Forget Flowers — Get The Pregnant Friend In Your Life A Pickle Bouquet This V-Day

I am a diehard pickle fanatic. In my fridge right now, you'll find no fewer than seven different jars of pickled vegetables and fruits. I stack them on burgers, eat them in my peanut butter sandwiches, and devour them straight from the jar. That's why when I heard about these pickle bouquets for Valentine's Day from Grillo's Pickles, I was all over that idea.

Edible arrangements have been popular for years — and I love a chocolate dipped strawberry as much as the next person — but this pickle bouquet speaks to me on a deep, deep level. Not only is it likely incredibly delicious, but it also appeals to my craft-loving, DIY-adoring heart. Because this isn't an arrangement you can just have delivered from your local floral delivery service — there are actually instructions for how to do it yourself with Grillo's line of piquant, savory spears.

Grillo's, a Boston-based "clean pickle" company, has a solid range of pickles to choose from, and in a variety of shapes, whether you want spicy, dill, or sweet bread and butter pickles. Grillo's also suggested that you add additional greenery like fresh dill or hot peppers to your bouquet to really give it an extra kick. Just make sure you put it in a vase wide enough to catch the drips.

There are a lot of creative bouquets on the market right now. I've seen Reese's Cup bouquets, there are the slightly more racy thong bouquets, and even a beef jerky bouquet so popular that it's on backorder. Flowers are still the gold standard, but there are real questions about the sustainability of the cut flower industry, and it's started to become worrisome to many of us. These "alternative" arrangements could be a fun workaround for a potentially global problem.

A bakery down the road from my house does a gorgeous bread and cookie bouquet that I look forward to receiving every year. It's chock-full of bagels and rainbow cookies and pumpernickel rolls — basically all of New York City's biggest hits on one giant bouquet. If I made the pickle bouquet for my tangy food loving family, it would be a fun complement to the yummy breads in my bouquet. Add a cheese bouquet, some smoked salmon flowers, and a few tubs of specialty cream cheese and you've got a delicious Valentine's Day brunch.

OK, you might want to get on the liquor bottle bouquet as well, because you'll need a beverage.

Founder and chief executive officer of Grillo Pickles, Travis Grillo, wrote about the pickle bouquets, “We’ve always had fun involving pickles around all types of holidays, and we felt pickles needed a little more love during Valentine’s Day. We know there are a lot of pickle lovers out there that would love nothing more than to get a Valentine’s Day gift loaded with their favorite snack." I couldn't agree more, my pickly friend. I couldn't agree more.

But Mr. Grillo is missing one key demographic in his spiel: pregnant ladies. Clearly, this man has never woken from a dead sleep at 3 a.m. to waddle into the kitchen and make a grilled cheese and pickled jalapeño sandwich, which would then be dunked in a mixture of sour cream and salsa or Hidden Valley Ranch. He's never pulled into McDonald's and thought about threatening physical harm to the underpaid employee who forgot her extra pickles. (It's not something I'm proud of — pregnant women get desperate.)

But for sure, this pickle bouquet be hilarious to present to your pregnant friend, partner, or sister — along with a jar of peanut butter, because you need to hit all your bases. At the very least, pick up a jar of Grillo's pickles and eat a few as the mood strikes — you know it will.