Food Nourishes Our Bodies, Money Nourishes Nothing

My friend Laurie brought me another bag of grapes and so after a wonderful day of dealing with all the accumulated detritus of a life come undone with stress and a lot of working away from my home, I cleaned the grapes and began de-stemming them to make more raisins. Plucking grapes off of their stems, especially when there are lots of little ones, takes time and care if you are trying not to wreck them with careless haste. I got to hearing people's thoughts whirling in my head "Is all that work really worth a pint of raisins that you can buy for a couple of dollars?" and "When I think about what money I could be making in the time it takes to make those raisins it just isn't economically worth doing."

There are only so many hours in the day. What do we spend those hours doing? Running around in cars hustling children from one activity to the next, working for someone else for dollars in the bank, scrambling to do all the things we're "supposed" to do like go to the movies, take vacations to Disneyland, and sit on school boards to prove we're good parents.

But what if we're looking at everything backwards through the lens?

I started thinking about how hard people worked during the Great Depression* and how people were working crap jobs for pennies just to barely survive. They may have worked 16 hour days to keep their family from drowning but a lot of them still had to make a lot of the things they needed for themselves. In fact, they worked all those hours and still baked their own bread, they canned food, they grew gardens. Why? Because there was no Walmart to offer them insanely cheap alternatives.

The real cost of things.

When people say they can buy something for less than they can make it, do they even understand the true cost of what they're buying? Do they take into account the quality? Do they calculate the human cost involved? If you're not making something yourself, someone else is making it for you. If it's cheap to buy, it was cheaper to make. Someone, a person not unlike yourself, was paid to do the work so you wouldn't have to. But for you to get it so cheap, that person is not making much money on the factory line where practically your whole life has been assembled.

That's a cost. Human sweat. The quality issue is a serious one. If you buy something really cheap, it was made cheaply and will not last long. The sooner things break down the faster the landfills are filled up and the faster the earth is covered in human detritus. Wasted money and time. That's what the landfills are.

I once bought a pair of pants at K-mart because we were on a budget and K-mart had some super cheap clothes. I wore that pair of pants ONCE before they ripped in such a way that I couldn't fix them. One day. So what did those pants truly cost me and everyone? They ended up on a landfill. I've made lots of my own clothes before and when I do I choose good quality fabrics, I use a short stitch (better quality) and I make them to last. I have rarely had to get rid of anything I've made for myself. In fact, if I ever lose my fat I will be able to wear them all again because I still have them. They were not only worth making, I made something worth keeping.

Of course not all of us were born with equal abilities. Not all of us will be able to become skilled at sewing, or canning, or woodworking. But all of us are capable of learning some of those things. Of practicing the art of doing for ourselves. We shouldn't be looking at these life skills through a money filter. Money is just a stand in for the things we can't do for ourselves. Originally money was how many chickens we had, how much produce came from our garden, and what skills we had that could be used to trade for other people's skills.

Bartering is ancient currency.

I used to have a knee-jerk reaction against the concept of bartering. It reminded me of a Hippie-style simplistic vision of utopia. I don't believe in utopias any more than I believe in panaceas. People who suggest that a world where there was no money and we all bartered for our needs sound just like evangelists talking about heaven where no one needs to eat. Once I got past my knee jerk reaction I felt anxiety at the concept of negotiating trades with people because I have a lot of weird phobias and irrational anxieties about dealing with people. Bartering seems like such a nebulous concept, one steeped in the possibility of tangles and snares. How can you be sure it's fair? How can you know what some thing's worth?

But I've changed my view on it. Oddly enough it is largely through blogging and being here in my small town where there are quite a few like minded people that I have come to realize that bartering is no more complicated than trading goods for dollars. I've come to regard trading skills and homemade goods as more honorable than buying. And more pleasant. How do I keep from getting fraught with anxiety? I realized a while ago that it isn't about fixed worth in the same way that money is about fixed worth. It's about need. Need is so much easier to sort out.

I need some wine barrels. My friend, who gets them for free from the winery he's working at likes my home canned goods and he and his wife value them and we make a trade. It isn't really about the worth of the barrels versus the worth of the canned goods. That would be looking through the money filter. It was need versus desire. Bartering is also often a matter of need versus need.

I have often heard people say that they can't make something themselves for cheaper than it costs them to buy it. But I think they're looking at it backwards. I think they should be asking themselves if it's worth all the hours they spend away from home to buy everything instead of making things for themselves? If they didn't have to buy so much they wouldn't have to work so much.

If you made all your own clothes you most certainly would have to spend more than you would if you were buying them from Walmart, but if you let me teach you to sew, or another friend, you can make a better quality item that will be useful for years. And when it's done, you can make a patchwork quilt out of it because you will have chosen natural fabrics. Think of all the hours of working for money you could save yourself by not having to buy clothes so often.

Needs Versus Desires

Then there's the semantics of the issue that drives me nuts. Choice and Need are two words that get abused all the time. When people say they have no choice but to have two cars they are generally not being honest. Maybe in a case where one of the cars is a truck that is necessary for work, there is a need. But most families in the Untied States have at least two cars. I know lots of them that have more. I hear them say "We need all the cars because of the kids." Each kid as they grow seems to think that life requires a car of their own. We choose where we live. We choose the activities we follow. We choose how far we live from our friends. We make all the choices that lead to our needs.

I would like people to stop saying they have "no choice". We all have choice. We can decide not to keep up with the Joneses. Maybe if we're so concerned about keeping up with the Joneses we should move to where the Joneses don't care what we do. Maybe your kids don't need two or three extracurricular activities. Maybe you don't need to chair any school or work functions.

We all make choices that lead to the lives we're living. A lot of the things we say we "need" we don't really need, we just want. It is easier to convince ourselves to work harder, earn more money, even when we're bone tired already, if we believe that what we want is really what we need.

I look to myself in this. I have thought about selling my Scooter because if I really examine it, I know that I don't "need" it. I love it, I enjoy it, and I use it. We have one car. One scooter. Many bicycles. I don't need my scooter, but I have it. For the time being I have decided to keep it because we don't use our car very much each week. Philip rides his bike to work. We use the car to run errands and to visit friends. We only have to fill up the car with gas once every couple of weeks now. We used to fill it up every week. We've made our life more local on purpose. Yes, there's a price. Local jobs don't pay well. It's been a struggle. But we're happier.**

I know that I could run a lot more errands on my bicycle than I do. If I didn't have my scooter I would still be able to go grocery shopping on my bicycle.

