We drove to the farmers’ market and wandered up and down rows of stalls in the YWCA parking lot. Bush- els of canning tomatoes sat on the ground at every stand, their skins pocked by small scars and bruises. But their scent was fresh, and the autumn air sharp and brisk. The growing length of the sun’s shadows enticed us to grab as much produce as we could. At home, vegetables flowed across the kitchen and spilled onto the floor: peppers for roasting, Roma tomatoes for drying, winter squash stacked in a corner and the canning tomatoes waiting on the floor.
The enamel canning pot dwarfed the stove and the smaller pot of boiling water beside it. I dropped several tomatoes into the smaller pot and watched as bubbles rose up out of their scars. Fishing them out with a slotted spoon, I slipped them into a bowl of ice water, shocking the tomatoes so that a gentle squeeze slid their deep red flesh out from under their skins. Juice ran down my fingers and dripped on the counter, and the pile of naked tomatoes grew. I started canning the year Chris and I moved into our first apartment. At the time I worked each summer as a camp director, four hours north in Ely, Minnesota. On days off, I borrowed the neighbor’s chocolate Lab and hiked through red and white pines over glacier-carved bedrock. I picked wild berries as we went: June strawberries in the sandy soils along the road, July raspberries in a sunny patch where trees had col- lapsed during a storm, and August blueberries nestled among lichen on top of a rocky hill overlooking the lake. While I filled my buckets, the dog ate blueberries right off the bush. I returned to our two-room cabin with too many berries to eat. Before long the freezer was full, and it became clear the ber-
Every year, as soon as Chris headed north in May, some part of the house demanded attention: the bathtub clogged, the garage got tagged with graffiti, or it rained so much that the lawn sprouted up like a jungle.
ries would never survive the drive back to the Cities in September. I borrowed canning equipment from my neigh- bor and learned to make jam. The cabin windows grew dense with steam while I stirred and sampled the oozing, bubbling, sugary liquids, and by the time I was done, I had over a dozen jars.
When we returned to the city, I looked around our stale apartment—built to resemble a ski chalet too far from anybody’s slopes, with faux wood paneling and white carpet—and wondered if I could live without walks through the woods. How could I rejoice in sidewalks and asphalt? Images of the root cellar in my parents’ base- ment, lined with jars of home-canned peaches, tomatoes and apricots, flashed into my mind. I remembered standing in my mother’s kitchen as a young girl, watching as she carefully lowered packed jars of tomatoes into an enamel pot of boiling water, knowing they would return to the kitchen in winter as stewed tomatoes, ruining a perfectly good plate of homemade macaroni and cheese. But I had since developed a taste for tomatoes. Maybe canning was just what I needed.
This year, the enamel pot came to a boil in the tiny kitchen of our one-and-half story bungalow. Empty jars floated and bumped into each other in the surge of the water as I waited for them to become sterile, peering through the steam on the windows at Chris ripping tendrils of runaway strawberries out of the garden. He yanked with the vibrant energy we’d both had in June, when we’d confined the strawberries to one small patch so they wouldn’t take over the basil or the potatoes. It was our first summer together since we bought the house three years earlier; Chris had finally quit working at camp and joined me in the city full time. We had already started counseling and it had felt hopeful to dig in the dirt together.
I pulled a jar from the boiling water and set it on the counter, where it steamed and dried instantly. I mea- sured a teaspoon of salt and lemon juice into the jar, and its heat released their acrid smell, an odor I have come to recognize as the arrival of fall. I quartered a skinned tomato from the pile on the cutting board and slipped the pieces into the jar, gently mashing them down to release air pockets. Amber tomato juice spilled over the sides of the jar and onto the counter. Six more jars to fill, then back into the water bath for forty-five minutes to seal the lids. Noon had come and gone, and there would be at least two more batches. Tomato pulp and seeds dotted the floor, tomato juice had dried to the counter. The weekend was already spent, and I would barely leave the kitchen. Every year, as soon as Chris headed north in May, some part of the house demanded attention: the bathtub
10 Winter/Spring 2012
greenwomanmagazine.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76