Friday, September 17, 2010

Leaving Home


Just outside my office window, perched on top of the window unit air conditioner, is another mourning dove family. For those of you who read my earlier blog about the flower basket full of birds on my front porch, this story might ring familiar. The air conditioner doves occupy the second nest at our house, and if you count all the babies these two families have produced, there have been a dozen. Two eggs at a time, each in succession, all in one season. Somehow, I feel proud.

I have a front row seat to the air conditioner doves – the chair where I sit typing is maybe three feet away from them. They don’t seem to mind that I am practically on top of them, especially when I reach over to use the fax machine, inches from the window. Mama keeps an eye on me, and the scruffy-looking babies seem curious about what goes on inside the house – or maybe they are just enchanted by the window itself, pacing back and forth and running their beaks along its surface.

Lately, they are all flapping wings and clouds of tiny feathers. They are learning to fly. Yesterday, one of them left the ledge, oh so briefly, and lit on a nearby tree branch. The other stood with wings flapping and I watched as its little feet levitated an inch off the surface, then back down. They are so big compared to the tiny eggs where they’d nestled under their mama’s feathered breast. Like my own babies, there is a pair of them. And, like mine, they are almost ready to leave. They are breaking my heart.

Oblivious, of course. Just being birds.

Their mama flies away frequently, leaving the babes with plenty of room for learning. They totter at the ledge, turning their heads quizzically. They stretch their wings, unfold them like accordions, and fluff their feathers. They pick at each other, then settle down to sleep side by side. When Mama returns, they attack her. She is still feeding them, a comical (and violent) act that involves babies pecking around at her breast, then inserting both their beaks into hers as she regurgitates whatever it is she’s gathered to eat. She looks exhausted. And is that blood on her beak? Or just some red markings? Every time I see this spectacle I’m grateful we humans use spoons and mashed banana to feed our young. Mama also seems to be eating their excrement, to keep the nest clean. The babies are getting so big, I wonder how long this will go on – and she probably does, too.

Today, the babies are hopping and flapping the six inches from the nest to the branches of the mimosa tree. Sometimes they almost miss the ledge and scramble to get up, scratching their little claws on the metal of the air conditioner surface. Sometimes they get their wings caught on a branch and awkwardly rearrange themselves before trying again. At first, Mama stood by briefly, sitting on baby #2 after baby #1 flew off – as if it were too much to watch them both totter off at once. Then she flew, and after a minute or so Baby 2 took off as well. Both babes are in the mimosa tree now. By tomorrow, or maybe the next day, I’ll find them two stories down in the garden – or they’ll be gone entirely.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Grapes



My house smells so sweet today.

That’s because last weekend Joseph and I were standing in a clearing at Misty Mountain, his paradisical property in the southwestern Virginia Blue Ridge, when he looked up and said he smelled grapes. A minute later, I caught the scent, and we scouted around until we found them: wild vines draped all over a downed tree, heavy with sweet muscadine grapes.

We reached up and picked a few – they were perfectly ripe, plump and juicy and full of flavor – and also so tart they made my face scrunch up at the first bite. These are the kinds of grapes you eat slowly, working the seeds out with your tongue, squeezing the skins between your teeth to extract all the sweet pulp, then savoring the bitter kick of the skins themselves. That evening, I discovered they are phenomenally tasty when paired with Parma cheese, its nutty depth the perfect complement to the tang of the fruit.

I returned to our discovery the next day, feeling incredibly lucky to have stumbled on this gift from nature. There they were, still hanging from their tangle of vines, these darker-than-dark orbs that looked as though they were ready to burst out of their tight skins. I reached up and began to pick, reaching higher and higher, finally retrieving a bucket to stand on for a bit more height. I climbed up one of the vines to get to the clusters of grapes hanging higher up. I felt greedy for these little gems, and gathered as many as I could, tugging the stems and listening to the loose ones drop into the cardboard box I’d brought along to hold them all. I filled it two or three inches high with grapes, then had to give up as it was almost time to leave.

Today, I took the grapes from the refrigerator back in Takoma Park. I’d gathered enough to fill a grocery bag about three quarters full. I poured them into a colander, picked them off their stems, rinsed them and put them in the biggest pot I have. I smashed them with a potato masher, then poured boiling water over them to cover, and let them simmer about 15 minutes, until they softened – all as directed by Joy of Cooking and a couple of web sites about how to make grape juice (John, take note: cooking the grapes makes all the difference!). Then I poured the cooked grape juice and skins into a cheesecloth over another big pot, to strain the juice. The juice is straining overnight.

