Category: Sustenance

Culturally, Labor Day marks the end of summer and the beginning of fall.  Technically, fall is nearly two weeks away, at the solstice, but there is more to it than that. Although the nights are cooler at the moment, and the quality of the light is beginning to change; the scent of autumn in the air is not yet as prevalent as it was at this time last year. This could simply be because last year was very dry and this year has been quite wet. It could also be that my sense of smell, which had seemed to grow more acute as I aged, may not be what it was before my fall. I do hope this is not the case. 

I would not object to the arrival of Autumn.  I am tired of rampant growth. The blueberry bushes are turning red. I have been entranced with the browning of the oak leaf hydrangeas near the patio.  Last year the blossoms on this shrub were white and green well into autumn; this year they turned brown before the end of July. The plants appear healthy but it has been an odd year for hydrangeas. It has been an odd year in many ways.  Aside from blueberries and hydrangeas however, growth rather than decay seems to be the order of business.

Or perhaps I just feel that way because I have been out in the garden tackling the weeds.  At least I have been weeding and mulching the small areas of the garden that I had already planted.  What looks like lush greenery from the upstairs window, is actually an infestation of weeds.  I admit I am happy for green, but I also admit defeat, admit that my back is not up to this.  After two hours of weeding and spreading the mulch I had on hand, I spent most of the rest of Labor day sitting and reading, my back mostly in spasm.

I cannot do everything myself, and have hired help on the yard reclamation front.  I am happy to have weeded that area next to the driveway, now cleared and mulched, and area I planted just before my fall in July.  It is possible, and regrettable, that I lost some of those plants, but I found a few small delicate remnants hanging on.  There is hope, but it will be spring once again, before I know whether this last-ditch effort was enough.  I can beat myself up over it, my natural inclination is to be harder on myself than anyone else after all, or let it go.  Letting go of self-recrimination seems to be an exercise in lifetime learning.

Admittedly I have also probably overdone it in the kitchen, as well as in my focused attempt to organize, shift everything around, and reorganize the house.  Perhaps I am ready for a personal autumn of sorts, a slowing down and preparation for reflection, a letting go of heavy lifting and the mad overdrive of summer labors.

My first pressure canner arrived.  Ordered in May, I did not expect it before mid-September. I find I am fascinated by a device that terrified my younger self.  Truthfully, I always had a glass-topped stove, a stove that would not accommodate a pressure canner.  But I also worried, worried that I was too easily distracted, too unfocused, worried that the combination of an absent-minded cook and pressure cooker was a recipe for disaster.  

My fears were unfounded.  Yes, during George’s final years my life was fairly chaotic, my ability to concentrate often limited, and I was often pulled in too many directions, but that does not mean I still have to be that addle-pated and distracted person.  I feel like I have rediscovered my focus.  I feel like I am settling into being this person who exists today, a person who does not need to limit herself by past fears. So I got to work, learned to use the canner, and canned a batch green chiles.

Why green chiles? They are widely available, or were widely available.  At the moment it seems like nothing is always widely available.  In this world, maintaining a larder feels like a good idea. Mild green chiles are something I use often; it may be the Texan in me.  But truthfully I struggle to find them.  I use them in strips, but usually only find diced chiles in local markets. I can easily spend an entire day looking for whole green chiles in small cans, whereas once they were available everywhere.  I still find them when I am visiting family in Texas, but going to Texas for a case of green chiles is perhaps less practical than canning my own.  The goal was to can several varieties, see what I like best, and perhaps grow my own next year.

In fact I have been thinking a lot about pantries and larders and storage.  Not everything I put up is difficult to find.  Tomatoes, for example, are commonly available, but fresh tomatoes, picked freshly off the vine taste nothing like grocery store tomatoes.  And home canned tomatoes taste fresher than anything I can buy in a can in the store, although I did not really know that before I started. The tomatoes I used to buy now taste of chemicals and salt by comparison.  I also feel virtuous because a small space in my yard produces food for the present and tomatoes for the year.  I feel virtuous because canning jars are reusable.  Although cans can be recycled, many tomato products come in cans that are lined with a plastic coating to prevent leaching from the metal into the acid of the tomato, and lined cans are not recyclable. I feel virtuous because I use the whole tomato:  the flesh becomes crushed tomatoes or tomato sauce; the skin, pulp and seeds get dehydrated into tomato powder;  the water that drains from the pulp becomes tomato water that gets used weekly in soups and stews. Very little is left as waste, and that goes into a compost pile to be returned to the earth. But mostly for me it is all about taste, and about some connection to the earth that provides sustenance for all of us. 

