sweet pickle chips that called for a 1:1 ratio of pickling salt and sugar, coupled with mustard seed, and then you tried getting cute by adding a teaspoon of pink Himalayan Sea salt to the mix.

As I've laid out these tasks to you, one can see that a fair amount of reading is involved ahead of time, which will inform preparation, which requires one to plan and agree on the things they will use, and how they will implement each item.

And once the ingredients and plan are formed, and the scene begins, you have to time the varied elements to have enough time to accomplish each task succinctly.

Blanching food means you bring it to a quick boil for a few minutes (this fluctuates with each food item) and then place it in an ice bath to quickly cool it back down. And it was then getting them drained enough to accept more of the brine.

It would be best to boil the brine; all ingredients must be fully dissolved. If your brine doesn't reach boiling before being placed in the jars, it won't create the full anaerobic effect of pickling when you place the jars in your heat bath. If the brine ingredients are not fully dissolved when boiled, they won't participate in the anaerobic process that starts to blend the flavors.  I know the difference between dissolved ingredients in brine and not just by taste. And it's the mark of a great pickler that understands and respects the importance of fully committing to these steps to set up the rest of the process.

Pickling is fun. But it's tedious for the untrained and boring to the unmotivated. It's at once intimidating and foreign to most.

So many people call themselves riggers in our space; I'm starting to wonder if I'm late to the game or if I wasn't notified that all Dominants must have an extensive background in rope to be a Dom. I'm slowly learning rope because it makes sense at this stage, but I didn't have a reason until last year. I noticed the details. The need for understanding human mechanics, nerve endings and pathways, the muscular-skeletal system, and how not to rip, rupture, or damage the sensitive portions of these structures.

But time and again, I read stories about submissives who have been irreparably harmed, physically and usually mentally, from bad rigging, poor rope quality, and an apparent misunderstanding of the task at hand.

I know the ins and outs of impact play and help submissives produce fantastic bruises, from spackling of colors to full-on red imprints, in all the right places.

But the more I venture, the more I am greeted by submissives that have pigment damage, skin burns, or pure emotional trauma from someone who restrained them and wouldn't accept their safe word.

I understand how to plan and structure training for several high-level scenes, like CNC with chases and "***ings."

But as I visit clubs and munches, I continue to hear testimonies of scenes where things go wrong, even incidents where Dominants didn't disclose that people would be watching or participating. (Quick note for the uninformed, when you involve someone in such a scene, without the other party's consent, depending on the actions taken by that third party, that can be prosecuted as a sexual *** for both you and them – and this has happened!)

These details may seem far more crucial than my wild ideas in pickling (and they are), but they have the same effect on a sliding scale. 

If I pay attention to the details in my pickling, each step after is ruined more and more under the weight of inattention, poor communication, and hastiness.

If I don't establish consent, I will not receive trust. If I do not receive trust, my submissive will not be able to commit to me and the plan we devise for us. They can't envision my insight into how to manage them through a scene. They can't understand my thinking when we decide to challenge a soft limit. And through all these misfires, they can't submerse themselves in our dynamic.

Instead of a firm, accountable ecosystem, if I don't flesh out the details and use my talents to execute the tasks correctly, my pickling will turn out too soggy to accept flavors, and the process will have failed, for no other reason than my inability to commit to my work, and my word.

I'm a pickler and a Dominant.

And I don't know who needs to hear this, but you can't be in this space if you take the time to learn. Suppose you take the time to read your play partners, your nesting partners, or your just plain, run-of-the-mill partners.

You are worthy of the respect you demand. And there are more ways to demand respect than yelling and putting on a mean exterior. They are all better than this method.

Some of the meanest people I've met never stopped smiling and laughing.

You can be afraid of who you are, up to the point that you involve others. When you decide to add others into your space, you should have already confronted those things that scare you about yourself. It's not their job to take that roller coaster ride with you.

If you are not going to commit to what you say you enjoy and want to participate in, at best, you just put it down before you hurt someone else, yourself, and do something you can't reverse for either person.

You can be an expert at almost anything by applying yourself to that thing. At first, it may take a lot of long days, nights, and much effort that can't be split into creature comforts simultaneously.

But eventually, you will find that you need less and less time and effort to recall those things and that you can make quick, appropriate adjustments that help to demonstrate your fluid understanding of a given situation and instill further trust in you by others involved.

Not everything in kink is supposed to be harsh, brutal, and abrasive. You don't have to pursue everyone that way all the time.

It's better to have transitions, like a manual transmission, where you shift from one s***d into the next and the next and shift back down occasionally on that day's journey. Reading this into a scene will demonstrate your ability to be in control and therefore have control and instill further trust in you by others involved.

I hope many people read these words and they get into meaningful conversations with one another about what Domination looks like.

I know that when submissives meet me, they think my physically imposing size and somewhat grizzled looks are what lead me into who I am. But that couldn't be further from the truth.

I am in control of what is happening inside of me. Knowing yourself, and mastering that, is the biggest thing you can do, no matter where you fall along the power exchange line, to make yourself who you desire to be and not the person who is lazy, careless, and selfish. 

