her able hands

Angelina has a great post about cooking with what you have on hand and it’s had me thinking about the pantry I want to build when we reconfigure our back entryway someday. My grandmother had a fantastic pantry when I was a kid, but she tore it out and made her kitchen bigger once all of the kids were grown and raising families of their own. I suppose you don’t really need a huge pantry for two people, but I sure wish I could have it here and now.

I remember the cookie jar on the counter inside, the rows and rows of jars and cans stacked neatly on the shelves. The bin of potatoes and onions underneath. The window at the far end where I could lean on the counter and watch everyone in the backyard from the dark space and feel like I was in another world, spying. She had unopened jars of Raspberry Za-Rex and Coffee Syrup for flavored milk—we blew through several glasses of that every visit.

Here I have one of those corner carousel cabinets that holds a surprisingly large amount of food. But you have to watch how you load it, things knock off into the unreachable space in the corner sometimes. I also have one of those snap-together Rubbermaid shelves in the basement that holds some kitchen supplies that get used less often, as well as the rapidly dwindling jars of canned food from the 2005 garden.

This weekend Tyler wanted to make a sandwich, but groaned his lament at the empty Bread & Butter pickle jar in the fridge. Nothing in it but green brine and mustard seeds, a few floating slices of onion. He looked so bereft and actually started to put everything away rather than eat a sandwich without the beloved pickles. I told him to check the shelf downstairs and he Teenagered me with “This was the last jar, moooom. Duh.”

“You’re sure? Because I’m pretty sure I just told you that so you’d make them last a little longer than your usual week. Go check.”

He huffed and puffed and leaked air all the way downstairs and back he came with the true last jar of B & Bs. He even managed to look a little sheepish and thanked me for being so sneaky. I restrained myself from saying that it’s hardly sneaky when it’s sitting right there on the shelf for anyone willing to schlep down to the basement and get it, lazy bones. Honestly.

The slices at the top were kind of mushy, but they didn’t have brine covering them so I picked out about an inch worth and tossed them into the chicken scraps bin. Once into the brine, oh wow. Even at almost 2 years old, spectacular pickles. I stood at the sink eating with my fingers straight from the jar and could feel the prickly spines on the cucumbers as I washed them in the sink that summer. I wish I had time this morning to go back through my CDs and find the pictures I took of the heaps of harvest in the wheelbarrows. I must have pickled 300 cucumbers that summer, plus the tons I sold at the farmer’s market.

Well, I’m determined to work out my soil balance problems this season so I can restock my pickle supply. Even if I don’t do any other canning this summer, we can’t go without the B & Bs. Oh hell. Or sauce. Or roasted tomatoes. Or roasted peppers. Or salsa. Or Kim-chee. Or pickled banana peppers. Whoops! There I go getting all carried away again, forgetting that I work 45 hours a week. Silly bint.

One other thing that I canned that summer has surprised me with how good it tastes and I sadly used the last jar the same day we cracked open those pickles. We had traveled to see my family that July, right the same week the Haricot Verts came on strong. When I returned the first crop was all a bit oversized for market, so I picked for two days straight, pulling in about 75# of beans that I had to clean and trim. I gave a lot away. Some I blanched and froze, and I know there’s a trick to doing that so they don’t get mushy, but hell if I can figure it out. They had great flavor, but worked best in soups or casseroles. Not so great as a side veggie. The rest I either pickled as spicy dills (pretty yum!) or I straight canned.

Now, I’m not a fan of canned vegetables. I don’t ever buy them in the grocery store, except for an occasional can of creamed corn to add to chowder, or canned artichoke hearts for pizza or pasta and hearts of palm for salad. Oh, and black olives. But I have never in my life bought canned green beans, so I set about this project with some trepidation. What if they sucked and gathered dust on the shelf for ten years?

Well, they didn’t suck. As a matter of fact, I’ve been enjoying a bowl of the roasted chicken soup with brown rice that I made on Sunday, for lunch every day this week and biting into the canned, oversized Haricot Verts that I dumped in at the last minute has been the culinary highlight of my days. They’ve absorbed just a tiny bit of the slow-cooked stock mingled with the salty brine, but just behind that comes the taste of summer. Green, sharp, sweet and while not exactly the flavor of a fresh green bean, the ghost of that beautiful snap and crunch sits on the tongue for just a second.

I can see my pantry, tucked next to the mud room I envision one day after we’ve sold the other house and knocked the debt back down. But for now I look forward to putting up even just a few jars of pickles, sauce and yes, even some green beans this summer. Just so I can pull myself up out of the grey Midwestern winter fog to taste the sparkle and promise of summers to come–thanks to the work of the summer just past.

