Little things you almost forgot.......
I canned stuff tonight for the first time in ages.
I live in a rural area. How I love the sound of that word! Rural. It's magical. For the urban kid who was 7 before he knew what trees were, to live in a forest is a joyful privilege like no other. It's 3 miles into town, a rather extraordinary place in its own right. Guerneville had one of the highest percentages of same gender households in the country during the last census (or so I have been told), but I digress.
Our county is one of the fastest growing in the bay area. The county seat (how's that for a term out of the past), Santa Rosa, which is where my practice is, has doubled in size in the 23 years we've been in this county and now tops 160,000. It's not quite a major urban area, but its certainly no longer the rural backwater it was 50 years ago, when it was home to just 30,000. When I settled here, my father had images of farm people paying for their health care with chickens and home grown produce. I disabused him of that notion rather quickly, but these days looking at the prices at Whole Paycheck, er, make that Whole Foods, trading services for wholesome organic food might not have been such a bad idea on the whole.
I am periodically given some of the bounty this landscape provides. A few patients who're aware of my love for fresh figs, visit me annually at harvest time bearing gifts. I've dried some, frozen others, pureed pulp to freeze for use months (and yes, even years) later in baked goods like my fig frangipani. Pears have gotten dried, zuchinnis stuffed, baked, stir fried and turned into breads, and tomatoes have been turned into salsa, sauce and salads.
However, its been several years since anything got canned, that is until tonight.
Wednesday last, John came in for an office visit with a lug of organic, yellow blush peaches off of his tree, unsprayed, ripe and bursting with juice and sweetness. While delicious, there are only so many peaches one can eat in a day. Sunday morning I looked at the lug, the contents of which was rapidly reaching over-ripe. I decided, I'd better do something fast or it was mostly going to go to waste. Time for Peach Napalm.
I have a taste for heat. I fell in love with sweet heat in New Mexico almost 20 years ago, when I visited Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos. Chili piñion brittle, and chili peanut butter cups delighted both my tongue and my sweet tooth. So did the hot pepper jam. I was hooked.
I made a batch of hot pepper jam for the first time later that year. My mother, who shares my taste for heat, loved it, as did my brother-in-law and roughly half of my nephews. Ever since, I've been churning out batches every couple of years, to keep us all in the requisite sweet heat. That was until my sister started making it as well, saving me the cost of shipping cross country, as well as the effort to make it all. About 8 years back, I came across a recipe for hot pepper jam with mango, and the thought of it so tantalized me, I couldn't resist. Thus was born a series of jams and marmalades, when fruit and chilis have been in season. Mango Napalm was the first, followed by peach, persimmon, fig, pear, as well as by two citrus marmalades, orange and lemon, known respectively as Agent Orange and Yellow Alert. I even made a label for them featuring a cartoon version of the fruit in question, with a lit fuse attached.
Last night the lion's share of the peaches, roughly 11 lbs of them, where peeled, chopped and mashed, mixed with the zest and juice of two good sized lemons, an ounce of fresh ginger root, and sweetener. Then with the addition of a pound and 3/4 of finely ground fresh mixed chilis (serranos, yellow chilis, and jalapeños), all of it went into the crockpot, where it was left to simmer away, until I returned home this evening. Added some pectin when I got home, then left it to thicken and cook a bit longer. After dinner, I canned up 23 half pints of Peach Napalm.
As I was pulling the jars out of the water bath and stacking them back in the boxes they came in, I heard the first 'ping' of a lid as the vacuum set, followed by another and a moment or so later, a third.
Ping!
What a sweet and satifying sound! I'd almost forgotten it, in the years since I've done any canning. That auditory confirmation that yes, you have succeeded in putting by some of mother nature's bounty, to enjoy when the blush is gone from the bloom, and the rains of winter have once again returned. As I look at the spread on my kitchen table of hot jars filled and sealed, cooling before they're put away, whether they be gifts for this X-mas season, or the filling in a sandwich next March, I am sated and satisfied, at once grateful and serene, the little boy within still marveling that food doesn't always come from the store.
