Putting Away

A simple sound from far ago came back today, and it tickled awake an awareness of something I love: lids of water bath processed jars popping as they cooled.  I had dragged home the first mountain of apples, chopped out the centers, and loaded the slowcooker with quartered apples and cider.  I cored the pips to eliminate the bitter almond influence, preferring a smooth, apple fragrance that speaks of fall evenings and deep stews.  Also, apple seeds contain a tiny bit of a cyanide compound that metabolizes into hydrogen cyanide when released into the body.  The same for cherry pits, and the two that can get you into trouble, peach and apricot pits. We don't want that.

Going to market is a heady experience, for each apple variety offers a singular talent and there is so much to discover.  They have started to come in; my favorite for applesauce, the Paula Reds, are already almost at the end of their run.  Gingergolds and Jersey Macs are starting, but I wait for some of the older names to arrive for making pies, crisps, and of course, more applesauce.  I am done with college, and have all the necessary paperwork that says I can teach children according to New York State standards, so I have time for revisiting some of the things that had to be forgotten for a little bit.

My grandfather would make applesauce without peeling the apples, and the morning dawn rosy color suffused throughout the labeled jars, making it much more attractive than whatever yellow stuff came out of a can.  He put up a few pints each fall, using MacIntoshes and Jonathans to produce a creamy textured sauce blended with a small amount of sugar and cinnamon.  It was my favorite thing he made besides his grilled cheese with sliced pickles inside, or his version of an ice cream cone with a squirt of whipped cream and peanuts.  I wish I knew him better, he died quickly one fall day while bringing up pine seedlings he had started in trays down in the small cellar.  A stroke felled him, he was gone before the ambulance came.

Most everyone on my grandparent's street had fruit trees in their backyards, many folks being just a generation away from immigration, or like my grandparents, new to city life, having moved here from Elmira, New York.  My grandmother grew her huge roses, my grandfather tended his trees.  In a small backyard there were a Stanley plum, peach, cherry, and apple trees.  Grapevines sprawled over the arbor he built, and were just beginning to produce.  He grew begonias, gloxinias, and other fussy things that needed to be taken in before frost.

My Mom didn't do applesauce, but canned tomatoes, peaches, and the sacred chili sauce, all of which required scalding to loosen the skin of each tomato, of each peach.  When you looked at the bushels on the kitchen floor, you can only put on an apron and dive in.  Mom dunked, I peeled.  The heat of summer was compounded by vats of boiling water and we were wringing wet,  but that's the way it is, tomatoes don't arrive in January.  When in my own kitchen, I was determined to create applesauce like the marvelous stuff Grandpa had made.  It took a few forays with different varieties before I got the hang of it, but it happened.

The success of canning combined with a gathering instinct inherent in most humans exploded; I tried everything a water bath canner could process.  Peaches, tomatoes, pears, pickles, applesauce, apple butter, and homemade catsup were jarred up and put in a cupboard for winter meals.  I made rhubarb jam, catnip jelly, and yellow beans in mustard sauce.  A thick slice of bread with my apple butter will fortify those who slog to school or work through any snowstorm that nature or the boss hands out, it's that good.

Viewing the stalls of fruits and vegetable fusillade makes the kitchen pots rattle in my head, there is so much, so delicious, such a gift, it's the season.  The summer fruits are here, but a few farms are bringing in the heavier produce of fall; the butternuts, cumbersome heads of cauliflower, lumbering cabbages; all portents of root cellar recipes, when you would sell your dog to the circus to get a decent tomato, a peach, an ear of corn for goodness sake.  Staving off the shuttered cold with an open jar of homemade catsup for french fries is a happy thing to do, tossing a quart of peaches together with sugar, egg, and flour make a cobbler able to saturate the home with a bit of life stolen from a summer day, when a farmer arose at three a.m. to load wooden baskets filled by hands that reached to pick the sun from branches.  For you.  For me.  For their own satisfaction of creating in a smaller paradise.  

Well I have to go buy more jars; the crockpot will ally in making the catsup without me worrying about setting something on fire by leaving the pot to simmer overnight on a gas flame.  A heavy thickness has hung over the city all day, the rain hasn't broke through the low clouds, and of course the humidity added to the inside by canning makes the air feel compressed.  Not even eight o'clock, and it's almost all dark.  Yesterday I saw the moon, a half-slice of pink near the southern horizon; the moon always cheers me up, even more than the sun.  Maybe because the moon won't slice your retinas out if you look directly at it.  Fascinating to see the shadows of craters, I have a friend who plants according to the lunar phases, plants in the half-dark so the roots aren't shocked by sunlight.

Sleep well, friend, whether you are on this side of the planet or over the Pole to the east.  If it were so still, would the sound of heads flopping down be discernible as the sun set in each time zone?  Is there planetary noise as the earth wakes, if not just the gulls at dawn or the slap of paper delivery at the door?  Is there noise as we spin?  We are in atmosphere, and are rotating at 1,070 miles per hour at the equator; that has to make some sort of noise, do you think?  Whoosh?  Let me know, I'm busy dreaming of applesauce.  Sleep, let your paws run in your dreams as you pull through fields deep and green in that time where there is no time, no clocks, no when, just is.  Sleep.