So I don't need my scooter. I'm trying for honesty in myself just as I'm asking everyone else to be honest. You can still make your choices, and maybe one of your choices is to have two cars. But recognize that it's a choice, and a desire, not a need.


In spite of being tired at 5pm, de-stemming grapes doesn't feel like work, it feels like meditation.







*So great it gets capitalized like God and Jesus.

**Well, we're happier now that I have a job that is going to make a huge difference, but it's local too since I work from home!! We really are happiest not commuting to jobs fifty miles from home which is what Philip used to do for seven years.

Grape Jelly

Ingredient ratio:

1 cup grape juice, strained
1.75 cups sugar
1/4 package liquid pectin

Note that it isn't recommended that you crank up a huge vat of hot water just to make one and a half jars of jelly. This is a ratio of ingredients so that you can use any amount you have and still make a successful jelly. I followed the instructions for liquid pectin because it's what the Ball book of canning calls for. I cannot say with any expertise what the ratios would be if using dried pectin or home made.

1. Put your grape juice in a pot on the stove and crank up the stove to high. Stir the sugar into the fruit and bring it to a roiling boil.

2. Add the correct amount of liquid pectin, stirring it in quickly.

3. Boil for exactly one minute. I'm lame and don't have a kitchen timer so I watch the clock which is inexact.

4. Skim foam off. The foam won't hurt anything. It will make your jelly UNSIGHTLY, is all.

5. Ladle jelly into hot jars.

6. Leaving 1/4" headroom, cap the jars.

7. Process in a boiling water bath canner for 5 minutes.

Grape jelly is not a childhood memory of mine. Grape jelly was for those kids who got white bread and Skippy peanut butter. In my house we had honey, jam, or fruit butters with our peanut butter sandwiches. I never once felt my life was worse off for the absence of jelly in my life.

I don't think I ever experienced it until I was twenty two years old. The memory of that oozing squishy gluey "bread" confection is just as vivid to me today as the day I actually experienced it. A peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich on gluey bread is not the kind of food one can take lying down, partly because this might lead to suffocation, and partly because one must have the senses wide open and alert to appreciate it.

This type of sandwich must be eaten with some kind of beverage such as water or milk lest your throat glues itself shut in protest while you're trying to make sense of the cement like substance that saliva reduces it to. There was a moment for me, that first time, when I couldn't decide if this jelly sandwich was so strange it was charming, like an exotic tropical dessert, or if it was going to kill me once it hit my intestines and was therefore not charming at all.

In the end I decided that my life would be pretty good if I never ate a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich again.

Then one day, several years later, I got a jar of my cousin Christa's grape jelly made from grapes growing wild in her yard all the way over in Wisconsin. It was a lovely blushed pink color and smelled heavenly. I ate some on toasted wheat bread with butter and experienced something so wholly unlike my previous jelly experience...it was beautiful, flavorful, and without the peanut butter to smother it, it was marvellously cool to the tongue and yet also like warm sunshine spread across a field of wheat.

Ever since then I have courted the idea of begging my cousin for more of her jelly.

When I got free grapes from my friend Laurie I seized the opportunity to make some of my own. Concords are the classic grape for that purple grape juice flavor. I figured it must be perfect for jelly. I could serve it up in tiny jars and pretend to be eating in a cafe, always an ambition of mine.

It took me nearly a week to prepare the juice for it which consists of cleaning and de-stemming the grapes, mashing them with a masher in a big pot, boiling them for a few minutes, and then straining them. Straining them again. Then, against the sage advice of Internet friends who know about things like this, straining them once again because I don't want to have my first grape jelly be ugly.

Once the juice was strained sufficiently I refrigerated it because having five jobs can really get in the way of making jellies*. On Saturday I made the jelly. I did set aside some fragrant fine pulp for making into a jam/jelly hybrid since I hated wasting perfectly good fruit pulp. I used pectin because even though Concords are one of the few grapes that have a decent amount of pectin I didn't want to take chances. In case you decide to make some of your own, note that I'm very happy I used added pectin!





*It will reduce down to three jobs soon enough. Two of them are freelance. Then it will be just two jobs because one of them is temporary.

Make Your Own Raisins

This is total pantry love. It makes me feel that I must bake something right now using raisins. I haven't bought raisins in over a year and now the first raisins to come into the house after my local food challenge are ones I made myself from free local grapes. It doesn't get cooler than that for us pantry types.

The grapes I picked last week-end have held up remarkably well in the garage while I try to squeeze my grape processing between my five jobs (six if you include the Etsy shop). I've got a gallon and a half of grape juice waiting to be canned, some of it to turn into jelly, and more grapes in the garage with a big question mark hovering in a cloud above them. Now that my first batch of raisins has come out of the dehydrator* I have concluded that raisins should always taste just like dried grapes.

Raisins usually taste like very sweet gobs of sticky fruit. I like them. Many people I know don't care for them. The grapes (pictured here) that I used for making raisins taste a lot like a concord grape- think Welch's purple juice- but are green, small, and seedless. I believe it's a variety called Interlaken.

The only successful fruit drying experience I've had in the past was when I dried sweet cherries that had sat around macerating in sugar for twelve hours, then rinsed, before drying. I don't like how the dehydrator often makes fruit hard and stiff. It's challenging to know when to pull things out; how to achieve the perfect ratio of dryness to moisture for best keeping quality. Apparently, soaking fruit in sugar improves its texture while drying so that it retains a pleasant quality of tackiness that has some give to it so you don't mistake your fruit for a little piece of shoe leather.

Sweet cherries do not, in my opinion, taste good when dried. But having made them and not liking them insured that they would stick around in the cupboard long enough to see if they would mold. A year later and they are just as "good" as when they first entered the pantry. Too bad they taste like bland stewed fruit.

I sugared my bowl of grapes and added a tablespoon of vegetable oil. I stirred them well with a sprinkle of water to dissolve the sugar. After they sat for a few hours I rinsed them then dumped them unceremoniously onto my dryer trays and shook them into a single layer.

Twenty four hours later at a 135 degree heat most of them were perfect. A few of the larger ones needed more time to dry. These grapes were not at their peak sweetness so they have an amazing balance of sweet with a little zingy tartness and what's better: they taste like grapes, not raisins.

Philip waltzed into the kitchen ate a few and glibly said "You can buy raisins, you know."

I have never seen him snacking on raisins and noticed that he kept taking a few more. And a few more.

"That's why, you smug ass! They taste damn good."

He agreed.