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Chris and I went to a Mardi Gras party and fundraiser for a group of NOLA displaced musicians — via Habitat for Humanity. A local band, Costly Court, rocked the little catering hall in a strip mall, and people, I danced until my legs turned into rubber bands. The kind of rubberbands you find in your grandparents’ junk drawer that have been stuffed into a baby food jar for 38 years and are flaking apart and have no elasticity. I need to do that more often. I relished the feeling of walking out into the snow at the end of the night (we left before the band stopped). I felt sexy, fluid, released and very, very grounded.

The next morning I got up and met a few of the women from the night before and hiked a couple of miles around a lake in a snowstorm — through more than a foot of snow, some places close to 2 feet. With those same crusty rubber band legs. I haven’t had my heartrate up that high two days in a row in, oh, at least five years. Did you know that it’s almost impossible to hold a conversation while humping up an incline through deep snow with the wind in your face? It’s hard. But I gave it hell. There was an expectation that because I’m so tall and have such long legs that I would want to be at the front of the line so I could blaze the trail ahead. But I hung back and enjoyed the normal pace. If I had gone ahead I would have pushed myself too hard and my heart would have burst inside my chest and leaked out my pant leg into my boots.

I intended to get up and ride the bike today, but my moon cycle came on a week early (all the exercise?) and I’m so not sitting up on that tiny seat with these cramps and an uncomfortable pad getting shoved up my butt.

Come on, weekend!

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Since just before the holidays I’ve been trying to trudge my way through the tome Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. It’s one of those books that has sat on my reading list since college, mocking me with its big brainy brawn as I devour my Oprah’s Book Club picks.

I don’t put books down without finishing them very often, but am trying to learn how to say enough is enough in all areas of my life. I’m about 250 pages into the thicket—776 pages of fiction with over 400 characters—and I realize that I haven’t formed an attachment to one single soul. The language, yes. Pynchon’s use of the English language has made synapses explode in wonder at least a thousand times. But I haven’t fallen in love with one person in the book. That’s an important part of reading for me, feeling tangled up in someone else’s story and spirit. This novel is like wading through Purgatory, hundreds of lost souls bumping into one another but moving on so quickly that I forget about them in a page or two.

So yes, enough is enough. I’m taking it back to the library, paying my $11.40 late fees because I ran out of renewals and stubbornly refused to give up. I have to give up. The idea of reading another 526 pages of this massive web of human interaction a slothlike five pages a night makes me want to stop reading entirely.

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I’m too warm and lazy to get the camera out, don the winter clothes and schlomp out in the snow to take pictures, but boy-oh-boy is it winter out there! We woke up to about 18 inches and it’s still coming down so I’m going to get to work a little late this morning, let the plows catch up with the roads a bit. It took me an hour to get home last night (not so bad for a normally 20 minute drive done on roads covered with a thin layer of ice and frosted with a thick and constantly growing layer of powder–fishtailing all the way, even with the 4 x 4).

Normally this time of year I’m deep in garden mindset, the dining room table covered with seed catalogs, my 3-ring binder and clear sleeves spread out. I spend weeks muscle testing the garden plan, the spacing, the amount of each seed, the timing of seed starting. This year I haven’t done a thing. Didn’t even give the catalogs more than a cursory glance before tossing them in the coffee table drawer. I have more than enough seed (though of what is anybody’s guess, I need to sit down and do inventory). I won’t be doing all of the muscle testing this time around, there’s too little free time available and I’ll miss that part in a way, but honestly, I struggle with trusting the results every year. It’s hard to give up control, though quite thrilling to make the gesture.

This morning I ordered my seed starting mix and transplant mix from Fedco, and put in my order for potatoes from Moose Tubers (also Fedco). I won’t order anything else this year, not even a fruit tree because I have no idea anymore what I want to do with the property. Well, that’s not exactly true. It’s more that I have big plans, huge plans for landscaping this property into a permaculture oasis in the city and that’s going to take a long time and the vision is coming to me slowly. I don’t want to have a misplaced heirloom apple tree just yet. I think another year on the land with just simple vegetable and flower gardening, finding the right spot for the chickens and watching the play of the light will help clarify. It’s better to not shape too much just yet.

I also ordered a 100 foot ethernet cable so I can bring my G4 up into the living room. We have a nook by the staircase that has work-station written all over it. I just get nothing done with the setup in the basement. I thought about going wireless, but I never bought the airport card for my tower, and now it’s hard to find one and they cost more than they did when Apple supplied them. I’d need that and the Airport station and spending $300 on that isn’t appealing when I can run a $25 ethernet cable across the ceiling in the basement (floor joists) and have Chris snake it up through a hole behind the computer desk I intend to buy with that other $275 I didn’t waste on wireless. I’d like to get an armoir style with doors so I can keep the electronics contained.

