After eating the last pickle save the jar of pickle juice. Then when a broccoli stem becomes available cut the tough outer skin off, chop it up and toss it in the pickle juice. Works well. They reach a taste that’s very close what the pickles tasted like. After 2 or 3 cycles of that the pickle juice starts losing its strong punch. Adding vinegar and a sweetener can help at that point if you don’t have more pickle juice by then. Otherwise broccoli stems are not too versatile. They’re not that great in veg. stock because they bring a bit of bitterness. So I only use like ½ a stem in a pot of broth (which is wholly from veg scraps). My next experiment (untested): reusing juice from a jar of jalapẽnos to pickle broccoli stems.

It doesn’t take long for mold to grow on empty beer bottles. Considering beer bottles get returned for a refund, you have to assume that the brewery will make an effort to reuse as many as possible. I toured a brewery once and they showed us the big industrial bottle washing machine. They said the bottles get scanned for cracks using a laser, and rejects obviously get tossed. The question is: what about mold, which adheres quite well to the corners of the glass? I wonder if the laser also detects bottles that didn’t get clean. Or if they just figure the temps would kill everything and just be considered safe enough from there.