Furthermore, the grapes were free, we already had a dehydrator, and it didn't take much work to throw them in there.

Plus they're the only raisins I've ever actually thought were worth eating by themselves.

But now that I see how good they are I know what I must do with the rest of my seedless grapes.

Why make your own raisins? Because it's fun, it's easy, and they taste better. Do you need more reasons than that?

*Now that I see how good the results are I covet the Excaliber!!!!

Grapes

In my garage I have a box, a bag, and a giant pot all full of grapes. I know that the seeded ones are green Concords, there are a few purple bunches in there too, the red ones are similar to Red Flame, and the green seedless grapes are most like a variety I just tasted at One Green World called Interlaken, a variety that is known to do very well here and tastes similar to a concord.

I got them all from my friend Laurie's vines in her garden.

Now, please be very still and quiet while I say this: Max ate a whole bowl of red grapes. He hasn't eaten grapes in over a year. I din't coerce him, beg him or bribe him. Because that never works. We were grabbing our bicycles from the garage and he spotted the huge pile of grapes. I saw the glint of curiosity in his eyes and explained that those were grapes from Laurie's garden. He reaches out to grab one as though by instinct but hesitates, so I say (very casually), "Go ahead and try one, these are the kind you like. They're very good!" He does. I don't jump up and down screaming

MY KID JUST ATE A GRAPE@! YAHOO!!!

Because that would scare off my wild little beast.

He kept grabbing for more, like he couldn't help himself, because they are so good. So later, maintaining my cool air of not giving a whoop-holler-ring-a-doo, I say that he could have a bowl of grapes for one of his portions of produce. And he did. It's possible that's all the grapes he's going to eat for another year, but dammit, I'm happy about it!

Max said "Laurie grows good stuff." (He's been eating apples again and all of them have been from Laurie's tree!)

Now, what to do with all that bounty. At this very moment I have grape juice filtering ever so excruciatingly slowly through a strainer. It smells fabulous! Concord grapes are the classic grapes used for purple grape juice. Because I only had a few of the purple ones the juice is actually red. Straining the pulp out is important if you want a really good quality clarified juice that a picky child will be interested in drinking. Fruit pulp is obviously good for you but it will lend a browner look to a beverage. I am also going to make grape jelly for which you are supposed to strain out the pulp.

Here is what I'm going to be making today:

• grape juice

• grape jelly

• raisins

• pickled grapes

I am not at all sure about the pickled grapes but if you have the fruit, why not try it? I don't have the kind that is recommended for pickling but that doesn't mean I can't experiment. The kind recommended for pickling are the seeded muscat variety. The truth is I don't like eating seeds. I don't like having to spit them out either. I like my grapes seed free. I like my pomegranates seed free too (I spit them out).

The pickled grapes are supposed to be eaten with cold meats or hunks of pork. Since I am a vegetarian I will obviously not be doing either of these things. However, generally speaking, if something is good with cold meats or pork it is also good with cheese. I love cheese.* Cheese is a necessary food to me. It has been greatly vilified in the last ten years but I have to say that it has always agreed magnificently with my constitution. My only problem is over indulgence in cheddar which is the explanation for why I have a slightly annatto cast to my skin and vaguely resemble a giant block of Tillamook.

I am always mystified at reports of cheese constipating people. I can eat a pound of cheese a day and not have that problem. I guess if you aren't eating enough other good foods with plenty of fiber you may have this problem. Or, perhaps, some of us are made to eat cheese just as some of us are made to eat meat, while others cannot eat one or the other without unpleasant consequence.

That one time I ate a pork chop when I was a kid it sat in my belly like a cannon ball for at least 24 uncomfortable hours. (That was after the two hours it took to make my body accept it in the first place. The only reason I didn't vomit it all up was because I'm emetophobic). This is where it pays to listen to your own body and not assume that everyone else's body is the same as yours. I never preach at people for eating meat because I know that just like other animals, some people's constitutions were made to eat it. Meat can be unhealthy if not eaten with plenty of fiber rich foods like fruits, grains, and vegetables, but the same can be said of almost anything, and certainly it can be said of cheese.

So tell me, how do you like your grapes? Peeled by a naked virgin and fed to you on a divan while a minstrel plays you sweet little tunes? Or in a chutney to spoon onto your mighty hunk of pig fresh from the spit? Do you like to drink it clear and purple? Or do you prefer it fermented? Do you like to eat the seeded kind or the seedless? If you eat seeded grapes do you spit them out in a handy spittoon or do you chew them up and swallow them to scrape your guts clean of accumulated cheese deposits?

Harvest is starting in the vineyards now that the weather is turning. It's a time of heavy work in the fields and the resulting crush will keep much of my county busy. People will slide into their beds in the wee hours after back breaking sixteen hour days of work. All for wine. For love of grapes. For thousands of years people have been moving in these same rhythms. The equipment has changed but the rhythm is much the same as it ever was. I always love this time of year because it reminds me how our needs have changed so little, how people must still work with nature's schedule. To nourish ourselves we must bend ourselves to her needs, to her whims, and to her clock.

I love doing my own preserving because it keeps me close to nature's apron. It keeps me humble. It reminds me of how much labor it takes to transform the fruits and vegetables, the meats and dairy into food that can stretch into the winter months and through the barest time of all- early spring. It builds a deeper respect for the human ingenuity it took to allow us to stop migrating and plant ourselves in still homesteads.

Preserving my own food connects me with the great harvest that is happening right now all over this hemisphere. The gathering in is like one graceful motion shared by millions of animals and people. The air is buzzing with all the nut gathering, the grape harvesting, the threshers, the apple pressing, and the jars filling up with food for the pantry shelf. This is more important than anything else we know how to do. What is the stock market to us in the middle of winter when we're hungry and don't have excess cash to withdraw? What good is a house to us if we have no food to put in it? What good would a grocery store be if we didn't know how to fill it with food? People of industry may feel very important. CEO's of corporations may feel very entitled. But if they lost their jobs and had no money to buy food from the grocery store, would they know how to grow food for themselves and store it?

Not many of them. They would depend on farmers. On neighbors. On people like me who know what to do with a bounty of grapes and constantly seek to learn more ways to preserve the incredible gifts and treasures of the earth. Knowing how to harvest food and preserve it is a life skill everyone should have to learn. It serves our most basic needs. Money is only important because we can trade it for food. It stands in place of gold which was used to trade for other more basic needs. We can all live without money if we have a source for food, but if there's no source for food for our money to buy then money is worthless to our survival.

