As soon as I’m done writing, I’m going to don my glad rags and throw a jar labeling party. Woohoo! Pete jarred marinara; I jarred peppers in oil and Minstrel Boy’s Canned Peaches, spiced with Ras el Hanout. Sure, we’re having an adventure in playing with our food, but for me this is something more: after the dismal fog of depression, medication and brain damage, it feels fantastic to be able to learn again.

Seems like most folks learn jarring and canning at Grandma’s elbow, and, sure, I recall being impressed into peeling and dicing service as a young teenager, but I didn’t really learn anything except that you really, really don’t want hot wax making contact with your youthful epidermis. One also learned that food preservation is an investment into a secure future based on past privation: my step-grandmother, who grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania, jarred watermelon rinds. For a kid from the middle of New Jersey in the seventies, this is the beginning of examining a plate of food for meaning and not knowing enough to put on gloves.

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Should you have occasion to buy me a present, this offers a lovely selection of yarns terrific for cat blankets that benefit the people who are cats, and the people who recycle silk or grow alpacas, via the Greater Good store. That kind of gift rocks: it passes through my hands on its way back into the world.