I love having that for the TV and stereo, being able to close those doors and not have the black hole of the screen sucking every ounce of good energy out of the room makes a huge difference in my ability to function around the house. We usually only turn it on at night to watch a movie or when we get home so Lila can watch something while I make dinner if she’s not in the mood to cook. That happens less and less, she’s becoming quite the kitchen goddess.

So what all are you doing to plant the seeds of contentment this winter?

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Oh, goodness. What a whacked out couple of weeks it’s been around here. My goal is to not focus on the negative so I’ve had a hard time coming up with a post when all I want to do is post about the way our life here in sunny and warm Ohio has turned into General Hospital.

How about some +/- list action instead of my whining?

- The cold. Need we say more? Brrr.
- Chris’ dad went to the ER a couple of weeks ago, we all thought to die. He’s in the end stages of cirrhosis (genetic, non-alcoholic).
- He’s a difficult, needy and unhappy man when he’s healthy.
- The dying process has provided no epiphanies as of yet and we don’t much expect any.
- The hospital stabilized him and sent him home.
+ Hospice is now involved and are helping with arrangements—at first a hospital bed and potty in their living room.
- Chris’ mom fell down in the grocery store just before Christmas and tore the muscle away from her shoulder.
+ A surgeon repaired it (not sure on range of motion for a while, surgery was Wed.)
- She can’t use that arm at all for at least a month so Dad went to a nursing home.
+ Dad’s in a good facility with full-time nursing care and seems to be stable and mostly coherent.
- Dad’s coherent enough that he calls Mom several times a day to bitch her out about getting him the hell out of there and back home.
- The very thought of that sends Mom into tears and shuts her down when she needs to be strong and focused on resting and caring for herself so her shoulder heals.
+/- I’m the designated sponge bath administrator.
+ We live right next door now (man, did we see this coming in the spring) so popping by with food and to help with the things she can’t manage is so much easier than making that half hour drive.
+ Ty is in NY with his dad.
+ The doctor said the lump he found is a cyst and nothing to be concerned about.
+ I have a lovely freelance gig writing web content for my good friend’s yarn store.
- Between work, 6 weeks of constant illness and the insanity with the in-laws I’ve not focused on it the way I should and want to.
- Chris and most of his brothers got a terrible stomach flu (maybe Norwalk Virus) and lost days of work and are on the verge of losing a big customer because of non-delivery.
+ I get my crown (tooth, not royal) made today!
+ I’m reading The Success Principles by Jack Canfield and while it’s all stuff I’ve heard before, it now makes perfect sense and feels possible.
+ In an effort to get some energy flowing more smoothly around the old homestead, I finished unpacking and putting away all of the suitcases of clothes that Chris didn’t seem to care about and so we no longer have to trip around them in the bedroom.
+ Clearing that space out made visible the built-in writing desk next to the big window and window seat. While I worked Lila played with her dolls and kitchen set in her bedroom, singing happily for over an hour. I’ll be setting up the laptop (sans internet) at the desk so I have a peaceful spot to write that doesn’t take over the entire dining room.
+/- A cupcake bakery opened in the town I work in. I haven’t been there yet. The plus is because, duh, yum! Cupcakes! And also because hey! Maybe I won’t have to do it! The minus is competition and much better location—though that’s a silly thought considering I won’t be making any real plans for several years yet. So, yum! Cupcakes! (it’s a couple from NY city—the cupcake capital of the world–who opened it).
+ I rode my bike on the wind machine in the basement yesterday for the first time—20 minutes with no resistance and my Maude, the toxin flow in my bloodstream nearly made me barf. I’ll need to ease into it slooowly.
+ I didn’t cough!
+ My work is getting busier and busier, with more and more responsibility. I’m getting pretty good feedback for some of it.
- A lot of the work gets sent into a black hole of non-communication.
+ My performance review is sometime in the next few weeks so I’ll get an opportunity to address that formally.
- I think that a lot of the communication issues make it look like I’m not getting some of the work done at the level I should—be it fast enough or on target.
+ I have a job.
- We haven’t had any interest in the old house.
+ I have a job.
- I have to go to work all week.
+ They pay me a decent wage to do so.

Speaking of which, it’s time to get showered and dressed. But hey, I think I’m doing a pretty good job of focusing on the positive.

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