So while this country of mine is experiencing the worst bank crisis in history I will focus not on the financial disaster but on the possibility that it will inspire more of my countrymen to realize what is really important. I will practice ancient rhythms today and take heart that underneath all our industrialized trappings we are still just creatures of the earth who need, above all other things, the bounty that this season traditionally brings. We are hunters and gatherers still. Come join me in gathering and storing our treasures so much finer than gold.

Grapes are beautiful.

*Cow cheese only.

Job Skill: Multi Tasking Genius

now everyone will want to hire me

Today has already been jam packed even though I've had my friend Lisa B and her three kids for a visit, Max had a sleep over with his friend, I stayed in my PJ's until 10am and it's only 3pm. But that's not all I did. I did the dishes. I put a bunch of stuff away in the kitchen. And then I finished my blueberry project. I was freezing them and you have to do it in two steps. Wash and freeze them, then you package them up. Freezing takes a few hours so it's easy to walk away from them for several weeks while you start a rock band in your garage.

You can't leave food unprotected in the freezer for very long before the freezer begins to eat away at the quality. I learned this lesson well with my strawberries. So it's been hanging over my head. I did it. They are all done.

This is not urine.

Another thing that's been hanging over my head is my limoncello project. Remember that? Cindy sent me lemons when I couldn't buy them myself (from her own tree) and I was making her limoncello recipe. Well, after letting the peels steep in the vodka for the requisite 40 days, and then another 100 days after that...the peels have no color left in them and I still have not completed the project. Which is stupid because I think it's about time for some chilled limoncello, don't you?

Because I'm an incredible multi tasker I strained the limoncello while making a batch of sugar syrup to sweeten it (the last step) and AT THE VERY SAME TIME I was heating some questionable* milk to make into ricotta.

I know what you're thinking.

"How the hell does she do it?!"

I was thinking about how I was going to write a post about my awesome multi-tasking which is the employers gold standard skill when suddenly my milk (while I was straining the peels) went from 185 degrees to 207 degrees and boiling over.

In case you don't know it, you are not supposed to boil milk while making ricotta. Ooops!

What is it they say about pride cometh-ing before a fall?

Yeah, so I'm going to use it anyway because the last time I made panir cheese it turned out more like ricotta, and you do boil the milk to make panir. Maybe I'll rename it "panatta"?

Maybe not.

Meanwhile.... Now we are going to bicycle downtown while my sugar syrup cools down and then when we get home we will get to combine it with my lemony vodka. It will involve tasting it until I get it just how I like it. I'll probably be prepping the last of my peaches for freezing while I do it.

*5 days past it's date, but it didn't smell bad so what the heck?

Tomatillo Salsa

14 pints is not enough

Tomatillos are a queer fruit. They hide demurely in their husks until they come of age when suddenly they are splitting all their seams and bursting out like exuberant teenagers who have just discovered music. You expect them to be full of juice and lusty sharp flavor but they are strangely dry until cooked.

Strange cousin to the tomato both belonging to my favorite plant family Solanaceae. Other notorious family members include: potatoes, mandrake root, peppers, deadly nightshade, eggplant, and Angel's Trumpet (Brugmansia).

The skin of the tomatillo is waxy and sticky. Not a tactile treat for those of us who don't enjoy having tacky residue stuck to our skin. The smell of a raw tomatillo isn't particularly enticing. In fact, it has a strange almost fleshy scent. So what made humans decide to try the fruit of this plant which obviously belongs to a family of Borgias? Good question. If I had come across this plant in the wild I would have expected it to be like a tomato. But I would have been suspicious of its likeness to its poisonous kin. Will it kill me? Or will it be nourishing?

Most importantly: will it taste good? If I had decided to risk death and hallucinations to answer this important question I would have been very disappointed in it right off the vine. What on earth leads humans to cook things that don't taste good raw? Dogged determination? Complete stupidity? Someone found out that tomatillos, when cooked, have a very different flavor than when they are raw; that it is pleasantly tart and sprightly. Someone, eventually paired them up with all the ingredients to make it into *an incredible salsa.

This salsa is so good (in my estimation) that 14 pints of it is not sufficient. I intend to use it in many applications. Obviously it's great eaten with tortilla chips. It is also amazing with eggs. I'm eager to pair it with black beans. I would also like to make tomales and use this as a sauce for them.

I will be thinking of the brave person who uncovered this fruits merits all winter long. Cooking without the Solanaceae family would be devastating. I think European food, before the arrival of these south and central American treats, must have been very dull. What would Italian food be without tomatoes? Or British food without potatoes?

The salsa took a long time to prep. I found myself wondering if any salsa could possibly be worth so much effort and drama. Yes: DRAMA. My spouse generously offered to help so I had him cut the jalapenos with the warning not to touch his face or eyeballs until he had thoroughly washed his hands. If I had had gloves for him to wear, I would have given him some.

Sometimes crazy people hear things differently than non-crazy people. Sometimes you need a translator to understand how their ear hears things. For example:

When I said "Be sure not to touch your face or your eyeballs until you've washed your hands" what Philip heard me say was:

"Be sure to touch your face IMMEDIATELY!" Which he did within a couple of minutes. Without washing his hands.

His forehead started burning and he was sweating so the burning began to spread. He washed his face and then dried it with a towel. Which made the burning spread more. So he started to panic. Panic makes us humans do irrational things. Normally, if something you just did to help a bad situation, ended up actually making the situation worse, you would not continue to do it. In a panic you don't recognize rationality. So Philip, in a panic because his whole face was burning, washed his face again! His panic also made him sweat more profusely and this had him very concerned that the pepper burn would soon be in his eyes.

I told him to stop. To just stop making it worse. A spouse, whether male or female, never enjoys hearing this.

The thing is, I should have considered his asthma before setting him on pepper duty. I felt so bad afterwards. He started wheezing which is what he does when he eats food that is too hot for him. It has an immediate effect on his breathing. Guys are notorious for believing that there is some connection with an ability to ingest super spicy food with the strength of their manhood. Very curious that women rarely suffer this same issue. Philip used to be a very typical male in his macho love of spicy foods. However, over the years it became impossible to ignore the reaction his lungs had after he would eat really spicy food.

It's easy for a lot of people to dismiss asthma as an imaginary complaint if they've never experienced it for themselves. If you've never had difficulty breathing you don't worry that you might suddenly not be able to breath. You take breathing for granted. But people with asthma do not have that luxury. Asthma can be life threatening. So it's actually quite understandable that Philip, who started wheezing, might be worried about how bad it could get.

