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.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Monday, August 31, 2009
august
August turns to autumn, the air is as sharp as it is cool, this evening smells like my memories of this town. Dinner is peppery all-day chicken stew, crusty bread, the red and orange of a japanese maple (leaves falling across a shed roof thick with moss and broken bird nests), I can hear cattle from here.
I am taking a graduate-level course on sexuality, in the social work department. This is my first semester away from a community college and I throw myself into...this, and I still feel disconnected. I have two jobs and a child, why are my classmates so young? Mostly they're older than me.
I've been in this town through warm spring and turgid summer, autumn is an ending. It's a strange time to be a beginning. This is weather for tucking in, harvesting your last, covering your earth, settling your bets. It's a strange time to be a beginning.
I am taking a graduate-level course on sexuality, in the social work department. This is my first semester away from a community college and I throw myself into...this, and I still feel disconnected. I have two jobs and a child, why are my classmates so young? Mostly they're older than me.
I've been in this town through warm spring and turgid summer, autumn is an ending. It's a strange time to be a beginning. This is weather for tucking in, harvesting your last, covering your earth, settling your bets. It's a strange time to be a beginning.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
i am still weird
As autumn comes dew stays longer on the ground, and under the pines at the front of this house the thin soft grass is damp into late afternoon. The deck is warm, open to sunrise over a deep long blue valley. I come here to clean house, walk dogs, make money.
I can't look at food without thinking about where it came from. I can't look out at the land without thinking, top of that hill good place for a house, gets flatter toward the creek at the bottom, that little woods along the slope might keep things cool, run pigs in there and goats at the bottom and where's the sun right now? Where does the rain stand? Can you terrace that slope for a garden? Nice healthy weeds, those.
I'm too loud for this college, too armpit-hairy for these hippies, still as weird as I was in high school. Good to know, awkward just the same.
If I weren't in school my hours at the library would be perfect for the life knocking around in my brain: Wake up crazy early, get dirty outside 'till ten, hang out in the library during the siesta hours 'till two, come home and muck around 'till dark, eat for dinner what I saw grow up from the soil. Throwing my kid outside naked half the day would help with the toilet learning too, dammit. Got a ten year plan though, ask me about it latter, time to mop these warm slate floors and drink coffee 'till I wake up some more.
I can't look at food without thinking about where it came from. I can't look out at the land without thinking, top of that hill good place for a house, gets flatter toward the creek at the bottom, that little woods along the slope might keep things cool, run pigs in there and goats at the bottom and where's the sun right now? Where does the rain stand? Can you terrace that slope for a garden? Nice healthy weeds, those.
I'm too loud for this college, too armpit-hairy for these hippies, still as weird as I was in high school. Good to know, awkward just the same.
If I weren't in school my hours at the library would be perfect for the life knocking around in my brain: Wake up crazy early, get dirty outside 'till ten, hang out in the library during the siesta hours 'till two, come home and muck around 'till dark, eat for dinner what I saw grow up from the soil. Throwing my kid outside naked half the day would help with the toilet learning too, dammit. Got a ten year plan though, ask me about it latter, time to mop these warm slate floors and drink coffee 'till I wake up some more.
Monday, August 24, 2009
tomato sauce
I was kicked out of a homeless shelter (The JesusDuplexes) over a bottle of cheap pinot grigio. Actually, the eviction notice listed in order: an unclean house (not mentioned at any of the dozen and a half daily inspections), socializing with other guests, and the bottle of wine. And I suspect the socialization was the "real" problem, seeing as how there was a meeting the day before prohibiting interaction, and the families guilty of hanging out on the sidewalk chatting about our kids after bedtime were all given less than three day's notice to leave. So I called the magistrate and wrote out little cards & handed 'em out to everybody, explaining the legal process involved in eviction and how to get a judge to order the JesusDuplex folks to follow the LEGAL, thirty day or more procedure. But I'm getting away from myself.
It's stupid now that I risked my tenancy over something I suspected would be unacceptable. It's stupid now that I thought the wine was important- I told Marc as much, and he said "They're ass hats."
"No, think about it, if you're dealing with homeless people, you can't just kick one person out for being an alcoholic and let someone else pretend to be Julia Child. Oh wait. You could have the rule, 'If any of your behavior or belongings are a problem we will ask you to leave,' that would cover it...anyway, they're used to crackwhores or something."
