I haven’t had a chance to say yet how much I adore Pamela Anderson’s haircut, so here it goes: I love it! The style is like c-nty little bob meets Grace Kelly, and it beautifully shows off Pam’s natural glow. And Pam certainly has lots to glow about these days: more and more acting gigs like the comedic hit Naked Gun and a theater production of Tennessee Williams’ Camino Real, and a budding romance with her Naked Gun costar Liam Neeson. But wait, there’s more — as of this week Pamela is in the pickle business! In collaboration with Flamingo Estate (more on that later), Pamela’s Pickles are now available in 24 fl oz jars for $38 a pop, with all the proceeds going to the California Wildlife Center. Pam says she learned the base of the recipe from her great auntie Vie, but has made it her own with spicy additions and an unexpected floral note: dried rose petals.
“Roses make everything better,” Anderson said in an interview. “Food grade, of course. I put them in my spaghetti sauce and use them for tea. They have many benefits.”
The pickles—$38 for a jar of Spicy Rose Dill Pickles—are a collaboration with Flamingo Estate, the Los Angeles lifestyle brand, and 100 percent of the proceeds is being donated to the California Wildlife Center, a nonprofit wildlife veterinary hospital that provides care to injured, orphaned and sick wild animals.
Her “great auntie Vie” was the inspiration for the venture. “She was an award-winning pickler and canner, a great cook, and such a joy to be around,” Anderson says. “She was bedazzled from head to toe and danced in the kitchen in high heels while spiking your coffee with Kahlua. She wrote a book, From Pickles to Pears. This is legit!”
She lived with her aunt after high school and learned how to cook. “I can’t remember a year we weren’t pickling, canning, or making jam or mustards,” she says. “It’s just in my DNA.”
The recipe for Pamela’s Pickles comes from her cookbook, I Love You: Recipes from the Heart. It’s a spicy version of her aunt’s pickles, which called for dill, mustard and garlic. Anderson then adds pink peppercorns, Guajillo chile, smoky sea salt and her signature twist: dried rose petals. “I love carrying the tradition forward in my own way,” she says.
…Flaming Estate’s founder Richard Christiansen said he was eager to collaborate on the project with Anderson. “When we first met Pamela, we bonded over the love of her garden, and her incredible expertise as a chef, activist and green warrior,” he says. “She is a lighthouse for people who want to live a really full, happy, and healthy life on their own terms.”
This first batch of pickles, to be released on August 11, is Anderson’s first foray into selling her products. But she has other recipes up her sleeve—from vegan kimchi to radish pickles and sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil. She says she might branch out into other products, too. “I have too many ideas,” she says. “I harvest my rosehips and have a beautiful body oil and rosewater facial mist.”
Meanwhile, she’s looking forward to sharing the first fruits of her labor. When asked how she herself enjoys them—in a sandwich, perhaps, or straight from the jar—she demurred. “If you love pickles,” she says, “you know how to eat them.”
I’ll be honest, I’m not sure if I agree with Pamela that roses make everything better — at least when it comes to food! Without the exact right touch (which I’m sure Pam has, of course), I find roses can easily make an otherwise edible item taste soapy. On the other hand, the roses are up against pickles and peppercorns and chile! And I readily admit, the jars look gorgeous. The pink and green really photograph well together, and as of this writing they are still available from Flamingo Estate. I’ve never bought anything from them before, but the name was pinging in my head as somehow familiar. This is why: earlier this year Puck News referred to Duchess Meghan’s As Ever as the “Flamingo Estate knock-off brand,” an obviously derogatory comment. So even though Pam recently quashed the idea of any beef with Meghan over their cooking shows, I can practically smell the Daily Mail’s next briny headline. “Pamela Anderson joins forces with Meghan’s arch-nemesis lifestyle brand!!”
PS — Bless this splendid woman for the perfection of this sentence: “If you love pickles, you know how to eat them.”
Photos credit: James Warren/Bang Showbiz/Avalon, IMAGO/Avalon and via Instagram