That didn't stop me from wanting to tell him what a delicate flower he has turned out to be.

This all made me wonder what people did to protect themselves when processing large quantities of hot peppers before there was such a thing as latex gloves? I think about these things because they are disposable, made of latex, and will sit in landfills for a long time. How do things like this fit into a "slow" or a "green" life? My inclination is to not use them. I felt the burn on my hands for at least an hour after cutting up just twelve of the remaining peppers. I didn't mind so much. But it really can hurt.

So, was it all worth it? Oh HELL YEAH!! There was a little left over and I tried it. Oh yes! Clearly I need more. Tomatoes might not be as prolific this year but I can do a lot with this tomatillo sauce/salsa. I do want to note that I had had tomatillo salsa from Trader Joe's before and it was nothing to write home about. Very boring. You have to try it home made. I thought I didn't like tomatillos until my friend Lisa E. made some and I tried it.

Go make some yourself!!

*There are many recipes out there. I used the one from the Ball "Complete Book of Home Preserving" but it can also be found in their "Blue Book". The link I've given here is to a recipe by Rick Bayless, a well known chef and author whose specialty is Central American style cooking.
The one thing I see missing from most of the recipes I just saw is lime juice. Lime juice is, in my opinion (and my friend Nicole's opinion) A MUST. If any of you would like me to put an actual recipe for this on my blog here, request it and I shall deliver.

Home Preserving
weird recipe hall of fame

This salsa is good, but not good enough to warrant making as much of it as I did last year. I am much more excited about tomatillo salsa which I am making and canning today. Canning what you like takes experimentation, it means sometimes you spend time canning things you don't like first.

It's the same with eating. I accidentally bought this yellow watermelon. I'm not a fan. It doesn't have as strong a flavor as the red kind does and it looks anemic to me. I can't feed it to my child who already has very strong views on what constitutes edible food, he has been eating lots of watermelon in the past couple of weeks which is fantastic! But I know without asking him that he will not take kindly to his watermelon changing color on him. He likes things to be "how they're supposed to be".

I've already admitted that there are some canned items that I would never have tried if my friends didn't make them first and twist my arm to force me to try them. Peach salsa is one of them. I actually like the peach salsa, but not enough to make some for myself. Jalapeno jelly sounded wrong. Just plain WRONG. Until I had some poured over cream cheese and eaten on crackers. I found myself unable to stop eating it. Pickled peaches- doesn't sound all that great but I actually liked it. Another one I tried was bread and butter pickles. I already knew I loathe sweet pickles so I was pretty sure I wouldn't like these. Yep. Any amount of sugar with my dills makes me want to gag.

See how, with ease, I bring us all back in time to the eighties with my words?

There are some recipes in my "Complete Book of Home Preserving" by Ball that I am reasonably sure I would rather be poked in the eye with a dirty needle than eat, and here they are:


Carrot Cake Jam- not only does it just sound awful...the idea of cake pulverized into a spread to put on toast, it uses canned pineapple. I have a problem canning foods whose ingredients include already canned foods. Twice canned pineapple- will there be any nutritive value left? And how old will it be when you finally get in the mood to eat your cake-jam? It's already likely at least a year old. I get in the mood for cake jam NEVER, so I'm guessing that pineapple will get very very old.

Sundae In A Jar- why do humans want to put everything in a jar? What is this twisted urge we have? What's good about a sundae, in my opinion, is the separate ingredients coming together suddenly on your spoon, and maybe beginning to mix as the ice cream melts. The idea of taking an ice cream sundae, letting the ice cream melt, and stirring all of the ingredients together in one great big sugar soup sounds repulsive to me. Granted, this recipe is just adding chocolate flavored liqueur to a batch of jam style fruit...but why? Why not open up a jar of strawberry sauce to pour over some ice cream and then pour some chocolate fudge on it?

Tropical Breeze Freezer Jam- again, with the previously canned ingredients! Add some mashed banana to the "jam", shredded coconut, and mandarin orange slices and you have food not fit for my chickens. Who would eat this on toast? I don't even want to think about how much like clumps of slug guts the banana must be like...nasty. This recipe is proof that humans will eat anything.

Jelly Bean Jelly- this is the worst of the worst. The only real food ingredient is apple juice. Dudes- this is a recipe for a jelly that will taste like jelly beans using flavoring oil concentrates and, if you like your jelly on the festive side, food coloring. This is not food. There is no reason to eat this. If you want the flavor of jelly beans, what is wrong with just eating some jelly beans? It's that charming notion of "food in a jar" which is Ball's way of trying to drum up interest in their jars in the non-canning sector of the populace. Anyway- is it true that some people, while eating jam on toast, really wish their jam tasted like jelly beans? No, don't tell me. I can't know this kind of stuff, it will make my head explode!


You must bear in mind that if you twist my arm hard enough I just might give in and try your proudly canned "Twinkies In A Jar" jam, but beware what I will force you to eat in return.

I'D RATHER BE PICKLING

The slogan for my summer should be: I'D RATHER BE PICKLING!

My friend April has a picture up on her flickr pages of watermelon with feta, salt, and pepper which really tripped me up and out because the only other time when I have heard of such an odd pairing of fruit and cheese was when my Israeli step cousin was visiting and made me try it. I must confess that I didn't enjoy it. Which made me feel lousy because I also wouldn't go nightclubbing and I'm pretty sure we were written off as elaborately boring people. In April's comments she writes that the first bite was pretty good but she had to conclude that she is a "watermelon minimalist" which I enjoyed a lot.

I didn't know one could be a fruit minimalist. It made me wonder if I'm a "joy minimalist"? This would explain so much..."I'm not depressed all the time, I'm just a joy minimalist."

Not too long ago, maybe two days ago, I realized in a flash that I'm going to be one of those old people in my town that everyone knows and has stories about but I'll probably never hear them myself. I will shuffle around on my scooter, barely able to hoist my leg over the seat to get on or off because of my gimpy hip, and the shocking red lipstick I fearlessly wear will feather out from my lips in fine radial etchings so that I look like I've got a much bigger mouth than I do which will scare small children, and I'm going to smell like face powder and old perfume. I'm going to be teetering through the blueberry fields talking to myself and cursing at bumpkins who get too close to my jealously guarded buckets.

Either that or I'm going to be like the bald blond homeless guy with the bottle thick lenses who I'm not sure is completely cognizant of the same reality that I am. He's like kin*, so I cut him slack. How terrible to be homeless anywhere at all.

