Pickles,
Peaches, and Tomatoes?
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W
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e have been in sort of a
pickle here in Roscommon. It all started with the unusually warm weather this
spring and summer. It was so warm that the Mrs. got hot under the collar when
the temperature soared above 80°F early in the spring. Not knowing what else to
do, I called the furnace man who suggested installation of an air conditioner. Although
I nearly choked at the cost, I agreed and an air-conditioner soon graced our
backyard. Things around home cooled after that and we had a durn nice summer
even with the hot weather. I spent a good portion of my summer standing in the
back yard with a hose in hand, watering the tomatoes and beans while the air
conditioner hummed and the electric meter whirred. The consequences of all that
heat and all that watering is that come fall, I was up to my patuttie in beans
and tomatoes.
I decided to pickle the overflow crop of green beans. I
treated them with vinegar, salt, garlic and dill to make what the cookbook
calls pickles, but I would call pickled beans. Anyway, after I had produced
several quarts of pickled beans and eaten so many that my mouth was beginning
to curl in a permanent sort of sneer, it came to me that I needed to do
something with all those quart cans full of pickled beans. The Mrs. said I
should can them. (Canning: [kan’ing], n, an antiquated practice of putting food
in cans for preservation. A practice unknown to most civilized men ). I soon
learned that canning involved a number of skills that were completely foreign
to me: washing, sterilizing, steaming and re-packing jars to avoid air bubbles.
The final foolishness was spending an hour or more watching a giant bucket of
water boiling so my poor beans could simmer in the vinegar solution and the
rubber seal would consent to set tightly on the Ball jars. It was just
ridiculous.
All that vinegar wafting around the house must have
stirred some primeval activity in the Mrs.; she decided she would make and can
pickled beets. The odor of the house had just returned to normal after my
pickling and canning operation when, true to her word, she came home with a
basket of beets and a big bottle of vinegar. Soon, the house again filled with
that pungent smell of vinegar as she blanched, boiled, steamed and sealed
several jars filled with little red balls that she said were baby beats.
But she didn’t stop there. After the beets, it was
pickles. This time, it was ‘honest-to-God pickles made from cucumbers. I asked
the grocer if he could deliver vinegar directly to our house. Upon my
questioning, the Mrs. said she was making bread and butter pickles, although I
didn’t see either bread or butter in any of the finished jars. While she was
busy pickling, I watered the garden.
Just about then, my tomatoes got red. I picked ‘em and
we ate as many as we could, but not nearly enough to deplete the harvest. I
began to worry that all that red juice in my system might affect my plumbing
inappropriately. All I could think about was what if I had to have an emergency
physical exam that required me to pee in a cup. If I peed red, no doubt I’d be
off to the emergency room with some doctor who knew nothing about ripe tomatoes
ready to carve me up. The solution: can some tomatoes instead of eating them
all. I filled the big bucket with water and began the interminable wait as the
water heated slowly on the stove. I avoided any sort of pickling.
The preposterous thing about all this pickling and
canning was that it delayed our normal fall practice of harvesting fruit for wine.
As soon as we finished with the vinegarizing, pickling, canning and so forth,
we began our search for fruit for wine. We soon discovered the full extent of
our summer’s weather-induced calamity. Sadly, we found that this year (at least
in Michigan), there isn’t any fruit. The cherries and apples froze in the
spring, and the berries failed due to the heat and dry summer. We had staked
out several wild elderberry bushes for fall picking to make elderberry wine,
but there were no elderberries. Other searches yielded no wild grapes, no
raspberries, and no currants, nothing. Our fondest hopes for a bountiful 2012
wine season melted like ice cream in front of a six year old.
So, our summer was all pickles and no wine. I am
reflecting on this terrible sequence of events as I indulge in a large glass of
our 2011 peach wine. 2011 was a good year for peaches so we have a supply of a
flavorful wine. Next year, instead of drinking wine, I guess I’ll be eating
pickles and peeing red.
Grandpa Bill