And the entire house smells like that afternoon in the country.

[next day note: this juice is concentrated grape-ness in a glass, fills your mouth with pure flavor, and, to risk hyperbole, it really does feel like you're swallowing the essence of the earth and sun that grew them]

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Just Peachy


We did it. Clara and I put up 18 quarts of peaches. Bright sunshine of the season captured in Ball jars.

Not only that, we discovered that there are all sorts of surprises when you take an entire afternoon and spend it with a half bushel of fruit. Like, the sunset-red blush of a scalded peach that’s just slipped its skin. And the taste of juice squeezed from the discarded skins – essence of peach. And the nectar that clings to the sieve when you strain that juice, melting like cotton candy on the tongue. All this even before that moment in the dead of winter when you open the jar and let a bit of summer escape onto your tongue.

Canning is much easier than you’d think and it makes me feel famous. Virtuous. Lucky. Here’s a step-by-step description, which we put together ourselves from various sources –

FIRST
We started with an inventory of our canning equipment: hot water bath canner – basically a big, speckled-black pot with a wire rack; a bunch of quart jars (I bought a dozen new ones at the new Takoma Park Ace Hardware, 20 percent off all canning supplies!). If you’re using last year’s jars, be sure the lids are new – you can get those at the hardware store, too. I also have a handy set of tongs for lifting the hot jars out of the water bath. And I bought a jar funnel to make it easier to fill the jars, but we didn’t use it. I used Joy of Cooking for instructions, supplemented by some web site info.

SECOND
Next step: one of the best parts. We went to the Takoma Park Farmer’s Market and bought a half bushel of fragrant peaches from Twin Springs Fruit Farm (Thanks, Joseph, for hauling them to the car for me!). While we were at it, I bought some pea shoots for salad, a few ears of corn, some perfectly-ripe cantaloupe and brilliantly red bell peppers. The market is bountiful this time of year, it makes me want to can everything in sight, since I can’t eat nearly enough to do the harvest justice.

Back home, the process really began:
1) Gather three big pots: #1 for the canning itself (that’s the water bath canner), #2 for boiling water to scald the peaches, and #3 for heating syrup or apple juice (we used apple juice). Make sure you have tongs ready, too, for lifting peaches out of boiling water (you’ll see why in a second). And a paring knife for slicing.
2) Wash the jars and lids in sudsy water and rinse thoroughly. If your kitchen is small like mine, good luck finding space for them to dry!
3) Fill the sink with ice water.
4) Boil the water in pot #2. Pop the peaches in a few at a time, for just a few seconds (say, 10 or 20). This loosens the skins. But you don’t want to cook them, so to stop the cooking process, take them from the boiling water (with those tongs you’ve got ready) and put them in the ice water, where they’ll float around until they get their turn at being skinned, which is the next step.
5) Peel the peaches. This should be easy, since you scalded them – but some of the skins are kind of stuck on there. If this happens, pop them back into the boiling water for a few more seconds, or else just peel the skins with a knife (which I find handy to start even the easy-to-peel ones).
6) Slice the peaches. Or, you can leave them in halves – we sliced.
7) While all this is happening, put apple juice (or sugar syrup, which you make with one part sugar to one part water) in a pot and heat it to a simmer.
8) Once the peaches are sliced, put them in the jars, getting as many in there as you can without having them stick out too high (you don’t want them to touch the lids once they lids are screwed on). Pour the boiling apple juice or syrup on top of them, to within a half inch of the top of the jar. Screw on the dry lids, and place each jar in the rack of the water bath canner.
9) Boil in the canner for 30 minutes.
10) Remove from canner with the canning tongs.
11) Cool jars with lots of space between them. The books and instructions say to keep them away from drafts. Don’t touch them while they cool.
12) One of the coolest parts: while you’re eating your dinner, or reading the paper that night, you’ll hear a little a “pop,” out of nowhere, then maybe 10 minutes later, a “ping.” This is the pressure pulling the little lid toward the peaches – sealing the jars with a vacuum.

A quick note: we chose the “cold pack” method, which means we didn’t cook the peaches first (thinking that they would retain more of their nutritional value that way). But. Our peaches shrank once they were all jarred up and cooling. They are safe to eat, but a jar that’s only half full is not as great as a jar full of fruit. Next time we’ll try hot pack: you only “cook” the peaches for a few seconds, by immersing them in the juice or syrup, before packing – and it looks as though you can really fit a lot more fruit into the jars. Anyone have experience with this?

Last time we canned peaches, two years ago, Clara pulled the jars out in winter and made peach cobbler. Yum.