As I poured homemade blackberry wine into a pasta sauce made from tomoatoes, garlic and zuchinni, all gifts from friends or family, I talked about the women's shelter I stayed at before the JesusDuplexes. It was a communal facility, like a house, with seperate bedrooms and shared everything else. I told Marc I moved into the JesusDuplex to get away from the kitchen at the women's shelter.
We were assigned nights to cook meals. Food preparation consisted of things like "Remove plastic from Salisbury Steak, place in 350 degree oven. Mix 6 servings of mashed potatoes according to the directions on the box" of powdered whatthefuck "potatoes," and the Steak wasn't, it was some kinda soy & hog's feet concoction. Hog's feet would have been more respectable.
So you've got all these women tweaking about how much their lives suck, and you have Craft Nights for Therapy, but you have 'em cook shit? Why not some Food Therapy, y'all? Get 'em involved in some SKILLZ, hey.
I told Marc about a lady I didn't like very much because she was often irritated with her toddler, and said I should have been more patient with her because my child is an madly irritating todler now too. I told him I didn't like her until she cooked fried chicken one night - honest to god, "I found these chicken legs and some flour & eggs," give the lady a cast iron skillet, Fried Chicken. I didn't talk with her as much as I would have liked, but I think I might know some of why real food made with your hands was so important in that house.
When I cook, I gain a measure of control over my life and my future. When I take a collection of ingredients that used to intimidate me and I can make something that is sensually pleasing as well as functionally fulfilling, I've put thought and effort into a gift that is, with the prevalence of fast food, no longer neccesary. And when it's made with items gifted, foraged and recycled, there's a story on the plate worth admiring.
I'm grateful that I can choose, as a responsible adult, to drink a glass of wine while I'm stirring the tomatoes, pour a little into the sauce, and settle into a pleased glow because that graveyard up the hill fertilized the blackberries what fed the yeasts to make the wine and yea, this is the house that Sarah built, praise the dirt your god almighty, maker of food and wine, and I've had a little much to drink.
It's stupid now that I risked my tenancy over something I suspected would be unacceptable. It's stupid now that I thought the wine was important- I told Marc as much, and he said "They're ass hats."
"No, think about it, if you're dealing with homeless people, you can't just kick one person out for being an alcoholic and let someone else pretend to be Julia Child. Oh wait. You could have the rule, 'If any of your behavior or belongings are a problem we will ask you to leave,' that would cover it...anyway, they're used to crackwhores or something."
As I poured homemade blackberry wine into a pasta sauce made from tomoatoes, garlic and zuchinni, all gifts from friends or family, I talked about the women's shelter I stayed at before the JesusDuplexes. It was a communal facility, like a house, with seperate bedrooms and shared everything else. I told Marc I moved into the JesusDuplex to get away from the kitchen at the women's shelter.
We were assigned nights to cook meals. Food preparation consisted of things like "Remove plastic from Salisbury Steak, place in 350 degree oven. Mix 6 servings of mashed potatoes according to the directions on the box" of powdered whatthefuck "potatoes," and the Steak wasn't, it was some kinda soy & hog's feet concoction. Hog's feet would have been more respectable.
So you've got all these women tweaking about how much their lives suck, and you have Craft Nights for Therapy, but you have 'em cook shit? Why not some Food Therapy, y'all? Get 'em involved in some SKILLZ, hey.
I told Marc about a lady I didn't like very much because she was often irritated with her toddler, and said I should have been more patient with her because my child is an madly irritating todler now too. I told him I didn't like her until she cooked fried chicken one night - honest to god, "I found these chicken legs and some flour & eggs," give the lady a cast iron skillet, Fried Chicken. I didn't talk with her as much as I would have liked, but I think I might know some of why real food made with your hands was so important in that house.
When I cook, I gain a measure of control over my life and my future. When I take a collection of ingredients that used to intimidate me and I can make something that is sensually pleasing as well as functionally fulfilling, I've put thought and effort into a gift that is, with the prevalence of fast food, no longer neccesary. And when it's made with items gifted, foraged and recycled, there's a story on the plate worth admiring.
I'm grateful that I can choose, as a responsible adult, to drink a glass of wine while I'm stirring the tomatoes, pour a little into the sauce, and settle into a pleased glow because that graveyard up the hill fertilized the blackberries what fed the yeasts to make the wine and yea, this is the house that Sarah built, praise the dirt your god almighty, maker of food and wine, and I've had a little much to drink.
found object wine
Last night I bottled my first batch of wine: while I've helped Marc with the previous batches of crazy, this was the first I've done all by myself. Aww!