Remember that time that I was in a really dark place? And that other time when things were really bad and I wrote all those dark posts? Or how about that really blue period I went through when I was feeling so low and I sucked all the light out of the world? I know, I was thinking it's always kind of dark over here too. That's why I'm so pleased that I painted my nails glitter pink the night before last. There is really, literally, only two specks of it left on my actual nails, but the punch of silly color really added a boost to my morning. The rest of it is probably at the bottom of my pickle jars.

Just kidding! I peeled most of it off over the sink when I noticed it coming off. Now I miss my silly glitter. I rarely paint my nails. With so few vanities left to me I couldn't help but enjoy the sparkly dash of pink nails picking humble green beans against a searing summer sky and hard baked dirt.

My new friend Sarah and I had a pickling adventure. She picked (and pickled) her first ever batch of cucumbers while I picked and pickled some beans. I refuse to say "dilly beans". I'll just call them "dilled beans" because I just want to suck a little more light away from the happy people. Anyway, teaching friends to can and pickle things makes me happy. Sarah is a cheese maker and is going to teach me to make feta cheese. I love reciprocity like that!

There's been a lot of talk lately in canning circles about the cost of canning your own food. I think that people have an idea that canning food or growing it should be cheaper than buying it. I would like to say right now that monetary motivation for doing something for yourself is really cheap. When you're looking at it like that it's like you're looking at life through the wrong lens prescription. Why should you grow some of your own food when you can buy it for so much cheaper? Why should you can your own tomatoes when Trader Joe's sells huge cans of it for a fraction of the cost?

Do we count the hours of labor we invest in our children and calculate the cost to determine whether they are really "worth" the value of our time? Do we only cook food at home for ourselves if it costs less than going out?

I have a very long history of being pissed off with the whole "time is money" thing. Time is money when you're doing work for pay. If all the hours of your day boil down to what money you could be making if you weren't doing something that doesn't pay then your life is a very hard and sad one.

Why would I rather be pickling? I'd rather be pickling because doing things for myself is fully as important as taking care of my child. I don't count the hours I spend playing legos with Max in terms of money and I don't count my own labor into the cost of making dinner for myself and my family because there have to be some things I do purely for love, for deeper values, for our spirits, or I will die empty and cold.

So when I figure the cost of canning my own food I NEVER calculate the hours I spend doing it. Yes, time is money when you're on the clock, but when I'm home I'm not on the clock. I can my own food because it tastes better to me, I enjoy canning, I can count on there being no rat tails included in my jars, I know where it came from, and how it was produced. That kind of quality control is priceless.

I don't think everyone needs to can their own food. I'm not a proselytizer for preserving food at home. If you don't enjoy it, if you'd rather be...(I don't know what people do with their time who don't can their own food, garden, and other homesteading things)...whatever it is you do with your time- then don't. I don't care. Just don't tell me you don't can because it isn't cheaper than buying canned goods in the store. Because I just might sock you.

If I didn't continue to be the H.M.R. that I am I would want to make a t-shirt that reads "I'd Rather Be Pickling". I'm not even going to ask who else would want one. Because I'm not allowed to do anything but try to find another job that actually pays money.

For a treat that we're not allowed to have (because it is one more thing that goes on the credit card) Philip rented me some CSI episodes. So I'm going to go watch them and just pretend I am a worry-less person with adequate income and no tears. Life is good in the microcosm of the next few minutes. And the few minutes after that. Can I really ask for more? Is it rude to ask the universe to allow us to be alright for longer than today, tomorrow, and next week?

I hope you're all pickling too!





*Kin in the sense that he appears to be off-kilter and I'm sure I'll be no less crazy when I become a bag lady. Do you think I will somehow find a way to blog even when I'm in rags on the streets digging through the trash?

**Human. Money. Repellent.

A Year Of Pickles

It's hard to feel let down, bitter, or cold inside when your own two hands have coaxed a bucket of cucumbers into a year's worth of pickles. Pickles to eat in the dead of winter with cheddar cheese. Pickles to add to potato salad and to egg sandwiches.

It's hard to feel lonely when you are making the most basic thing in life (sustenance) with someone you feel wholly comfortable with and who you'd share your last jar with, if it ever came to that.

A friend who doesn't mind you spazzing out or your quirks and who gets you to try things that sound utterly disgusting* because you know there's a good chance you'll actually like it. Because she says so.

It's wonderful to wake up in the morning, go to a vast farm to pick cucumbers, and after hours of fun work...sit back and know that today you made enough dill pickles to last you an entire year. It's great to be a CEO** (I guess) but your work is so much less tangible or tasty. Your family appreciates the bills you pay but at the end of the day what did you MAKE? Making things is the best boost human beings can give their self esteem.

Homesteaders, housewives, or househusbands who make things, who cook, or garden, who fix things or build things, generally don't sit around feeling inadequate or worry about contributing enough to their family. Money isn't everything, but making things really is. You don't know how to cook? Go learn! You will feel more pride than you ever imagined you could over something so basic. It is the easiest way to make others feel cared for, nourished, loved, and safe. Including yourself.

When I looked at the rows of jars (56 of them!!) I felt capable, industrious, giddy, satisfied, and good about myself. Did you know that preserving your own food could make you feel like that? This was the official opening of my canning and preserving season. I've frozen some cherries and blueberries (in progress) but until the canner comes out and starts boiling and steaming like a locomotive through the thick summer air, it doesn't feel real.

While the dill heads are still ripe and full I have dilled beans to make. There's blueberries to freeze (and send to friends) and make into liqueur. Peaches to make into preserves and to freeze for smoothies when late spring brings every kind of hope but luscious fresh fruit. Tomatoes to sauce and dice and dry. There's eggplant to pickle, soups to can, and wild blackberries to eat straight from the center of a thorny hell.

These are the things that ground me when I don't know what the future holds. When I don't know what will come of us. One thing I can know for sure is that we have one whole year of pickles in the pantry.

*I can't believe I ever thought jalapeno jelly sounded gross.

**I personally can't think of a worse occupation besides being a prostitute. In a way I think prostitution is more honest work. No, that doesn't mean I "approve" of hooking, but as long as us humans need men, it will exist. Because men go in for that kind of thing. I know, I don't get it. For crying out loud though, why on earth don't men get arrested more often for employing prostitutes? And why do they think it's manly but the same men who think it's manly to be a "john" don't respect the women turning tricks for them? It's the johns who are the real losers in my opinion. But this isn't the subject of this post. I've gone wildly off topic with this footnote.

