Cucumbers, et al
Once it started raining again, the okra and the cucumbers have replicated themselves at an alarming rate. Would that the tomatoes did the same. Last weekend The T and I decided to go to the Farmer's Market down by the airport and buy some water melons. For $4 we got a three-foot-long pale green-and-white splochety item that turned out to be the fantasy watermelon of both our childhoods-- deep crimson, sweet-- perfection! And after watching them empty hugh bags of peas into the pea-huller machine, we picked up 20 pounds of fresh-hulled black-eyed peas, which T later confessed, after we had spent an hour or two blanching them in boiling water and dousing them in ice water and packing them neatly away in the freezer, that he wasn't really interested in the peas so much as the hulls... which the farmer had been more than happy to fill up a big bag with, since he was going to have to tote them off to the dumpster, anyhow. Mulch. T is always on the lookout for it. Mr. Mulch, King of the Kompost Heap. And the ten pounds of okra a day out of our own garden wasn't enough, no-- so we bought a 1/2 bushel of it, too, and dutifully blanched, iced & sliced, bagged and froze it.
And then, there is that prolific cucumber vine, putting out a half-dozen foot-long cukes a day. getting themselves stuck in the holes in the hog wire fence they've covered over. We pile them up on the counter, and when I've got about twenty and a dozen medium onions, a quart of vinegar, a few cloves of garlic, tumeric, sugar, allspice and mustard seeds, I pull out the old 'Veg-I-Matic' and slice up the cucumbers and the onions until they fill up the big stainless steel bowl (20" in diameter) ; sprinkle them with pickling salt, cover with ice for three hours to brine them up and then toss them in the hot sugar/vinegar spice mix and fill up a mere four quart jars with bread-and-butter pickles. Yum. They are good. One of the ladies I work with told me they use them instead of relish, and I thought to myself, oh, yes-- that would be tasty. Funny how it had never occurred to me that I could throw a jar into the Cusineart and presto! sweet relish.
The Veg-I-Matic had been sitting in a drawer for years. Never thought to try it out, believing the Cuinseart to be vastly superior to any mere manual slicing gadget. I hadn't seen one advertised in years. After the fourth or fifth cucumber in less than a minute, I realized that there was nothing to prevent me from slicing off the tips of all four of my fingers and my thumb in one swipe, if I wasn't careful, which may account for why they aren't being advertised any more. There were some strongly-worded warnings in the instructions about NEVER EVER leaving it anywhere near a child of ANY AGE!!! But that probably didn't prevent the inevitable lawsuits from otherwise intelligent homemakers who had glanced away for a brief moment, only to find they'd turned it into blutwurst instead of knockwurst.
The Veggie-Matic is actually a sort-of lying down vegetable guillotine, with a wicked 10" long razor blade set at an angle and a flimsy plastic "guard" to hold the vegetable during its repetitive execution. As I turned the onions into onion slices I could see why the mobs in the streets of Paris kept rounding up the aristocrats in carts to watch their heads roll-- there is something inherently satisfying about chopping, particularly if it's done neatly, quickly and efficiently. Whhhhhaaack!
But I digress.
So there are quarts of B & B pickles on the counter, and oh! I almost forgot-- back at the Farmers Market there were a few baskets of peaches-- Firestone, glowing orbs of sunshine, scalded and then chilled in ice water to get their skins to slide off, then chopped and cooked with sugar into an enormous vat of peach stew-- that does sound bad, doesn't it? But why? The 36 little jars of peach jam are begging for biscuits and a frosting morning. And as if okra and peas and watermelons and bread and butter pickles weren't enough, the fig tree gave up a quart of figs, which are now concentrated into two half-pints of fig preserves.
So it was, from dawn until well past my bedtime, putting up the abundance of summer against the grey meagerosity to come.
Saturday, H & I head up to the Cape to see the Old People. I am going to feast on lobster and fried clams until I'm sick. Then I'm going to spend twenty bucks on the boat ride to the Vineyard and buy some fudge, and eat every bit of it on the ferry home. And wash it all down with Sam Adams. Yes, until I'm sick. Can't wait.
And then, there is that prolific cucumber vine, putting out a half-dozen foot-long cukes a day. getting themselves stuck in the holes in the hog wire fence they've covered over. We pile them up on the counter, and when I've got about twenty and a dozen medium onions, a quart of vinegar, a few cloves of garlic, tumeric, sugar, allspice and mustard seeds, I pull out the old 'Veg-I-Matic' and slice up the cucumbers and the onions until they fill up the big stainless steel bowl (20" in diameter) ; sprinkle them with pickling salt, cover with ice for three hours to brine them up and then toss them in the hot sugar/vinegar spice mix and fill up a mere four quart jars with bread-and-butter pickles. Yum. They are good. One of the ladies I work with told me they use them instead of relish, and I thought to myself, oh, yes-- that would be tasty. Funny how it had never occurred to me that I could throw a jar into the Cusineart and presto! sweet relish.
The Veg-I-Matic had been sitting in a drawer for years. Never thought to try it out, believing the Cuinseart to be vastly superior to any mere manual slicing gadget. I hadn't seen one advertised in years. After the fourth or fifth cucumber in less than a minute, I realized that there was nothing to prevent me from slicing off the tips of all four of my fingers and my thumb in one swipe, if I wasn't careful, which may account for why they aren't being advertised any more. There were some strongly-worded warnings in the instructions about NEVER EVER leaving it anywhere near a child of ANY AGE!!! But that probably didn't prevent the inevitable lawsuits from otherwise intelligent homemakers who had glanced away for a brief moment, only to find they'd turned it into blutwurst instead of knockwurst.
The Veggie-Matic is actually a sort-of lying down vegetable guillotine, with a wicked 10" long razor blade set at an angle and a flimsy plastic "guard" to hold the vegetable during its repetitive execution. As I turned the onions into onion slices I could see why the mobs in the streets of Paris kept rounding up the aristocrats in carts to watch their heads roll-- there is something inherently satisfying about chopping, particularly if it's done neatly, quickly and efficiently. Whhhhhaaack!
But I digress.
So there are quarts of B & B pickles on the counter, and oh! I almost forgot-- back at the Farmers Market there were a few baskets of peaches-- Firestone, glowing orbs of sunshine, scalded and then chilled in ice water to get their skins to slide off, then chopped and cooked with sugar into an enormous vat of peach stew-- that does sound bad, doesn't it? But why? The 36 little jars of peach jam are begging for biscuits and a frosting morning. And as if okra and peas and watermelons and bread and butter pickles weren't enough, the fig tree gave up a quart of figs, which are now concentrated into two half-pints of fig preserves.
So it was, from dawn until well past my bedtime, putting up the abundance of summer against the grey meagerosity to come.
Saturday, H & I head up to the Cape to see the Old People. I am going to feast on lobster and fried clams until I'm sick. Then I'm going to spend twenty bucks on the boat ride to the Vineyard and buy some fudge, and eat every bit of it on the ferry home. And wash it all down with Sam Adams. Yes, until I'm sick. Can't wait.
posted by Merrrrde at 8:04 PM
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