Shabbot, Canning and Tim Ferriss

I can't stop listening to Tim Ferriss podcasts. I am not a bro-grammer, an entrepreneur, a start-up aficionado, I don't weight lift and I have no interest in the financial sector...but still. Seriously, that Tim! He's one of my new favorites. I love his zest for life, his Paleo self, his laughter, clarity and his hilarious and transparent drunk episodes. I wish I could have him over for dinner, I'd make him a great roast chicken and we'd have a hilarious night of storytelling and knee slapping, I can just tell.

I am waffling back and forth between listening to Tim and listening to (don't laugh) a totally fabulous Orthodox Jewish housewife, Rivka Malka who runs a video blog on YouTube. She's fascinating, and Judaism is my study subject so I'm enthralled by everything about her world from how sex works in Jewish marriages to how in the world Jewish women get everything done for Shabbot....oh....and what in the world IS everything?

Speaking of Shabbot...last weekend I started observing. In a very small way. I'm not converting and I am in now way celebrating in a legit form but I think its a good practice to bring into my life. I've been thinking about having a day of rest for a long time and meaning to figure out how to actualize and I just realized that Judaism was the perfect hook to loop me into it, all the compelling interest and strategy and advice...and there I was, planning out our family celebration together. I've decided that for me Shabbot will mean:

• A special tea party to kick things off the night before.
• Lighted candles and a blessing over my children.
• An entire day with no food prep and all meals served on paper plates.
• No laundry or other housework
• Permission to sleep in as late as I need to.
• A long hot shower with all the extras and a nice cold rinse at the end (my favorite)
• A break from my phone except for calling people I love.
• A nap if needed or suggested by my husband. (I guess that's a nap or a "nap" then.)
• A good hike.
• Activities that fill me with joy. This weekend I painted and listened to my favorite music.
• Some prayer and meditation.

So, one round under my belt....now to make it part of my rhythm of life. It feels good. I've been ready for this for a while. 

The garden is all whoppsy and long limbed and falling all over itself but even though there are an unbelievable amount of tangles and disordered corners there is also a heck of a lot of food out for being basically completely neglected for the last month, even in our dry season weather. Amazing! I have kale coming out my ears (wish I had enough basil to make a kale pesto or something. Am tempted to try freezing it somewhat obsessively but I have a feeling that the kale is just going to grow year round and be very happy here no matter the weather. The kale we have with us always.

 I planted two cherry tomato plants and I have little tomatoes coming out of my ears! Just tonight for dinner I cooked squash from our garden, an eggplant from the garden, kale from the garden and some herbs from the garden too. Amazing. I love this time of year. The tree that hangs down into our garden from the next door neighbors is loaded with beautiful apples and they are starting to fall off copiously. I have put the boys to apple collection detail every morning and I am just simmering a perpetual pot of applesauce and canning up pints of it whenever I get enough jars to fill the waterbath. It smells AMAZING in the house all the time and I have to say, these apples are totally wonderful tasting. I wish I knew what they were. This morning I also finished my first batch of roasted cherry tomatoes....I have been filling jars full of the roasted fruit and fresh herbs in layers and then covering with a good olive oil for long keeping too. Feels unbelievably good to be stashing and storing and laying up things in the garage for the cooler months ahead. 

 

May your crisper drawer run over and may your canning jars never run out....

Apple Sauce For The Soul

The boys are taking turns running out to the yard and filling a basket with windfall apples from our tree and running in to dump them into the giant tub on the kitchen counter next to me. We are making apple sauce. I peel and core and the boys collect fruit, cut up the peeled pieces, stir the bubbling fruit on the stove and root around in the spice cabinet electing seasonings that strike their fancy (no to the dill seed, yes to the applespice).

We have been making a saucepan full at a time....two or three pint jar of hot packed sauce in an episode, every batch a small limited edition. It's super fun and super slow and I have had several moments after the kids were in bed when I stared at the mouldering fruit we didn't get to that day and the wispy cloud of fruit flies and thought...."Maybe I should throw them all out and forget the whole thing."

Maybe I will....all projects have a lifespan....but for now...we are making do, squeasing in couple more jars here and there, adding some pureed apricots this time and cardamom, letting each kid play chef and learn to wield a cutting board and a paring knife. I see a long, cozy winter ahead of us, all of us comforted down by applesauce spiced to the palate of the hour.

The Fresh Apple

I forget every year just how good an apple tastes. A real apple. An apple that grew near you. An apple picked from an actual tree. An apple that drips juice on your chin and tastes like the rusty leaves, like the nippy wind, like the tart chill in the air.

Ru turning the press wheel.

Apple cider! At least in small quantity.

My boys wild apple picking with Big Grandpa (my dad) last fall.

I no longer buy oranges unless its the dead of winter and I think this year I'm done buying apples unless its fall. Yes, they are edible all year round but they become a bland, pale shadow of themselves, something that gets old so fast its hard to time it. I really love a good apple but every year when it is apple time I have to polish off my enthusiasm and convince myself to go apple picking because a whole year of completely pitiful, mediocre grocery store apples has stolen their thunder. I don't hate regular apples, they're edible I just don't actively like them either and they are so ubiquitous and so overdone that they completely steal the thunder of a real ripe tree fruit.