Public Speaker

McMinnville's Finest

I started life as a lisper. My mom says it's because I sucked my thumb until I was seven and pushed all my front teeth out. Like all very special fourth grade girls I had to attend speech therapy in the "special" room of the school. I was also very shy. My own family didn't realize this because around them I was the mile-a-minute talker. How could such a child be shy? But I was. Reading passages from books out loud in class, as all kids were expected to do, was a special kind of torture. I would stutter, lisp, break out in a sweat, and blush madly every time I said a word wrong with all those hostile eyes fixed on me.

One of the reasons I knew I couldn't be a teacher as a profession, aside from the fact that young people often make me want to wring their necks, is that a job which calls for standing in front of thirty pairs of alien eyes every day would absolutely give me a stroke within the first year.

I've heard it suggested that no one likes public speaking but that can't be true because some people seek it out. I really think that stand up comedians are bizarre human beings- they not only stand in front of hundreds of people with a spot light on them but they do it with the intention of making people laugh. I'd rather die. Actors seem to thrive on this sort of attention. And then there are the professors who love to hear themselves talk...c'mon, you know what I'm talking about.

I have taught friends to make bread and to can food but with friends I am my dorky self. I can wander through parentheticals like paths in a beautiful garden and my friends never make fun of me or let me know if they're having mean thoughts. I am actually a very good teacher of the things I know when I can do it in my style.

Today Nicole and I are going to stand up in front of people and give them an introduction to food preserving, provided people come. Maybe no one will come? But we want people to come because both of us are passionate food preserving geeks who want to inspire other people to dive in and become more self sufficient. We want people to listen to us and leave thinking "I can totally make my own pickles!"

Nicole is also a shy person. We're quite a pair to be giving a talk. We're like Abbot and Costello.

I've been feeling a little rejected by my city lately. The only business that has really embraced me is the toy store for which I couldn't be more grateful*. It's actually quite fun working there and I don't worry before I come in. But I still have to find another part time job. I know so many people in my town. I have so many great connections. I care about my community here more than I've ever cared about other communities I've lived in. I have so much to offer my county but my county doesn't really have a place for me.

Except as a free public speaker, apparently.

Here's what I keep thinking: I am an excellent employee. I'm loyal, I have a strong work ethic, I am independent when independence is called for but am also an excellent team player. It's rare to find both qualities in one person. I don't have a lot of ego about my work- I don't need to get petted and coddled to perform well. My work ego is only concerned about providing what my employers and my coworkers need. I am a vibrant person and in spite of my private challenges what I bring to work with me is an overflowing positive energy, sunshine, an ability to stay calm under pressure, and a deep pleasure in bringing satisfaction to others through my work. I learn computer programs quickly, I have a ton of experience with customer service, office procedures, I'm organized, I'm an excellent multi tasker, I have an exquisite eye for detail without losing the big picture.

What employer wouldn't want those qualities?

What keeps coming to me is the possibility that my town doesn't value these things. My town hasn't come to a full realization how talented I am at learning new things and bringing sunshine with me everywhere even when it's pretty dark under my own skin. My town, perhaps, doesn't know how to use a person who is so flexible. Is it possible that the only way my talents will be recognized and used professionally is to get hired in someone else's community?

I keep thinking there is nowhere for me. I keep thinking that I made a giant mistake ten years ago when I left my swatching job to go back to school. Education is considered so important to so many people but even though I took two years of academic classes and got a 4.0 gpa, it counts for nothing since I didn't get a degree out of it. I made a detour to enrich myself and it seems that all I did was damn myself for all future employment. I should have stayed the course I was on.

And think on this, all of you who want to embark on your own business: owning your own business is like the kiss of death for future employment. Supposedly it will show off what a multi-talented person you are but all it really does is make you seem over qualified for most jobs. I've heard of this happening before I had my own business. Since I was my own administrative person you'd think that I would now be considered qualified for all administrative positions. And that's where you'd be wrong. It only counts if you've done it for someone else.

So today I am going to perform a public service for my community at great cost to my comfort; performing the one task that I have no talent for and dread above all others. That's all my community wants from me (right now) and I'm going to give it the best I can. That's how much I love where I live and the people who share this county with me. It's true love and I will forgive it for not recognizing everything I have and want to share with it.

At least we'll always have Paris The Carnegie Room.

Kisses, McMinnville!!!!

*Safeway also embraced me and Diane and Sue couldn't have been nicer. With more on-the-till training I could have been Safeway material but Safeway's method of training wasn't enough for me. I learn very quickly by actually doing a job with a mentor at my side. Clearly I'm not talented enough for Safeway but I was grateful for the opportunity to give it a try.

Wheat fields of McMinnville
the food where I live

Wheat fields are beautiful. That's a field of food right there. Golden grains shining under the July sun. It's a shame that this food isn't going to feed the people who live near it. This food is going to be exported. This is what's wrong with the world right now. We grow grain and ship it away. We grow nuts and ship it away. We grow beets for sugar and ship the sugar away.

All this food surrounds us and it isn't going to feed us. It's going to suck up a bunch of power to send it somewhere else, to feed other people. We have starving people here in our own county. But that's another story, isn't it? Because even if all the food we produced were to be sold locally there just aren't enough jobs to provide money for the people who are starving to buy it with. The weirdest thing is that every country could be growing enough food for all it's starving people but the people who are starving aren't necessarily starving because there is no food, they are starving because the food costs too much.

While poverty is something I have been familiar with personally in the past and am re-experiencing much more lightly now, I am extremely fortunate that I have enough resources to buy 18 pounds of sour cherries when they become available. I am fortunate to be able to buy them for $1.20 per pound and that I have the knowledge to preserve them in several different ways.

To know how fortunate I really am, even with debt collectors calling me every day, all I have to do is see how rich in food I am to feel my true luck. And now, I must go shower, get dressed, and get processing because my sour cherries are turning brown!! Ack! I'm off. I hope for all of you that you are rich in food too because that is the true measure of our well being.

Excellent Lunch + Diseased Trees = Life As Usual

My breakfast/lunch yesterday was: one homemade pita slathered with yogurt cheese and topped with caramelized onion and roasted tomatoes from the freezer. A damn fine repast! I will be making a donkey load of the roasted tomatoes next summer.

I have also come to realize that my tomato canning may get a whole lot easier next year if I use my Kitchenaide food strainer which I used to use for applesauce. It removes the skin and seeds while plunking your pulp in your bowl- brilliant! Why did I waste so much time blanching and squishing the seeds out by hand?