I live in a rural area. How I love the sound of that word! Rural. It's magical. For the urban kid who was 7 before he knew what trees were, to live in a forest is a joyful privilege like no other. It's 3 miles into town, a rather extraordinary place in its own right. Guerneville had one of the highest percentages of same gender households in the country during the last census (or so I have been told), but I digress.
Our county is one of the fastest growing in the bay area. The county seat (how's that for a term out of the past), Santa Rosa, which is where my practice is, has doubled in size in the 23 years we've been in this county and now tops 160,000. It's not quite a major urban area, but its certainly no longer the rural backwater it was 50 years ago, when it was home to just 30,000. When I settled here, my father had images of farm people paying for their health care with chickens and home grown produce. I disabused him of that notion rather quickly, but these days looking at the prices at Whole Paycheck, er, make that Whole Foods, trading services for wholesome organic food might not have been such a bad idea on the whole.
I am periodically given some of the bounty this landscape provides. A few patients who're aware of my love for fresh figs, visit me annually at harvest time bearing gifts. I've dried some, frozen others, pureed pulp to freeze for use months (and yes, even years) later in baked goods like my fig frangipani. Pears have gotten dried, zuchinnis stuffed, baked, stir fried and turned into breads, and tomatoes have been turned into salsa, sauce and salads.
However, its been several years since anything got canned, that is until tonight.
Wednesday last, John came in for an office visit with a lug of organic, yellow blush peaches off of his tree, unsprayed, ripe and bursting with juice and sweetness. While delicious, there are only so many peaches one can eat in a day. Sunday morning I looked at the lug, the contents of which was rapidly reaching over-ripe. I decided, I'd better do something fast or it was mostly going to go to waste. Time for Peach Napalm.
I have a taste for heat. I fell in love with sweet heat in New Mexico almost 20 years ago, when I visited Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos. Chili piñion brittle, and chili peanut butter cups delighted both my tongue and my sweet tooth. So did the hot pepper jam. I was hooked.
I made a batch of hot pepper jam for the first time later that year. My mother, who shares my taste for heat, loved it, as did my brother-in-law and roughly half of my nephews. Ever since, I've been churning out batches every couple of years, to keep us all in the requisite sweet heat. That was until my sister started making it as well, saving me the cost of shipping cross country, as well as the effort to make it all. About 8 years back, I came across a recipe for hot pepper jam with mango, and the thought of it so tantalized me, I couldn't resist. Thus was born a series of jams and marmalades, when fruit and chilis have been in season. Mango Napalm was the first, followed by peach, persimmon, fig, pear, as well as by two citrus marmalades, orange and lemon, known respectively as Agent Orange and Yellow Alert. I even made a label for them featuring a cartoon version of the fruit in question, with a lit fuse attached.
Last night the lion's share of the peaches, roughly 11 lbs of them, where peeled, chopped and mashed, mixed with the zest and juice of two good sized lemons, an ounce of fresh ginger root, and sweetener. Then with the addition of a pound and 3/4 of finely ground fresh mixed chilis (serranos, yellow chilis, and jalapeños), all of it went into the crockpot, where it was left to simmer away, until I returned home this evening. Added some pectin when I got home, then left it to thicken and cook a bit longer. After dinner, I canned up 23 half pints of Peach Napalm.
As I was pulling the jars out of the water bath and stacking them back in the boxes they came in, I heard the first 'ping' of a lid as the vacuum set, followed by another and a moment or so later, a third.
Ping!
What a sweet and satifying sound! I'd almost forgotten it, in the years since I've done any canning. That auditory confirmation that yes, you have succeeded in putting by some of mother nature's bounty, to enjoy when the blush is gone from the bloom, and the rains of winter have once again returned. As I look at the spread on my kitchen table of hot jars filled and sealed, cooling before they're put away, whether they be gifts for this X-mas season, or the filling in a sandwich next March, I am sated and satisfied, at once grateful and serene, the little boy within still marveling that food doesn't always come from the store.