Dunrie Greiling Ph.D., Ann Arbor, MI 48105
Today was a day of fall chores: sweeping out the garage, tidying it and getting it ready to store the table and chairs for the winter, raking leaves from the back yard, and pulling in all of the “tender” bulbs (voodoo lily and calla lily) that I had planted in pots on the deck and porch. They’ll slumber in peat in a bin in my basement – cool and dark – until it is time for them to grow again in the spring.
Nice to feel I’m ready for the change of season.
It’s that time of year, the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market is a study in abundance, and my summer reading, Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, has inspired me to can. 
So, I took a perfectly good Saturday and Sunday and made two trips to the Farmer’s Market, a trip to the hardware store, two trips to a grocery store, burned many BTUs of gas on our gas stove, and taught myself to can following the Ball Blue Book of Preserving and an article on canning in the October 2008 Bon Appetit.
This was my discovery:
makes about six pint jars of fresh tomato sauce, something which when purchased would have cost many dollars less than what I spent. Yet, I didn’t burn myself, had some fun cooking and learning, have some lovely jars of pinky-red tomatoes lighting up the shelves of my basement, and I have stored a bit of this lovely summer sunshine for later.
I realized that canning is kind of like knitting a sweater. It’s not that I saved any money, it’s that I got to enjoy the process and engaging with something concrete – beautiful yarn in the case of a sweater, beautiful produce in the case of canning. That level of absorbtion and attention is almost intoxicating, while my hands were slicing the 50th tomato, my mind was wondering at the variety of shape and color and detail in the box of romas. Plus, I experienced a distinct sense of abundance when processing a big pile of tomatoes- their weight, their texture, their color, bounty. So, after I finished the tomatoes on Saturday, I was up for another round on Sunday. With dinner guests arriving at 6PM, I carefully planned my day of cornbread-baking, coleslaw-making, peach cobbler-baking, and my husband’s slow cooking of the spare ribs with more canning. I discovered that
makes six 1/2-pint jars of drunken fig jam. It’s tasty, though I’ll have to arrange to get myself invited to sophisticated dinner or wine tasting parties where I can bring this as an addition to a cheese plate…Dear reader, let me know if you’re hosting such an event. I have the housewarming gift ready to go!
I loved it, I’d do it again, and I realized just how much I love my dishwasher, which I think ran about 6 times this weekend, no fooling, and that’s even after I hand-washed all of the pots.
So, I had a 1-4PM meeting today turn into a 1-6:30PM one with an hourlong trip on each side, and although it was a great meeting, I’m an introvert and was sorely in need of downtime afterwards. So, when I got home at 7:45, I was hungry and tired and would have very happily reached for some comfort food from the freezer or a local restaurant (chinese food? pizza?). But, I have this farm share from a local organic farm, and my fridge is filled with kale, beets, beet greens, green beans, onions, and the like.
I even considered heating up frozen veggies, just because I didn’t think I could muster anything beyond tossing something into a bowl and punching 4 buttons on the microwave. Then I realized that was completely pathetic, and I couldn’t possibly. I imagined each bean and each beet staring at me, balefully as they wilted, while I feasted on non-organic and less vitamin rich frozen food because it was marginally more convenient.
And then I recognized the awesome power of the farm share to improve my life. Yes, the veggies were organic and local, yes they were chock full of vegetabley-goodness like vitamins and minerals, but their real power was elsewhere. Yup, those veggies in the fridge could make me eat healthier just by their very presence. I’d already committed to them, several times, by signing up for the CSA share from Tantre Farm last fall, by picking them up this week, by giving them space in my fridge. After all that, how I could waste them? The frozen food would keep. I had to wash and slice and maybe even boil before I’d get my meal.
I started with the beets. I scrubbed them and cut them into even blocks for a quick boil. But then, because I was crazed with hunger, I tentatively put one in my mouth and bit down. Raw beet was perfectly fine, tasty in fact. I turned off the water, chopped the beets more finely, tossed on a splash of fancy Zingerman’s balsamic vinegar and moved on to the next course. I prepped some kale, rinsing and chopping, and blanched it quickly. Nice.
In probably 5 minutes, I had two very tasty dishes out of my organic veggie stockpile. Because the healthy food had guilted me out of it, I had protected myself from poor eating. By stocking the fridge with healthy food, I actually ate healthy food. And it was quick to prepare. Imagine, fresh fruit and veggies really are nature’s original fast food.
