Yes I Can

I think the appeal of canning, for me, is not wasting anything. Even my small garden will produce a bounty that is overwhelming. This weekend I had to face the bowls and bags of peppers in my refrigerator with the realization that it was use it or lose it time. I ad-libbed a recipe using the vinegar-sugar base I strained and saved from the previous weekend’s canning of sweet-hots or bread-and-butter jalapenos. I enlisted the help of my twenty-five year old food processor and chopped every bell pepper, green chile, pimiento, onion, and garlic clove in the house. To this I added the head of cabbage I discovered once all of the peppers were out of the refrigerator. The jalapeno-infused vinegar was the perfect complement to this mélange of vegetables, making (what I am labeling the jars as) chow-chow.



Canning seems to be a manic activity for me, so while I was at it, and since my kitchen was now a complete disaster area, I decided to keep going. The morning’s harvest yielded a fair amount of green beans and I recalled once being served a Bloody Mary with pickled green beans instead of the requisite celery stick, so I was off. Out came the vinegar and a few hours later I had jars of lovely pickled beans.



Sadly, I have not yet made and canned my own tomato juice, so there were no Bloody Marys to be had. But, I have a near empty refrigerator and a pantry full of the last of my summer garden’s offerings – and nothing went to waste.

Putting Food Up

Fresh produce is a lot of work! Sometimes I ask myself why I go to all of the trouble when I could pick up food at the grocery store for minimal cost and oh-so-much ease and convenience. I know the answer, even though growing and preparing my own food is a major undertaking and probably more expensive, I know it tastes better and is better for me than the mass-produced over-processed “stuff” I can buy at the grocery store.

Don’t think for a second that I don’t buy “stuff” from the store – I’m at my neighborhood grocery almost every day. It’s a bit embarrassing when the cashier or the carryout person says, “See you tomorrow.” But, I do try to grow and eat as much as I can from my own garden or from the farm or the farmers’ market. Growing the food is one aspect, but what I want to discuss today is bringing all of that fresh food into the kitchen.

Fresh fruits and vegetables come with dirt. I learned in my Master Gardener course that we grow things in soil, but what remains on the veggies when they arrive in my kitchen is dirt. Cleaning the produce is a major undertaking. Let’s compare lettuce for an example. Lettuce from the supermarket is either triple washed and sealed in plastic bags or sold as heads that were grown without benefit of soil in a hydroponic environment. There is not a speck of dirt to be had on store-bought lettuce. Lettuce from my garden goes immediately into a sink full of very cold water. The leaf lettuce is washed multiple times, each time leaving a residue of dirt, sand, and bugs in the bottom of the sink. In spite of my best effort there is still a gritty texture to most of my salads. Head lettuce is even harder to clean; each leaf must be removed and rinsed and there is usually a surprise at the core – a bug carcass or two. I’ve never found a bug in my store bought salads. But, really – how did we get so far away from the real source of our food that we would be freaked out by a bug in our lettuce? In theory a bug in our lettuce should be a good thing, indicating the lettuce was actually grown in natural conditions. Bugs or no bugs, my salads taste better than any of the pale, limp, watery excuses for lettuce I can buy at the store, but I will be in the produce section buying it along with the masses when I am unable to grow it due to weather.

Canning vegetables, or “putting food up,” as my grandmother called it, seems like a ridiculous undertaking in these modern times. I spent five hours yesterday canning jalapeno peppers and ended up with seventeen quarts of pickled peppers and eleven pints of sweet-hot bread and butter jalapenos. I could buy a jar or can of pickled peppers at the grocery store for about a buck! The time and money involved in home canning is not the issue for me. I see canning as another way to connect with my food, to appreciate the bounty, and to carry on a tradition which is fast becoming a lost art. I will proudly present gifts of my “put up” produce to friends all winter and I will take a great deal of satisfaction in opening a jar of tomatoes for a soup or stew, knowing I planted the seed that grew into the tomato that I harvested and processed in my very own kitchen. How many hands touched the tomatoes in the three-for-a-dollar cans at the grocery store? And how many miles did those tomatoes travel in their short life spans to get to my neighborhood store?

Whole foods, fresh foods are a lot of work, but worth it in so many ways; the taste, the nutritional value, the control over food safety, and the plain old satisfaction of it. Anyone can open a bag, a box or a can – but I take immense pleasure from growing my own food and supporting my local farmers. I’d write more on this topic, but I have a bushel of green chiles in the kitchen waiting to be “put up.” (I might even find a bug!)

1960 Redux

Tonight my husband, Frank, and I went to a concert at our county fair sponsored by the local “oldies” radio station. We saw the Grass Roots, a band I really liked in the late 1960s. In fact, one of my favorite songs of all times is “Temptation Eyes” by the Grass Roots.

Frank and I went early in order to take in the fair before the show, but it didn’t take long to realize we weren’t going to ride any rides or play any games of chance on the midway, nor were we going to eat anything “on a stick” or fried, which seems to be the only fair fare offered anymore. We took our concert seats early to people watch. We saw several folks we knew and compared notes. Frank saw a former co-worker, I saw a girl I went to first grade with. It was fun to observe the crowd from our upper section seats and try to find someone we knew. I saw my cousin, Bunny, Frank saw the sales manager from our insurance company.

I said, “There’s the guy from the Grateful Dead concert.” Frank gave me an odd look, because, contrary to popular belief, we have never been to a Grateful Dead concert. And then he saw him; a total Dead-Head. Sitting an aisle over and a few rows in front of us was a sixty-something-year old in a tie-dyed t-shirt, jeans and a ball cap with a feather poking out from the crown. He had a glazed look which suggested his brain was fried from too much acid in the 60s or too much pot in the parking lot at the fair.

The minute the show began our Dead-Head was on his feet (much to the chagrin of the family he was seated in front of) and rocking out to “I’d Wait a Million Years.” He proceeded to dance erratically to every song, at times threatening to topple over on the people in front of him. At one point he tired of the constraints of a mid-row seat and moved to the row overlooking the floor seats. From this new vantage point he could keep his glazed eyes on the band while simultaneously entertaining those of us near enough to see him and threatening to fall on top of unsuspecting floor seat occupants.

I did enjoy the Grass Roots but, I must say, the Dead-Head put on a much better show. His writhing dance movements and his awesome air guitar performances were MTV-worthy. In spite of repeated requests from Security to return to his seat, he continued to entertain until the final encore of “Midnight Confession.”

I am happy to report that the Grass Roots (or a bunch of guys who call themselves the Grass Roots) put on a great show, especially when they sang “Temptation Eyes” (second to last song), but perhaps the real show was in my section, performed by a guy who never left the 1960s.