I canned 13 quarts of stock over the weekend.  I actually made 15 quarts, four quarts of beef stock and eleven quarts of chicken stock.  Two of those went into a batch of soup, half of which was frozen for later.   This happened mostly because the freezer was full, and when I was rustling through it I found 5 gallons of chicken bones and vegetable trimmings and another couple of gallons of beef bones. Apparently weeds were not the only thing that got out of control this weekend.

No wonder my back is sore.

One morning earlier this week I harvested 5 pounds of tomatoes.  Not an unusual harvest; I have a larger assortment of tomatoes sitting on my counter this morning, waiting to be turned into crushed tomatoes and tomato puree.  But on that particular morning I was in the mood for something more immediate.  As it happened,  I also had somewhat over 2 pounds of cucumbers in the fridge. The combination triggered thoughts of gazpacho.  The ratio of tomatoes to cucumbers felt perfect for gazpacho making, and so, with the addition of some pimientos de padron and basil, also from the garden, the taste of summer materialized in my blender.

The garden has shaped my eating habits and changed me; the garden and the farmer’s market because I never intended to be fully self-sufficient, and I believe in supporting local farmers.  But this year, what was once a belief held more in the abstract than always in practical reality, has burrowed deeper, helped me to redefine who I am and what I think is important, important to me alone perhaps, but nonetheless important to my life.

Much summer eating is simple, has always been simple.  Produce at its peak does not ask for much.  I have been eating fresh tomatoes and shishito peppers daily for at least six weeks now.  I am not yet tired of either, and I am certain I will miss them when the season ends.   Cool weather crops are figments of memory, although there are still herbs, scattered greens, a few miscellaneous vegetables here and there.  I fell behind after my fall.  But I am fortunate.  I do not depend on my small patch of earth to live.  Compared to grocery store produce, freshly picked vegetables are a carnival of flavor.  I already knew that.  I have supported local farmers and markets for years,  but it has also been years since I walked outside and picked my dinner.

I have always loved to cook.  When I was young I worked my way through Julia Child and Marcella Hazan. I made complicated things but I increasingly learned to love simple things as well, but it was a different kind of simplicity than the simplicity of my childhood, a simplicity based on taste, on respect for the ingredients, and increasingly, for me at any rate, on connection to the earth that nourishes us. 

As a result of my love of cooking, of food, and my burgeoning appreciate of taste, my first gardens were vegetable gardens.  I was not interested in flowers. I was interested in unusual, at the time, European produce and heirloom vegetables.  I saved seeds.  Because the nights often cooled down in early August when I was living further north, I had been known, during particularly cool seasons to dig up and pot pepper plants, growing them on a hot, glassed in sun porch, using a child’s paintbrush as a pollinating aid.

But this season is different. Gardening in Tennessee is the same, and yet different, than gardening in New York.  This year was always an experiment.  I decided early on that I would not fret over my failures, but celebrate abundance and the opportunity to learn.

What I suspect I did not count upon was the way I would change.  Perhaps it is not so much change but a refining, a rediscovery of more youthful passions combined with years of experience.  I love going out and wandering in the garden, picking a salad.  I have always thought that simple things, a salad, a roast chicken, fish, were often the most telling.  But the salads of my 60s are not the salads of my 20s.  I love picking herbs, flowers, garden plants.  I love tasting, combining colors and flavors.  I love the way even something as simple, as innocent even, as a salad reveals the ever evolving sense of terroir.

For a long time in this once-again single life I did not cook much.  Cooking for one did not seem to be as much fun as feeding other people.  I still loved to entertain.  But cooking, like everything else worthwhile in life, is a skill that blossoms with practice.  It feels so good to be in the kitchen again, whether I am simply layering herbs and greens, blistering peppers, making pickles and relish, grilling a steak, making soups, ratatouille, or moussaka.  I perfected gluten-free biscuits, going so far even as to develop a gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan version, that I find quite good — an accomplishment for a woman who finds that all dairy-free plant-milks have an off-putting mouth-feel and aftertaste.

Mostly the garden has rekindled my sense of play.  I have rediscovered my kitchen confidence, my sense of taste, but also of community, and a kind of creative exploration that rolls over into everything else in my life.  When I can throw parties again it will be easier because my footing is more sure.  This connection to earth and its own cycles, to the air, the water, is necessary to nourish body and soul, to nourish creativity.  It is not about just being in nature, but participating with it.  I have found that convenience is a form of disconnection.  I need less on my plate, not more.  

I am different than I was six months ago.  We are all different, each one of us, and truthfully this is always the case, even in non-pandemic years.  The tomato I pick today is not the same as the tomato I picked yesterday, its own terroir is different than that of its sibling on the same plant.  But this year, this year of uprooting, of tragedy, this year offers an opportunity as well as an unsettling. 

I am finding that I have about half the energy I think I used to have.  That too may be a myth, I may not have had as much energy as I believe.  At the moment, expect one post a week.  I barely made this week, but at least I am still here.