• Earthy ponderations: part three

    I bet you thought I forgot that I said there were three parts, huh? You thought I was so wrapped up in maters that I forgot to finish pondering the earthy matters (part one and part two). Ha! Think again! What do you think I do while I chop and mince and blanch? I’ve got to do something with my brain to lift it out of the juicy mire. So, here we go…

    Mom is still doing the talking. She has the ability to hold forth, let me tell you (or maybe you already noticed)—and just for the record, her father was a preacher. (I think that’s relevant.)

    ***

    Mom: Overwhelmingly so, with or without technology’s strides, vacationing happens at nature’s expense, not to mention the less arcane costs. The ad for the hybrid SUV, picturing a shadowy, moss-carpeted forest and smugly tooting, “Finally, a vehicle that can take you to the very places you’re helping to preserve,” is really promising that for the $60,000 sticker price, wow-ee, you can get there without having to fold your legs into pretzels, and in addition, you’ll be conscientiously stomping down the lichens and sedge. Gas-hog transported somewhere or not, either way, on a grander or lesser scale, we’re invading.

    … Is the family sustaining anything beyond their bellies, by staying planted at home in the growing months, entrenched up to their ankles in their own blood and sweat and tears?

    I have no scientific answer for that! Just, sweet and simple, in defense of dirt:

    Number one, Hounding after nature a la vacationer style is probably a sham. Er, scam. Whatever.

    Number two, Furthermore, fleeing doesn’t get the flee-er anywhere.

    Number three, As compared to deifying nature, worshiping it to its ruin, loving nature means humbling ourselves in labor, even getting down on all fours. Tending the garden, mud squishing up between our toes, we can only laugh at ourselves—or cry.

    Me: Sustainability is more than us doing something. It’s about listening. We spend so much time trying to conquer nature—shipping our processed food from all over the world, using absurd amounts of electricity so we can stay up way late and sleep way late, pouring concrete wherever we might venture so as not to soil our shoes, building fancy, gas-guzzling contraptions that allow us to trot the globe on a whim, keeping our homes’ temperatures so even that we never break a sweat or shiver—that we miss out on some valuable lessons in patience and grit, not to mention some built in respites for sanity’s sake.

    That’s why working with our food supply, doing the gardening and cooking ourselves, is about the most down-to-earth a person can get. In this one small way we are forced to abide by the natural elements, heading the ebb and flow of the seasons, respecting the differences between night and day. We can’t go scampering off to visit far-away relatives when the beans are in season. The food can’t be put on hold; you have to act now.

    ***

    Well, except for the fact that I am compiling this series of Earthy Ponderations while I am hiding out at Panera Bread (after going shopping for clothes, of all things), ignoring the tomatoes, nectarines, and apples that were waiting to be turned into sauce, salsa, jams, and dried snacky foods. So see, I guess I have the same elitist attitude as everyone else, trying to get the upper hand, not wanting to kow-tow to nature’s demands.

    But right now, at this very moment—7:43 on Tuesday, August 18, 2009—I’ll take any excuse I can get: I’m tired. Let me fool myself a bit longer.

    About One Year Ago: How to make butter.

  • The mater question

    So I get this email from my girlfriend asking if I use the hot-water-bath method or the pressure canner method to can my tomatoes and I tell her that I use the hot water bath.

    And then a couple days later I get another email from her, this time asking if I do them raw pack or stewed.


    I haven’t a clue, to be honest, but I don’t tell her that. In fact, I don’t tell her anything at all, preferring instead to let her think the reason I haven’t gotten around to answering her email is because I’m too busy, rather than the cold, hard truth which is that I’m avoiding the question since I don’t have a quick answer. I’m a good friend like that—skipping out when the going gets tough.

    But I will now redeem myself by commencing to give a fully complete, well-rounded, all-encompassing (go redundancy!) answer to the Mater Question, as my girlfriend calls it, in the form of an entire (short) post. Maybe I’m not such a bad friend after all?

    One more thing to enhance the confusion factor: I call these tomatoes “stewed” but I don’t actually stew them before canning, so maybe they’re not stewed. Does that mean I’m lying when I call these “stewed tomatoes?”


    In any case, I think it’s an easy-peasy way to put up tomatoes.

    But then again, maybe the rest of you have easier-peasier ways? If so, please enlighten me (and my girlfriend).

    Stewed Tomatoes, Canned

    High-acid (red) tomatoes, such as Big Boy, Better Boy, Roma, etc.
    Salt

    1. Wash the tomatoes.


    2. Blanch the tomatoes, which means:

    Fill a large kettle with four inches of water and bring it to a boil. Drop enough tomatoes into the kettle to cover the bottom of the pan.


    Wait for thirty to sixty seconds, or until you see the tomato skins starting to split. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the tomatoes from the boiling water to a colander.


    Repeat the process (bringing the water back up to a boil between batches) until all the tomatoes have been blanched.

