The Lower East Side thrived as a center of pickle-making until the 1950s. An open-air market that stood on the future site of the World Trade Center Plaza served the surrounding neighborhoods. As developers moved in, the market moved out, and the hundreds of cucumber wholesalers, barrel makers and brine-masters dwindled, according to Nancy Ralph, director of the New York Food Museum. Traditional pickling practices gave way to real estate and corporate food chains, as Jewish immigrants moved out of the neighborhoods.

Today only two Lower East Side picklers remain - the Pickle Guys and Guss' Pickles. <Watch the video.>

Kalustyan's, a Middle Eastern grocery on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, has sold specialty Middle Eastern ingredients, including pickled lemons made on the premises, for 25 years, according to Aziz Osmani, one of the store's owners. Arpiar Afarian, a Lebanese immigrant, has been making the store's pickled lemons for almost as long as the store has existed.

The traditional, fermented pickles have a place, but now, increasingly, the pickling is done at home. And while it used to be necessary to pickle and preserve the harvest to survive the winter, ironically, New Yorkers are deciding to pickle again despite living in a city synonymous with "convenience." Murray's Cheese Shop in Greenwich Village and the Natural Gourmet Institute in Chelsea have been running fermentation classes, touting the benefits and legacies of the traditional food preservation methods.

CityPicklers.com assembled 18 people from among the pickling enthusiasts for six hours on a Sunday in January. Picklers pounded cabbage, experimented with spiced brine concoctions and took home their own handcrafted jars. <Watch the video.>

"To be honest with you, when I came here I had very low expectations, I thought I would totally mess it up," said Shazhad Hassan, a Merrill Lynch trader who eats out for every meal. "It's not as painful as I imagined it to be."

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