When I was visiting my parents' house last week my grandmother came over and borrowed my child while I made dinner, fed him lots of cookies, and brought him back with a bucket of figs from her sister's tree. I finally got the whole mess through the food mill's finest grind, separated into chunky-mess-for-preserves and thin-mess-for-wine.
The stuff was light brown and about the texture of pudding, so I added sugar 'till it was sweet and water 'till it was thin, and set it in my largest pot on the back burner 'till it was cooked (yeah, we're real precise around here).
The chunky mess went into a smaller pot with proportionally more sugar and much less water, a few shakes of cinnamon and powdered ginger and a drop of molasses, and let's call the resulting three jars of glop Fig Butter 'cause it's nice on toast (toast being that stupid-good oversweetened wonderful bread that Marc bakes 'cause my huffy pretentious "artisan hearth breads" take too damn long for a busy day).
When the doctored fig juice on the back burner had hung out for a while, I ladled it into a gallon glass jug (a stash of which we found in the chicken house/junk pile on my family's property, and LAWD I am thrilled to be mucking around in it for furnishings and whatnot like I've wanted to do since I was nine), added cold water 'till it was cooler and full enough. It was about body temperature, the kind of warmth you want on your wrist for bathing a newborn, and the kind of warmth yeastie-monsters adore. So I poured a coffee mug half full of the stuff, stirred in a packet of yeast what's been floating around in my cabinets neglected in favor of the jar in the fridge, and let it proof.
Shit foamed up boy-howdy fast, was poured back into the jug, sloshed around a bit, and we Ooh-ed and Aah-ed like the tiny happy bubbles were fireworks, topped it with a vapor lock, set it thus contented atop the fridge.
We racked (that's siphoning it out to dump the yeasts collected fallen at the bottom of the jug) and tasted the bottle of blackberry and jug of apple peach, and darned if they don't remind me of a cheap dry red wine and an oversweet white. I'm darn pleased.
When I was visiting my parents' house last week my grandmother came over and borrowed my child while I made dinner, fed him lots of cookies, and brought him back with a bucket of figs from her sister's tree. I finally got the whole mess through the food mill's finest grind, separated into chunky-mess-for-preserves and thin-mess-for-wine.
The stuff was light brown and about the texture of pudding, so I added sugar 'till it was sweet and water 'till it was thin, and set it in my largest pot on the back burner 'till it was cooked (yeah, we're real precise around here).
The chunky mess went into a smaller pot with proportionally more sugar and much less water, a few shakes of cinnamon and powdered ginger and a drop of molasses, and let's call the resulting three jars of glop Fig Butter 'cause it's nice on toast (toast being that stupid-good oversweetened wonderful bread that Marc bakes 'cause my huffy pretentious "artisan hearth breads" take too damn long for a busy day).
When the doctored fig juice on the back burner had hung out for a while, I ladled it into a gallon glass jug (a stash of which we found in the chicken house/junk pile on my family's property, and LAWD I am thrilled to be mucking around in it for furnishings and whatnot like I've wanted to do since I was nine), added cold water 'till it was cooler and full enough. It was about body temperature, the kind of warmth you want on your wrist for bathing a newborn, and the kind of warmth yeastie-monsters adore. So I poured a coffee mug half full of the stuff, stirred in a packet of yeast what's been floating around in my cabinets neglected in favor of the jar in the fridge, and let it proof.
Shit foamed up boy-howdy fast, was poured back into the jug, sloshed around a bit, and we Ooh-ed and Aah-ed like the tiny happy bubbles were fireworks, topped it with a vapor lock, set it thus contented atop the fridge.
We racked (that's siphoning it out to dump the yeasts collected fallen at the bottom of the jug) and tasted the bottle of blackberry and jug of apple peach, and darned if they don't remind me of a cheap dry red wine and an oversweet white. I'm darn pleased.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
at the deli
Marc asked, "What's on the Italian Fried Chicken?"
Deli lady answered, "Italian seasoning."
"What's in the Italian seasoning?"
"It's what we use to season Italian things."
"But what's in it?"
"The Italian seasoning."
"What does it taste like?"
"The Italian flavors."
"And those are?"
"It's what is in the Italian seasoning."
"OH MY GOD!"
