More Canning, and Other Stuff

Mostly overcast and quite humid day. Feels unsettled, like something coming. High of 80°f but sticky and uncomfortable. 

It was another day in the kitchen for me. I made the elderberry jelly, and it came out beautifully. 

I was lacking a half cup of juice for the second batch, so I added a half cup of white wine. I must say, that batch tasted even better than the first one! You can see the difference in color in tge photo, as the jelly with wine is lighter in color. I ended up with 14 half-pint jars.

Yum! Had to taste test, you know.

Next was a little more corn, which I decided to freeze on the cob, vacuum-sealing it so it should taste almost fresh when we use it.

Last, the tomatoes.  I had a motley mix of pink, black and red tomatoes that needed to be used before they went bad. I had seen a recipe for tomato dill soup, so I decided to give it a try.  I think it tastes delicious,  and could be served hot or cold. 

I had enough to make 7 quarts, plus a pint I put in the fridge for tomorrow's supper.

Besides kitchen duty, I finally got the old radio moved in place. 

I had a stack of suitcases full of DVDs in this corner, so I made space in the large old cupboard to the right for all of those. The suitcases will go to a booth, one more small step in downsizing. The old radio is a temporary resident---it doesn't work and we can't fix it, so I am thinking to gut it, put a new back on it, add lights and shelving and make it a bar cabinet, leaving the old radio dial and knobs in place. Still undecided about the door---remove it, remove just the speaker cloth and replace with plexiglass,  or leave as is? Currently there is a non-working record player in there that slides out when you pull on the door. I think it just looks so cool, so it can sit a while, until we have time to work on it.

We also continued working on this set:

I am not happy with the table top, but it is what it is. It's still slightly messed up from where the former owner left it out in the rain. We tried hard to fix it, but it's not much better. So it will go as is. All that's left to do is wax the top and add feet to one of the chairs.  As soon as we have time, we will get this to a booth.

I had a pretty nice day, all round, but poor Larry spent most of his working on his mower, again. I guess it is heading back to the shop as he has worked on it for many hours over the past week with no luck. So aggravating for him. And of course the grass is quickly getting out of hand. 

Tomorrow he has a doc appointment in Parkersburg,  then Wednesday another one in Huntington,  so there won't be much else happening here at home. I am very glad I worked through all the garden stuff, because Thursday we will be picking tomatoes from our friend's greenhouses, and that means the rest of the week will be spent processing them. No rest for the wicked!

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

These July Days

70°f/21°C this morning, cloudy all day. High of 81.

This weekend has been a kitchen kind of time. The corn is ready, the elderberries along the road are ripe, and a fruit farm in Ohio announced that it is now blackberry picking season.

So Saturday morning we started working up the corn. Larry shucked it, and I cut it off the cobs and vacuum-sealed bags for the freezer. Push rewind, as we did the same thing today, ending up with 12 quarts so far. There will be more, but this is most of it, I think.

I had those elderberries we picked Friday evening to deal with too. I stripped the berries from the stems (which takes a long time), washed them, put them into a pot and covered them with water, brought to a boil and simmered them for about 10 minutes to release the juice. Funny how some turned red when cooked, others stayed black. There are some green ones in there too, as the berries don't all ripen evenly, but they won't hurt anything; if anything, they'll increase the pectin content, which is good for making jelly.

Next step was to strain the berries through cheesecloth. I put the resulting juice in the fridge to make into jelly, or maybe syrup, tomorrow.

Yesterday, after putting up the corn, we drove over to Ohio for the blackberries. We picked more than I had planned on, but I'm happy with that! When we got home, I cleaned all leaves, etc, from the berries, then popped them into five gallon bags for the freezer. These too will hold until I can make jam and pie filling this coming week.

We ended our Saturday at the firepit, something we haven't been able to do for a while due to the heat. 

Here I was trying to take a photo of wine, fire, and Mothman potato chips, but this is what happened:

Oh well! 

It was such a pretty evening, a perfect way to end a busy day.

While working on the corn today, I made a quick casserole with veggies from the fridge. I sautéed yellow squash, zucchini,  carrots, celery and onion,  mixed these with leftover boiled potatoes, added what was left of a package of grated Mexican cheese, a jar of Alfredo sauce, and some leftover ham that I cut up. Popped this into the oven for about 20-30 minutes, sliced some tomatoes, cooked some corn on the cob, and that was dinner.

Tomorrow we have tomatoes to deal with, and I will make the elderberry jelly, I hope. 

It's the time of year that the garden does its best to overwhelm us with its abundance, but I think we are keeping up with it pretty well so far. I am not complaining! I appreciate how fortunate we are to have so much, even if it does mean a lot of work. 