Those things are vanilla, anyway. And isn't the whole reason we're here because we didn't like vanilla?

Take it from me, a pickler. 

Results only vary when you ignore details. 

[gl****]

Nicely written sir, thought provoking and erudite

[Deleted Member]

Loving all of this. Now I want some pickles.

[angelbrite77]

I didn't relate but anyway

[Dy****]

12 minutes ago, angelbrite77 said:

I didn't relate but anyway

I hope that means you have not had awful interactions in dynamics.  That would be heartening for me.

[Dy****]

48 minutes ago, Peonycharm said:

Loving all of this. Now I want some pickles.

Let me know where to send a jar!

[Dy****]

1 hour ago, glasgow898 said:

Nicely written sir, thought provoking and erudite

That's great to hear!

[Deleted Member]

12 minutes ago, DyingForLife said:

Let me know where to send a jar!

Lol!!!

[Deleted Member]

I like sweet and spicy pickles. How do you make em?

[CagedClitLvr]

Wow. I f**king loved this. Long long to compare pickling to bdsm but ... I do both. And my curried pickles are to die for. Lol. But really, I need to know how I can share this with.... Uhh... 99 percent of people I disappointingly interact with on here. I try to explain and be informative. I do well. But I ofter just feel like I'm being bombarded by offensive tactics that arw degrading in an undesirable way. I go months not on here cuz I get discouraged. But now I feel there's hope. It's about chemistry not titles it's a science and a building of trust and expansion. To me all of sex is intimate as I have a diff language with every partner. Like a recipe. But my favorite one is out there. And u made me wet. So perhaps I'm also looking for a seasoned pickler 🤣😂🤣🤤🥰😍

[Dy****]

1 hour ago, GlittterButt said:

I like sweet and spicy pickles. How do you make em?

Well, the trick is to get your mustard seed and sugar to pair up in the brine.  After that, if you're looking for spicy, it depends on what type of spice you're wanting to emulate.  There's probably a powder for it somewhere.

[Dy****]

1 hour ago, BreezyDay said:

Wow. I f**king loved this. Long long to compare pickling to bdsm but ... I do both. And my curried pickles are to die for. Lol. But really, I need to know how I can share this with.... Uhh... 99 percent of people I disappointingly interact with on here. I try to explain and be informative. I do well. But I ofter just feel like I'm being bombarded by offensive tactics that arw degrading in an undesirable way. I go months not on here cuz I get discouraged. But now I feel there's hope. It's about chemistry not titles it's a science and a building of trust and expansion. To me all of sex is intimate as I have a diff language with every partner. Like a recipe. But my favorite one is out there. And u made me wet. So perhaps I'm also looking for a seasoned pickler 🤣😂🤣🤤🥰😍

Oh my!  So much to unpack here.  

Yes, I sometimes take awhile to make my point.  I always feel like all the words I pick are necessary, but maybe I could have used an economical approach here.

I would encourage you to not be discouraged by how people choose to interact with you.  I have found that most people interact in a way that is not representative of who they are.  They are afraid of exposing to much of their inner workings, for *** of being hurt, rejected, and judged.  Which is much like those of us who they reach out to.  I try to be encouraging of the communication I would prefer, rather than immediately identify the communication I did not want to receive.

There is always hope, you must look within yourself to find it.  Depending on others for hope, or the confirmation of same, is a recipe for failure.

There is indeed a science to building trust with partners, but there is an art to presenting to them.  Never divorce the two.

The rest, I will just say, I'm flattered.

[Deleted Member]

Pickling, fermentation love those, I have little farm, grow may own food, to stay helfy, that's number one for me

[AKA_Copper]

Two things,
1. What recipe takes EIGHT jars if garlic?
2. Are you Peter and do you play the pipe?

But really, a good post though I ***, the point will be lost on most

[Dy****]

8 hours ago, CopperKnob said:

Two things,
1. What recipe takes EIGHT jars if garlic?
2. Are you Peter and do you play the pipe?

But really, a good post though I ***, the point will be lost on most

It was eight jars of pickles, but I estimated that because of the garlic cloves in each of those jars, which was two.  So I would have bought that many jars just to pull out the garlic cloves.  Total waste.

I hope it doesn't get lost.  That would be the worst.

[Setrion]

9 hours ago, CopperKnob said:

But really, a good post though I ***, the point will be lost on most

We just need the companion post, "If you want to try BDSM, you need at least as much patience and perseverance to read this post. There WILL be a test." 😏

[Dy****]

7 hours ago, Setrion said:

We just need the companion post, "If you want to try BDSM, you need at least as much patience and perseverance to read this post. There WILL be a test." 😏

Feel free to write content that blows mine away.  I would applaud it.

[Deleted Member]

37 minutes ago, DyingForLife said:

Feel free to write content that blows mine away.  I would applaud it.

😂😂😂

[angelbrite77]

Friday at 11:05 AM, DyingForLife said:

I hope that means you have not had awful interactions in dynamics.  That would be heartening for me.

Yes unfortunately it does mean that. Sad, but true