I have to hand it to the constellation of social sites to which I belong. All combined to give me a very happy birthday today! I turned 38 today, and I didn’t get the iPhone I was seriously hinting for because of local shortages, and my husband has a summer cold, so has been prone on the couch for two days, barely audible on the cell phone. I was thinking I might just have a lonesome birthday, but no!
Good wishes streamed in from across the globe, from close and from not-so-close friends via email, twitter, Plaxo, and Facebook. The email friends already knew my birthday, or maybe saw my shame-free birthday-promoting gchat status line. And, at least some of the twitter wishes came in response to my own birthday oriented tweets, but not all. Some came before my own tweets. The other birthday wishers are either uncanny calendar-keepers or may have been reminded of the event by the various methods those sites use to keep friends aware of each other. Facebook and Plaxo did all the hard work for me. I’ve been kind of withdrawing from Facebook, but I got re-engaged with it today, catching up with well-wishers, surfing their profiles. Previous to today, I would have said I wasn’t completely sold on Plaxo. I mean, who needs another place to update your status and befriend the same 30-60-90-howevermany people I’m already friends with elsewhere. But Plaxo seems to really emphasize the birthday thing, and that was amazingly touching to me on this day. Nice to get several well-wishing messages and feel friendship coming through my email all day today.
I also benefitted greatly from the ArborWiki birthday deals page, which helped me score some great (and free!) Zingerman’s bagels and a yummy free Birthday cupcake from Cake Nouveau (key lime, mmmm). Thanks to the larger ArborWiki community for maintaining the list!
The 600 block of South First Street had a block party last Sunday (6/22/2008). Wendy, my across the street neighbor, organized it by gaining the signatures needed to get the permit from the city to close the street. We live on the block of First Street where it goes from 1 way to 2 way. Much of the traffic that zooms down First turns onto Madison before our block, but we are close to downtown, and we do get a fair number of cars on our block. So, when they put up the barricades to close the street, the quiet was noticeable. And then came the kids. From the corner house, from across the street, from neighboring blocks.
They came with wheeled vehicles of all sorts – bicycles with training wheels, tricycles, bicycles, scooters, and a funky skateboard with an axle in the center. But there were no cars. We pulled some tables into the middle of the closed street, and as the kids did their bicycle/tricycle/scooter laps in the street, we set up a table of snacks and drinks. The cookies and the cupcakes went first, individually taken by kids looking thrilled to be getting dessert before dinner. Each one that grabbed a cupcake seemed to be waiting for one of the adults to insist they put it down and eat their veggies.
Then the squirt guns came out, and the hoses, and the kids formed some loose teams and had a water fight. The adults only interfered when the shenanigans got too close to the adults and the food table, but otherwise the water war raged at the north end of the block. Adults of grandparental age marveled at the way the girls and boys played together – said it wasn’t like the old days. Later, after our neighbor Georgia created a geyser with Mentos and Diet Coke the gangs of kids broke into gender groups – the girls skipped rope and the boys continued to beat on the plastic 2-liter container.
We met one neighbor for the first time, and we’ve been here for almost 8 years now. And, we got to know other neighbors better, not only those on our block, but also neighbors who live on nearby blocks. What fun.
In the week since the party, I’ve been looking for people on the block, looking to say hello and continue the conversation. Looks like 8 hours of no cars and some food on the street has started to coalesce some neighbors into a neighborhood. Thanks Wendy!
So, there’s this blog I read, and the author has a book with a really compelling title. I’ve enjoyed his blog posts on the topic, and I had put his book on my Amazon wish list.
In support of my intention to acquire, maintain, and store less stuff, I moved most of my Amazon wish list to a wish list (personal card catalog) at the Ann Arbor District Library. They don’t have every book I’ve ever wanted, but they have an awful lot of them. Amazing. I suppose I’m not as unique as I thought ;). I’m also storing some of the list on my anobii.com bookshelf’s wish list (edited to remove the link since I now use Goodreads).
Anyway, this blogger’s interesting sounding book with the compelling title was available from the library. I put it on hold, received the notification email, visited the library, checked it out, and then returned it the same day. Funny, flipping through the book, it seemed so tangential to my current interests and so, yes, I’ll say it, thin with huge spaces between lines, not many words on the page, not many pages. After touching the book, I no longer had any interest in its contents. Funny. Glad I didn’t buy it or get someone else to buy it for me.
Note to self – always touch books I’m going to buy or ask to be purchased for me. Online descriptions just don’t compare.