Speaking of tomato sauce...for those of you who are aware of my dissatisfaction with my marinara sauce made with home canned tomatoes (although plenty of tomato flavor, it lacked sprightliness and always turned out dull compared to the sauce I make with commercially canned tomatoes) I followed some suggestions and added some red wine vinegar to a sauce I made a couple of days ago and it turned out great! I think the home canned are just too sweet and they need more acid added to them to really shine.

After last week's Master Gardening class I made a courageous decision to be brutal in my garden and not suffer super weak and diseased specimens to linger for years in hopes of rehabilitation. The weak plants get shovel pruned. I had in mind my Pink Pearl apple tree which has been showing distressful signs of disease at the bud union. I think it's apple canker, though I plan to get some official help from my mentor in the class. After taking the above picture I examined all my young fruit trees and EVERY SINGLE ONE of them is showing signs of disease at the bud union. If I am right about what they have, then chances are good that all of them will have to be destroyed and some major amendment will have to take place in the soil before replanting. A new strategy will have to be employed.

You would think this would distress me. It actually isn't much. I mean, it's an awful waste of a couple hundred dollars, but I want to do it right. I want the best plan possible for the long term. So a chance to do it right is not a bad thing.

I found the deed to our property yesterday while doing some clean up and discovered that our yard isn't 10,000 square feet, it's just over 14,200 square feet which means it's just under a third of an acre. That's really cool! I have always wanted to describe my yard in terms of acreage and be able to say "I have a quarter of an acre" but never thought I'd be able to.

Yes, yes, I am very shallow. So sue me.

(That's such a nineties expression huh?!)

Well, I'm off to the psychiatrist to report that I'm still quite tired all the time but at least I've cut my beer consumption by 75% for the last two weeks. Anyone who knows us knows what a tremendous accomplishment that is.

Scary Pickle

What the hell? Do you know what this is? It's pickled eggplant. It was simmered in vinegar and then preserved in oil. I have been storing it in my very cold dark garage pantry. Those little tumorous looking clumps are (I'm 99% certain) oil that has hardened. I have taken this slice out to warm up in my kitchen to see what happens. If these little tumoresque bits don't melt then I think I will not eat this pickle.

So many modern people are fearful when making pickled and canned goods at home. Unnecessarily fearful. Thousands of years of pickling compared to 100 years of government regulation just isn't enough to make me believe that the USDA knows everything. This is a traditional pickling recipe and there is no reason for it to not be safe. I am not going to trash the traditional recipes of the world because my government just isn't sure that people should have been doing it this way for the past two thousand years.

This brings me to the "Joy Of Pickling" one of the books I bought at Powells last week. I sat down last night with a cup of tea and read through most of the recipes and I am fascinated. Who wouldn't be when reading a recipe for "souse" a tart jelly made of the fleshy part of pigs feet or any other pork trimmings? Everyone has heard of pickled herring, but if that doesn't grab you, how about some pickled pig's ears? How many of us have eaten sour grapes?

I was raised as a vegetarian and after trying almost every kind of fish and quite a few kinds of other various fleshy delicacies at different times in my life in an attempt to acquire a taste for meat and fish, I have officially given up the ghost. Eating flesh, to me, is an exercise in repulsion. I don't care if you eat it. Just don't cherish a hope in your heart that if I ate YOUR meatloaf I will change my mind about meat.

It aint gonna happen. Not just because my body has rejected all meat in every way, but because I don't feel I'm missing anything. I used to try to eat meat so I could fit in with the world. Being a vegetarian kid in 1979 wasn't the common experience it is today. My mom had to bring food for me to summer camp when I was a kid and instruct the cooks on what to feed me instead of hot dogs. The world has finally caught up and it's not so hard not eating meat anymore. Now a lot of people are trying to eat less of it themselves.

The truth is, I am uncomfortable eating the flesh of another animal. I don't think it's wrong to do it, I know that it's the natural food chain at work, it just makes me uncomfortable. So I'm happy being a vegetarian all around.

The reason why I mention all of this in relation to pickling is that there is a classic food pairing that I am missing out on by being a vegetarian. Cold cuts + pickled fruit, for example. Reading my new pickling book I see again and again how meats and pickled fruits, or chutneys, or jellies have been paired together harmoniously for centuries. And it sounds good! So I am asking myself what kind of vegetarian meal would pair well with a pickled shallot? Or sour pickled grapes?

Cheese is the obvious answer. Cheese and bread. The ploughman's lunch without the cold cuts. Also, a real mezze spread would be a perfect opportunity to lay out small bowls of pickled delights such as eggplant, mushrooms, and turnips to be eaten on fresh pita* that has been dipped in lebneh or spread with hummus.

On a side note: see that jar of yellow stuff? That is a pickle I am not planning on eating. I am very worried about it. That's the version of piccalilli that I made from the Ball Blue Book Of Canning that smelled like flour when I was done. Not in a nice way. Raw flour is not kind on bellies and that's what it smells like. But sometimes we have to try making things even if they might not turn out so that we can find new favorites. (I hear all my friends laughing in the background...me who eats news things cautiously and infrequently...ha ha ha)**

I heated up my eggplant and the tumoresque bits melted away. It was just solidified oil. I am planning on making pita pizzas today with red sauce, pickled eggplant, and cheese. Yum.

If any of you are planning on getting any food preserving books, now is the time to get them. By the time summer rolls around the bookstore shelves will be very spare of preserving books as will the library shelves. I know this from experience. This is why I bought several titles that I've been wanting for a long time in the middle of winter when there is very little preserving to be done.

So what's the scariest pickle you've ever eaten? What was the best?

*Yes, the pita must be fresh. Do not buy pita from the store. Make pita. Store bought pita is dry and stupid. Fresh pita is fragrant, tender, and perfect for spreading with anything you fancy. The two do not even exist in the same universe so learn to make your own. IT IS SO EASY!!!!!

**I would like to take a moment to address this myth about Angelina's reluctance to try new things. I actually do try new things quite a lot. I admit I try new things with a certain amount of trepidation, but I try them anyway. New things tried in the last six months: beet pickles, jardiniere, tomatillo salsa, peach salsa, pear and ginger jam, pepper jelly, collards, beet greens, bread and butter pickles, yogurt cheese, sheep/cow blend cheese, raw milk cheese, Jerusalem artichokes, quince marmalade, dried sweet cherries, homemade mustard, and today: pickled eggplant. I didn't like all of the things I tried, but many of these things have been added to my cache of favored recipes.