    3. Remove the skins, which means:

    Once the tomatoes are cool enough to touch, cut off their tops and any bad parts (use your sniffer to make sure you sliced all the yuck out—if you slice off a bad spot, make sure to rinse your knife before moving on to another tomato) and slip off the skins.


    4. Chop the skinned and scalped tomatoes into the desired size. Some people (like my mother) just chunk in the peeled tomatoes, but I prefer to chop mine up into smaller pieces because they are easier to use this way (just pop the top and dump) and less offensive to children.

    5. Fill your jars. At this point you get to decide what juice-tomato ratio you would like to have—for a more tomato-packed jar, leave out much of the tomato juice, and for a more juicy tomato-y jar, add less chunks and more juice. (That was probably way too obvious, but I felt compelled to say it anyway.)

    6. Add salt—one teaspoon per quart and one-half teaspoon per pint—wipe the lip of the jar, put the lids on, and screw on the rings.

    7. Process the jars of tomatoes in a hot water bath—ten minutes at a gentle boil.

    About One Year Ago: So why did I marry him? Thirteen years and counting!

  • As they come in

    A couple nights ago I went shopping, just for a little bit, and guess what I found? A tart pan, yes! Of course I had to break it in right away, so the next morning I quick whipped up a nectarine tart (it helped that I had two disks of butter pastry chilling in the fridge). Pretty, no?


    It’s actually not exactly what I was looking for. I was wanting a springform tart pan, but I think that for now this will do quite well, especially seeing as it only cost five dollars.


    It’s a good thing I had that dough chilling in the fridge because I don’t think I would’ve had a chance to make that tart otherwise—that same morning I needed to make salsa, and do it real quick ‘cause I was leaving in the afternoon for another one of Yo-Yo’s doctor appointments and would be gone for the rest of the day. But by getting up early and chopping veggies while the sky was still dark, I managed to get both the tart and two batches of salsa made in one morning. Whoo-hoo!


    We go through a lot of salsa. Two years ago we all met at my parents’ house for a salsa-making party (I bulked up our paltry few tomatoes with some cases of Romas from a local farmer) and turned out a whopping 51 quarts of the bright red, sweet-and-mildly-spicy condiment. I didn’t need to make any salsa last year, but we’ve been out for a little while now and we’re missing it, so I want to make plenty this year.

    The Salsa Party of 2007:
    Mr. Handsome blanching the tomatoes. I chopped, I mean cropped, his head off since he had a slightly addled expression plastered all over his face…

    My Balding Bro and The Happy Pappy dealing with the peppers…

    My Tiny-Little Brother getting hatchet-happy with the onions…


    It’s my style to go whole hog when undertaking a project (Four bushels of apples to turn into sauce? Okay, let’s do it ALL today and knock ourselves out—what fun!), but I have to put the tomatoes up as they come in, so it’s a little bit here and a little bit there. It wears on me, the tomatoes day in and day out, but it all adds up. I’m not complaining (too much).


    Valerie’s Salsa
    This recipe comes from my—you guessed it!—Aunt Valerie.

    Because the vegetables aren’t cooked prior to canning them, this is a very fresh-tasting salsa. Even after the hot water bath, the salsa is crunchy and light, mildly spicy with a touch of sweet. (If you prefer a hotter salsa, simply add more jalapenos or some cayenne pepper.)

    One-half bushel of tomatoes is enough for a double recipe.

    14 cups peeled (see note below) and chopped Roma tomatoes, or another paste tomato
    3 cups diced onions
    1 ½ cups diced green peppers
    1/4 cup minced jalapenos (about three peppers)
    1/4 cup minced garlic cloves
    3/4 cup Therm Flo (or Clear Jel)
    3/4 cup sugar
    1 cup cider vinegar
    2 cups tomato sauce
    4 teaspoons chili powder
    1 ½ teaspoons garlic powder
    1 ½ teaspoons cumin
    3 tablespoons salt

    Combine the tomatoes, onions, peppers, and garlic in a large mixing bowl. Set aside.


    In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, stir together the sugar, Therm Flo, and spices. Add the vinegar and tomato sauce. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly. When it is very thick and bubbly, add it to the chopped veggies and stir to combine. Ladle the salsa into jars, wipe the rims, screw on the lids and process in a hot water bath—15 minutes for pints, and 18 minutes for quarts—at a gentle boil.

    Yield: 5 quarts

    Note on how to peel tomatoes:
    Wash the tomatoes.

    Fill a large kettle with four inches of water and bring it to a boil. Drop enough tomatoes into the kettle to cover the bottom of the pan. Wait for thirty to sixty seconds, until you see the tomato skins starting to split. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the tomatoes from the boiling water to a colander. Repeat the process (bringing the water back to a boil between batches) until all the tomatoes have been blanched.

    Once the tomatoes are cool enough to touch, cut off their tops and any bad parts (use your sniffer to make sure you sliced all the yuck out) and slip off the skins.

    About One Year Ago: Cold Curried Corn Soup. The soiree is coming up in just several weeks (!); I wonder what perfectly doctored foods we’ll get served this time around…