When I look back through my blog for posts made around this date, I see the same theme. And if I go back before 2020, the garden posts are intermingled with storytelling research, grandchildren coming to stay, travel and performances. Busy, busy times.

I think back to when I was a child, and how much easier food preservation is now. Back then, we children would be out in the garden right after breakfast, picking whatever we were told to pick. If it was beans, we'd sit under a tree or out on the porch and snap them, often squabbling about who was going too slow. If it was corn, we were the shucking crew; if tomatoes, we had to help peel them or cut them up, depending on what Mom was making.

We lived in town, but every single family on our block had a garden, except Miss Mary next door, whose gardens were let go after her uncle who cared for them passed away. Everyone else gardened and canned. No one had pressure canners, and I am not sure when those came into use. So beans, corn, beets, and other low-acid veggies were processed in waterbath canners for 3 hours or more (which we know now, really wasn't safe, but fortunately we all survived). There was no air conditioning,  of course, so the kitchen windows would be open, with fans trying and failing to relieve the steamy heat. How well I remember Mom's red sweaty face, her apron stained and glasses all fogged up! 

We took Mom's work for granted, of course, being kids, but now when I remember those days I really feel for my mother, working so hard to feed us, and often as not pregnant with yet another mouth to feed. I won't say she didn't complain, because she'd have been a saint if that was the case. But she worked hard, and our pantry would be lined with filled jars, a testament to her hard work. 

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Concert and Conversation

64°f, about 18°C, light clouds all day. Warmed up to about 82°, with humidity returning late in the day.

The Vince Gill concert last night in Charleston was excellent. His band included some really standout musicians who performed smoothly as a team, and at one point Gill turned over the stage to some of his band, letting them do a song or two to show their talent. 

At the end, singing the song I waited all evening for, Go Rest High on That Mountain.

One of the things I liked best about Vince Gill--his willingness to share the spotlight with others. Another thing I really liked was his storytelling; he told the origins of his songs, who inspired him, and shared anecdotes about special people in his life who have passed on. I came away feeling like this was an extraordinary man, who, besides being a fantastic musician, had the ability to find the exactly the words to make his stories come alive.

He also interacted easily with people in the audience, and they loved it. And bless his heart, he knew where he was! You would not believe how many big stars come here and think they are in Virginia. It's funny and sad at the same time.

But before the concert, we checked in to our hotel, and found there were some interesting people staying there: men and women who work in the prison industry, who were attending a conference on prison rape, of all things. I had to ask them to repeat that; I was astonished to learn that the problem is bad enough that these guys had to get together for a week of training to deal with it! Most of the attendees I saw were black, and I wondered if this is typical of their career field. One guy was from very near where I grew up in Virginia, and he and Larry got into a long conversation about Northern Virginia that included a lot of laughter! 

Meanwhile, I was talking with a white guy from South Dakota who was assistant warden at a juvenile facility. He was fascinating, telling me about his years in the Air Force as a Combat Controller--which, he explained, was equivalent to a Green Beret, and basically meant that he "blew things up and killed people" (his words). Geez, what a way to describe it. Google tells me this: "Combat Controllers (CCT): Wearing the Scarlet Beret, CCTs are heavily trained in expeditionary air traffic control, assault zone assessment, and command and control of air power in hostile environments. They operate directly alongside the Army's Special Forces." 

This guy told me that he thinks his greatest accomplishment was helping to find and free 150 children who had been taken from their parents, somewhere in Africa. I wish I had clarified when and where, but he showed me photos of him with the children, and described the feast the village prepared in thanks---which included a camel killed on the spot! A huge bowl of camel milk was also passed around, and every person there drank from it---which may have been the reason he was sick for a week!

This man's's tales of his growing up years, being molested, being in a gang and in juvenile detention himself, are, he said, how he reaches the kids in his facility, telling them that if he survived and did well in life, so can they. This peek into worlds I know nothing about was fascinating, unnerving, and haunting. Here was this guy, smiling and telling me about raising his kids after his wife left, ordering a Ruben sandwich and drinking beer like any other man, packing such heavy memories and yet working to give troubled kids a chance, hope for a better life. I hated to leave this conversation,  but it was time for us to get to the concert. 

When we returned, we were startled to find a raucous party going on outside the hotel. A group of the conference attendees were out there with a karaoke machine, singing, laughing, drinking, and talking. They invited us to join them, and I almost said sure, why not? But then I realized these people were relieving the stress of their week and probably their jobs, they were bonding and forming friendships they would carry back home with them. We were outsiders, and needed to stay that way. I was okay with that.

We were soon back to our humdrum life--home to feed the critters, then off to Ohio to pick up from the most recent auction. It was a good break, one that made me appreciate even more this simple life we have here in our hills.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.