So I looked at it and I said, "Ok, those are dehydrated red pepper flakes, and it probably involves basil and garlic and a lot of salt."
And Marc said "DOES IT HAVE ITALIANS IN IT"
And she said "YES, WE GRIND 'EM UP REAL FINE."
And the funny thing was, it tasted like Chinese greasy spoon orange chicken.
Deli lady answered, "Italian seasoning."
"What's in the Italian seasoning?"
"It's what we use to season Italian things."
"But what's in it?"
"The Italian seasoning."
"What does it taste like?"
"The Italian flavors."
"And those are?"
"It's what is in the Italian seasoning."
"OH MY GOD!"
So I looked at it and I said, "Ok, those are dehydrated red pepper flakes, and it probably involves basil and garlic and a lot of salt."
And Marc said "DOES IT HAVE ITALIANS IN IT"
And she said "YES, WE GRIND 'EM UP REAL FINE."
And the funny thing was, it tasted like Chinese greasy spoon orange chicken.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
today's reads
Today I'm taking home from the library:
Handy Farm Devices & How to Make Them (A Classic of American Ingenuity)
by Rolfe Cobleigh (a 1996 reprint of the 1909 original)
Continuing the Good Life: Half a Century of Homesteading
by Helen and Scott Nearing (of course)
Trapping: A Practical Guide
James A. Bateman
A Natural Year: The Pleasures and Rewards to be Gleaned from The Good Earth - With Informal Instructions on Foraging for Wild Food, Gardening, Preserving, Bread Baking, Wine Making, and Many Other Family Pursuits
Grace Firth
Practical Blacksmithing: The Original Classic in One Volume
Compiled & Edited by M.T. Richardson (Because it is a veritable tome)
Building & Using Our Sun-Heated Greenhouse
Helen Nearing (Because she wrote it)
Making Authentic Craftsman Furniture: Instructions & Plans for 62 Projects
Articles from The Craftsman edited by Gustav Stickley
Planting Green Roofs & Living Walls
Nigel Dunnett & Noel Kingsbury
Second Nature : A Gardener's Education
Michael Pollan (Because, HELLO)
The above to be thrown at (or quoted from at) Marc, that he may be further educated thereby, and that I may be less irritated at his face hidden perpetually behind a book than I am when the distracting device is the INTERNETS. Because his mind, it doth wander, and it doth seize upon a concept or a task and focus all his efforts thereby until a goal is accomplished. And if that goal be homesteading we shall be thus satisfied, and shall have tomatoes and where shall be the goats?
I shall take to repeating that, in the manner of & CARTHAGE MUST BE DESTROYED. I shall vow to hereby end all paragraphs with AND WHERE SHALL WE PUT THE GOATS?
Handy Farm Devices & How to Make Them (A Classic of American Ingenuity)
by Rolfe Cobleigh (a 1996 reprint of the 1909 original)
Continuing the Good Life: Half a Century of Homesteading
by Helen and Scott Nearing (of course)
Trapping: A Practical Guide
James A. Bateman
A Natural Year: The Pleasures and Rewards to be Gleaned from The Good Earth - With Informal Instructions on Foraging for Wild Food, Gardening, Preserving, Bread Baking, Wine Making, and Many Other Family Pursuits
Grace Firth
Practical Blacksmithing: The Original Classic in One Volume
Compiled & Edited by M.T. Richardson (Because it is a veritable tome)
Building & Using Our Sun-Heated Greenhouse
Helen Nearing (Because she wrote it)
Making Authentic Craftsman Furniture: Instructions & Plans for 62 Projects
Articles from The Craftsman edited by Gustav Stickley
Planting Green Roofs & Living Walls
Nigel Dunnett & Noel Kingsbury
Second Nature : A Gardener's Education
Michael Pollan (Because, HELLO)
The above to be thrown at (or quoted from at) Marc, that he may be further educated thereby, and that I may be less irritated at his face hidden perpetually behind a book than I am when the distracting device is the INTERNETS. Because his mind, it doth wander, and it doth seize upon a concept or a task and focus all his efforts thereby until a goal is accomplished. And if that goal be homesteading we shall be thus satisfied, and shall have tomatoes and where shall be the goats?
I shall take to repeating that, in the manner of & CARTHAGE MUST BE DESTROYED. I shall vow to hereby end all paragraphs with AND WHERE SHALL WE PUT THE GOATS?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)