Category Archives: compote something

Three Little Birds Pitch By

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It's like a postcard from Ta's Brain Works Again Camp.

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.

Smart is sexy.

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.

How To Loosen A Jar From the Nose

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The jarred pepper and marinara sauce version of the Jackson 5. Guess who's Tito!

Drusy’s lying across my lap and over my right arm. My nails are wet and I’m typing with just my left hand. Minutes ago, I finished fussing with milk, now tucked securely into heated yogurt cups for the night. America’s Test Kitchen details how to make Apple Upside Down Cake and I just erased Friday’s oddly tedious General Hospital. I’m waiting for my sisters to call back about whether or not they’re going to jar peaches with me tomorrow night. I’m pretending to blog. All of this is normal, and I bet at your house, you’re this busy, too.

I Was Yours But I’m Not

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My cousin Sandy works in the bakery for the Cake Boss. She does lovely work and has a wonderful eye for color. Her favorite compliment is, “You’re a fucking retard.”

In other news, friend of Poor Impulse Control Mr. Blogenfreude sent me some ras el Hanout, a Moroccan spice mix I haven’t seen in stores here, though I probably wasn’t treasure-hunting in the right treasury places. The fragrance of the spice, double-wrapped and still inside the plastic mailing envelope perfumed our kitchen. The aroma is so fantastic I want to take a picture of it for you. Forget high speed: we need a scratch-and-sniff internet.

Cats And Chicks Can Get Their Kicks

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I like this food writer’s style. At the farmers market on Friday, we found beautiful tomato peppers, which I’d never seen before, enthusiastically described by the farmer as being the inspired pet project of her elderly Hungarian friend. This morning, I read the recipe several times and thought I could do it.

Your classic good news/bad news scenario in jarred form.

I was right! After I roasted the peppers, the brining, salting and packing was a breeze. I loved this recipe until I dropped three 8 oz. jars into hot water for processing and heard a loud CRACK! The bottom of one jar cracked cleanly, and as I lifted the top of the jar, peppers slid out the bottom. I cleaned out the pot, boiled more water and processed it for 10 minutes. Despite the pepper explosion, this recipe was so easy I plan to pick up a case of peppers and jar them this weekend. This was a really exciting project.

Hardly exciting: last night, Daria whispered in my ear that yesterday’s Trentonian published a picture of Poppy’s father and his girlfriend lying dead on the road with his boots sticking out from under a tarp. Today’s coverage is somewhat more respectful and less barbaric. In another turn of unbelievable events: today is Poppy’s birthday, and most of her Facebook friends don’t know. Oh the places people will go when they don’t know where we are.

Rewind We’ve Gone Too Far

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Caponata photographed like it went to Julliard and was once in a Toni Basil video.

This morning, I simmered and jarred caponata, which is an eggplant salad unique to Sicily and the Italian foods aisle at your grocery store. You’ll find it next to the oil-cured olives, the pepperonata and the marinated artichoke hearts. If you still can’t find it, that’s because I got there first.

Last year was the first time I jarred this magical stuff. The first time I remember being aware of it was when Dad opened a prized jar of his private stash at Miss Sasha’s bridal shower and no I don’t know how this lapse in my culinary education was possible. Anyhoo, last winter I jarred it in 8 oz. jars; that’s fantastic lunch with a mess o’ Triscuits. Eight ounces of caponata is just the right amount for two sandwiches with melted Swiss. It’s not too much. It’s not too little. That’s why these babies here ate 12 oz. jars: because I enjoy playing with eggplanty fire.

And You Were Right There

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For the past two weeks, we’ve been combing Craigslist for a tenant and hoped we’d finally found one. She seemed charmingly befuddled, geographically distant and linguistically tangled. We emailed back and forth, made detailed arrangements to receive her shipped possessions while she visits family in Finland and waited for some time to pass. She sent a picture of herself in which is appears young and supercute, which made me nervous because she can’t know I’m me and don’t care, but jealous types wouldn’t let a girl like that sleep one room from her huuuuuzbind. She also said a lot of things that didn’t make sense and each letter seemed to require a different Rosetta Stone. Last night, a giant check arrived, ostensibly to cover security, rent and shipping costs, but instead of things falling into place they flew everywhere and landed buttered-side down. A list of demands arrived, including that we cable money to a person in California, though no shipping company was named. My Spidey Sense, which had been tingling, went all 220 volt zot! zot! zot!

Cherries fit for the lunchbox King.

Last night, I made the mistake of trying to jar what was probably the final cherries of the season. Minstrel Boy gave me an off-the-cuff recipe for simple cherries spread. I pitted, halved and dropped them into a saucepan with sugar and the zest and juice of two lemons. Sort of. That’s sort of what he said. Anyway, this tenant stuff was suddenly very messy and the pan boiled over. In the jars, these cherries are a deep, rich, luscious merlot color, though they didn’t jell, which MB attributes to some sort of voodoo curse. Who cares, right? My kitchen smelled sweet and lemony and the cherries would taste great on a garbage can lid.

This morning, the supposed proprietor of the shipping company emailed me. His grasp of English grammar seemed tenuous, his demand for cabled money was suspicious, his email address could be made up in minutes, his company had no fixed address and his phone number went to a call center for the hearing impaired in Georgia. Tonight, I emailed the pleasantly befuddled young woman and said without a thorough explanation for all this, I’m mailing back the check tomorrow. Pete and I can’t have someone we can’t trust in our house and I can’t have someone near me playing weird games with money. It puts a permanent wave in my EEG. Tomorrow, we’ll see what she says, but I have a feeling by tomorrow night, I might be able to think again.