A Bounty of Figs

Thank you, author John Boyne for giving the term “flying fig” – and the lack of concern it measures – some historical context. A few years ago, Boyne included the phrase in a novel about the famous mutiny on the British ship, the Bounty, which occurred back in the late 1700s. I can now tell myself the phrase is historically accurate and not just a euphemism for another phrase that is far less polite.

What does any of that have to do with real figs? Why nothing, of course. But I did have a bounty of them drop into my lap this week.

Despite my canning ambiguity this year, I had been mulling over if there was any way I could snag some fresh figs locally (they’re a rare bird around here) and by chance overheard a friend talking about a tree loaded with figs, ripe for the plucking. As luck would have it, the tree’s owner doesn’t give a fig about getting out in this heat and picking them, so my friend/source is welcome to them. And I’m welcome to what he picks as long as I give him back some preserves, including a jar or two as recompense to the tree’s owner. It’s a sweet deal for everyone.

Yesterday morning I started with this – about 3 quarts of figs, washed and stemmed.

It’s a miracle there were any left after I started nibbling on them.

 After a few hours of cooking down (meanwhile I scrubbed and sanitized a dozen jars) and a few minutes of filling, sealing and a quick dip in a hot water bath, I wound up with this pretty array of jars, plus one in the fridge because I misjudged the number of jars needed:

Fig preserves; they’re like sunshine in a jar.

But the nice neat stack of jars comes at a price.  This is the kitchen after the preserves finished their water bath.  Canning is not difficult, but it does take time and it is messy.  Very, very messy.

How many kettles does it take to can?  All of them.

Is it worth it?  Oh yes.  I’m not much of a jam/jelly/preserve fan, but I am looking forward to using these preserves in some upcoming cakes and cookies.  And I’m hopeful I might get another batch or two of figs.   Maybe in a year or two my fig tree will reward me with some figs.  Assuming it survives transplant shock, poor baby.

Happy preserving,

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To can or not to can?

by Dick Williams, War Food Administration, 1944

I grew up watching my grandmother and my mother “put up” vegetables and fruit every summer.

There’s a certain irony to the timing – just when you think the thermometer’s mercury cannot possibly rise any higher, it’s time to pull out your biggest pots and pans (and kettles and vats) and start boiling stuff.  You boil water to sterilize the jars (unless you’re really progressive and use your dishwasher’s sanitizing cycle); you scald the skins off tomatoes and peaches, you boil the food you’re putting in the jars, and then you boil the filled jars to create a vacuum that will preserve the contents until you open them for use.  Who needs a sauna when your kitchen is full of boiling pots and kettles?

Back in the day, canning and drying was the best and sometimes only way to have fruits and vegetables for eating the rest of the year.  Store-bought produce was limited and expensive, especially when you’re a housewife feeding a house-full on a very limited budget, which was the case with both my grandmother and my mom.

Instinctively, I took up canning when I had my own garden.  I made strawberry preserves in the spring, bought a bushel of local peaches each summer to make preserves and canned peach slices.  I’ve scratched and clawed my way through thorny brambles to pick wild blackberries for preserves and vinegars.  Our old house had muscadine grapes, which do make fabulous jelly.  And sometime in August, jar upon jar of tomatoes, tomatoes with peppers, and salsa would begin to line up proudly on my pantry shelves.

I never bought a pressure canner, so I’ve never ventured into canned corn or beans, although I have frozen corn, beans and fresh-picked blueberries from time to time.  Roasted and peeled green chilies are commonly found in my freezer, too.

But here’s the irony:  our family rarely eats jams, jellies or preserves.  It’s just not our thing.  So I finally realized it made no sense to put up a dozen jars of preserves that I’d wind up dumping out the next season in time to wash the jars and do the same thing all over again.

When we moved from the old house, I tossed several jars of home-preserved jellies and tomatoes and salsa that were of questionable vintage.

And so here I am, at a crossroads.  My pantry is much smaller now but I do have shelf space in the garage.  (It’s where my canning jars are sitting in storage tubs, waiting for me to wash and sterilize and fill them with something.)

The call to can is strong.  And I am thankful I know how to go about it – that could prove to be a handy bit of knowledge if our society ever teeters off its axis and we are forced to revert to the “good old days”  of self-reliance and self-sufficiency.

Nesco FD-60 dehydrator

I want my children to have an inkling of how food can be made to last from one harvest to the next.   But does it make sense to preserve batches of stuff if I’m going to eventually throw them away?  Aye, there’s the rub.

A friend recently showed off a bag of dried peach slices she dehydrated with fresh peaches she bought from a local stand. The fruit looked so much more colorful than the commercial dried peaches that it nudged me to buy a dehydrator of my own. It should be here early this week, and once it is, that’s the green light to snag a box of peaches to dry, and a box of tomatoes to roast, puree and freeze.  I guess I’ve answered my own question!

Happy Monday,

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Housecleaning 101: Fight fire with fire

When I dashed out the door Friday afternoon to scoop up a car load of girls and haul them to the mountains, the house wasn’t in shambles, but it wasn’t really clean, either. Laundry was done, but not put away.  Bed was made, but I didn’t have time to change the sheets.  Dishes were done, but left to dry next to the sink.  You get the picture.

Our return was heralded with suitcases full of dirty laundry, shopping bags of new acquisitions, and quite a few leftover groceries, which I frugally refused to throw away when we packed up our belongings yesterday.  The house-sitting son worked most of the weekend (that’s his excuse and he’s sticking to it), so tidying up behind us or himself was not high on his list of to-do’s either.

So here I am with a clean desk: a peaceful island in a churning sea of wreckage.  (Kind of makes me just want to hang out at the desk all day, but I guess that’s not really an option.)

How do I clean a ravaged house?

Conventional wisdom says, “dig in and clean.”  Phooey on that.  I figure I should first make a BIGGER mess, THEN I can really clean up.  (Otherwise, I would be cleaning up, only to mess it up again.  Two birds, one stone, all that.)  So instead of launching an assault on the mess, I grabbed some buckets, headed outside and picked grapes.  I should have picked them last week, but I knew there was no way I could squeeze juice- and jelly- making into that schedule, so I took my chances the birds and insects would leave a few for me and indeed they did.  I enjoyed our “cold snap” (those weather forecasters have a zany sense of humor) and sweated and swatted long enough to pick about ten pounds of grapes.  They’re smaller than last year, probably due to the dry weather while they were ripening.

As expected, the grape juicing process made a mess – bright purple splotches and stains on the counters and several sticky pans and a Foley food mill to wash up.  Much better to do this all at once, eh?

Good news:  the kitchen is now much more respectable.  Now on to tackle the laundry and get fresh linens on the bed before bedtime!

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