turnip pickles and graveyard fruit

I want to make pickled turnips today. In a fit of enthusiastic poverty I bought three wax-coated turnips at the grocery store. I pitied them there, because who the hell buys turnips at Ingles? And I thought as I paid for them, I could have waited a few nights and taken them from the dumpster. Damn.

They've languished in the crisper drawer. I have food stamps now, and I am able to buy unnecessary items: a jar of sun-dried tomatoes in oil, a quart of honey, a big glass jar of lovely calamata olives. I don't want to be spoiled and lazy just because I have money. I'd rather do my weekly shopping at the farmer's market (THEY TAKE FOOD STAMPS OH WOW) and interrogate the farmers about how to grow shitakes and what variety of basil does well here and what about cold frames for kale?

So I'll be making pickled turnips today, from this recipe. I might try these, too.

I worked at the library yesterday, and came home late and grumpy, and dinner was a beautiful clam chowder. After the second bowl I asked Marc how he made it - "The texture is wonderful" I said - and he told me, "I used those cans of clams and oysters, rinsed them in the colander, and simmered them in a pot with a little water. Then I added a stick of butter and about half a cup of parsley, and waited until you came home with the condensed milk!"

And I replied, "Oh dear god, a stick of butter."

And he grinned, "Yeah, but it's good!"

Bless him.

After dinner Marc decided I was too grumpy to do the dishes (BLESS HIS HEART) so he told me to go check out the upstairs apartment. Earlier in the week we ripped out the carpet, and he's been up there in his spare moments pulling staples from the subfloor. He and Thomas (gloriously helpful toddler playing in dirt) replanted the mint and basil and rosemary into containers along the walkway upstairs, and I saw that the bushes along the other side of the tiny yard were freshly mulched and the space outlined with railroad ties.

I immediately began thinking of edible landscaping. Can we dig up the bushes, shred them, bury them under the mulch, use the space as a compost pile this winter and plant some tomatoes and kale and zuchinni and herbs and maybe a fig tree and transplant some blackberry canes? If we replace the ornamental shrubbery before we move out, think that would be ok?

I walked around the other side of the building, plucked a big empty coffee can off the top of the trash cans, and started picking grapes from the grapevine along the driveway (between two apple trees how lucky are we). When that was full I rinsed them in the sink and let them dry on a towel on the counter while I walked up the hill to the cemetary, where there's a larger feral grapevine, and picked clusters of grapes until it was too dark to see.

Marc decided the grapes are domestic muskedines (thick bitter skins, gummy flesh, big seeds, and a dark smell), so he made a gallon of wine, combining them with the less-polite muskedines foraged from my parents' woods last week.

There are bottles of mysterious alcohol all over the house. I keep finding booze everywhere. And we don't even drink! We make it to give away! Bless 'em.

Today: pickled turnips, cloth pull-ups (because Thomas starts Montessori school in two weeks - HEY GUYS! MY CHILD GOT INTO THE MONTESSORI SCHOOL!), compost box. Maybe later more grapes, or yanking more staples from the floor upstairs.