Wild Michigan apples come in a.....

....beautifully varied palette.

Our homeschool co-op plans field trips most fridays once the weather turns nippy. This week they planned a pint-sized, cider pressing instruction. Pretty darn cute! My little boys were big fans.  I think Ru would like a cider press for our backyard so that he could spend some time every day feeling really important, turning that big crank.

Fallen apples at one of our local orchards.

Red Delicious on the branch!

We don't really buy store-bought juice at our house but we do occasionally indulge in cider in the fall. (Especially if we can find it raw!) Cider feels more authentic to me than most juice. I fondly remember romping around as a little girl at chilly, annual cider pressings with our local congregation and also at least once as a deal split between two families sharing the sweet rewards of all the apple picking and the use of a borrowed press. I grew up in a place where there are wild apple trees on every corner. Getting fresh apples is as simple as harvesting them from an ancient roadside orchard or craggy wild tree down the nearest lane. Most of them simply go to waste although a few are gathered up for deer, bait piles for hunting season and never even tasted by a local human.

Big Grandma and Big Grandpa, my parents with Ru, after a wild apple ramble.

Here in Connecticut they are slightly harder to come by. I know where one wild tree is but mostly we pay money to be let into a cultivated orchard in counties north or east of us. I'm okay with that though, the fruit snaps when bitten and the flavors are nothing, nothing you can buy in May in the corner grocery store. 

Gettin' Saucy In My Kitchen

We have the very first applesauce, from our very own apple tree. I have been waiting for this day for a really long time. All these sunlit apples came off that one overgrown, neglected tree that leans over the hedge between our house and the neighbors. In fact, this was only one round of the windfalls from our tree, I have another bucket-full downstairs that I need to start processing this afternoon. I am glad we happened to have this five gallon bucket around, I'm not sure what we would have put the apples in otherwise, laundry baskets?

I need to do more reading on rehabilitating old, forgotten apple trees and learn more about how to bring the tree into it's full glory again, full of great fruiting possibility. Even though it is only August, all the apples are done on our tree. I am not sure if it is because we just have an early fruiting variety or if the tree was stressed and dropped its fruit too soon. We didn't end up "picking" anything...as every single fruit fell off the tree. I hope to do some research this winter to learn what that means, maybe identify our apples (they are a nice yellow variety and obviously on the earlier side), and figure out what the next pruning steps will be in shaping the tree. I think this year we'll make some bigger cuts.

I was encouraged to hear the neighbors tell me, as I picked up apples on their lawn that they have never seen apples this large from the tree. I could also clearly tell, both when the tree blossomed and when the fruit developed where I had pruned. The pruned areas were flush with healthy growth and produced more and larger fruit than the other parts of the tree. It's really encouraging to know that an old heritage tree like this can be encouraged and tended and begin a new life.

And all winter while I collect books on old apple trees and draw pruning diagrams, and sharpen my tools I can eat apple sauce, small bowls, with tiny spoons...sipping the cinnamon tinted happiness that can only come from raising your own fruit. Ah, the good life!

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Apple Picking

We had a great little excursion to pick apples at Blue Jay Orchards and finished the fun with a warm box of apple cider donuts, rolled in cinnamon sugar. Autumn joy abounds.

Blue sky, red fruit, green leaves....beautiful.

I love the bounty of fruit rolling around under your feet, everywhere you step.

Snow White apple all shined up and glowing

I love that Dee puts little bits of flora that he finds behind his ears.

Witness...

Nib, riding in the baby pack during picking...

Ooo....new ones!

And yeah...you can see where Dee is getting the idea. Hee hee.

Apple cider donuts are so very, very good.

...lick your fingers off good.

Smiley babe, blazing blue sky.

And now there are bags of apples in the basement, rows of apples on the fruit table and apples in our minds and their dusky taste embedded in our mouths. Tasting every variety several times all the way through a mixed orchard will do that to you.

We are dreaming of warm pies ala mode, and apple dumplings, oozing buttery cinnamon...and I hoping this weekend to take my first crack at the bags of fruit and make something truly delicious...another apple cake could be squoze in too.

I leave you with this beautiful poem on the subject, which makes me want to be in my Mama's kitchen with sisters at my elbows.

Apple Season

by Joyce Sutphen

The kitchen is sweet with the smell of apples,
big yellow pie apples, light in the hand,
their skins freckled, the stems knobby
and thick with bark, as if the tree
could not bear to let the apple go.
Baskets of apples circle the back door,
fill the porch, cover the kitchen table.

My mother and my grandmother are
running the apple brigade. My mother,
always better with machines, is standing
at the apple peeler; my grandmother,
more at home with a paring knife,
faces her across the breadboard.
My mother takes an apple in her hand,

She pushes it neatly onto the sharp
prong and turns the handle that turns
the apple that swivels the blade pressed
tight against the apple's side and peels
the skin away in long curling strips that
twist and fall to a bucket on the floor.
The apples, coming off the peeler,

Are winding staircases, little accordions,
slinky toys, jack-in-the-box fruit, until
my grandmother's paring knife goes slicing
through the rings and they become apple
pies, apple cakes, apple crisp. Soon
they will be married to butter and live with
cinnamon and sugar, happily ever after.