The Moldy Peaches: A Sad Tale of Fruit Gone Bad, Not a Stirring Tale of a Quirky Band.

I HATE to waste food.  My husband is so aware of this fact that before he threw away 14lbs of organic peaches, he took a picture of their decay to prove the need for his seemingly rash decision. I am much more of a cut-around-the-bad-stuff-and-use-the-rest kinda gal, while he errs on the side of cut out some good stuff to make sure you got it all kinda guy.

But the real story is not our differing approaches to dealing with waste, but how I ended up with a box full of undeniably sad peaches.

Summer's bounty comes when it comes. In our case, we order locally grown organic fruit from Crown O'Maine on Thursdays and, with any luck, it arrives the following Thursday. I usually mark some up fifty cents or so and put it out on the sidewalk just beacause I think every pedestrain city needs something of a fruit stand. Anything that doesn't get sold the first day get turned into wine, jam, dessert, vodka infusions, shrub, syrup, or something so I try to place my orders with the idea that I will be processing all of it just in case it doesn't sell.

So far things have gone well, there has been one fruit per week, but then July happened and all in one week we had access to organic blueberries, green beans, and peaches. What is a wannabe homesteader like me to do? Order 'em all!

Dilly beans, blueberry jam, and blueberry wine ain't no thang, so I knew I could bang out that piece of it no problem. Peaches, on the other hand, well, I knew there would be peeling and pitting involved so it would inherently be harder. I also knew that with Grant's first birthday, the weekend was sure to be full to the brim and that Monday would be the first opportunity I would have to address the box of peaches.

And I had plans: Peaches in syrup from Food in Jars, peaches in BOURBON syrup, also from Food in Jars, and honeyed peaches from the hip girl's guide to homemaking. Not to mention the quaffables: wine and a vodka infusion!

Monday night arrived and I thought the peaches would be ripened to perfection, but instead they were gone. With our KahBang events looming on Thursday and Friday, I had to sit out a whole week of canning.

I was sad about the money, but even more than that, I was sad about the loss of these perfect little fruits that had spent months working towards a sweet encapsulation, only to find themselves unceremoniously dropped in the trash can.

My new box of peaches arrived today, the only fruit I am planning to process this week (sorry tomatoes and cucumbers).

Turn Your Head and Quaff

Around these parts we like a good libation.  And in keeping with our general bent towards folksy homesteadery, we like to make all manner of beverages and beverage enhancers.

I have a batch of strawberry and raspberry wine and melomel (mead) going, but it will be months before we get to enjoy them.  I imagine opening a bottle in the dead of January to invoke summer's memory.

But, as I live in the now, and enjoy the light refreshing nature of a vodka tonic on a hot summer's evening, I made three more immediate, simple refreshment enhancers.

The first is a raspberry infused vodka, a la Anne-Marie of Greenish Monkey. Unlike the faux flavored raspberry vodkas widely available, homemade raspberry vodka is light pink in color and far less sugary.  It is also incredibly simple to make:

Ingredients:

3 c vodka (lots of people use cheap stuff here, but I like to go local with Twenty 2 vodka)
1 c raspberries (or other fruit)
1 Tbs sugar

Put all of this in a canning jar and store in a darkish place for several days - 4 or 5 is sufficient.
Give it a shake every day.

Pour it through a sieve, pressing the fruit gently to maximize vodka juiceyness and minimize pulp.

Optionally, pour the whole thing through a coffee filter to really clear it up.

Next on the list is a multipurpose raspberry syrup which is good in yogurt, vodka tonic, champagne, seltzer, on ice cream...you get the picture.  Zoe loves the pale pink color it emits in a glass of seltzer and ice.  Though it is a bit sugary, a tablespoonful in an eight ounce beverage goes a long way.  At some point I will try this with honey.

This can be canned or not, but either way you will want to start by boiling your jars and lids for 10 minutes to sterilize them for the sauce.

Ingredients:

1/4 c water
3 c fresh raspberries (or blueberries, blackberries, boysenberries, etc.)
1-2 c sugar (depends on how much juice you generate)

Wash berries and gently mash in a sauce pan

Add water and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes, until they are good and juicy

Pour through a fine sieve and gently press berries to maximize juice and minimize pulp. Measure and return to sauce pan.

Add sugar in a one-to-one ratio (1 c juice to 1 c sugar).  Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer for about 1 minute until sauce is slightly thicker.

Pour into clean jars and cap.

If canning, place on canning rack and process for 10 minutes.  Remove and let cool.

And last but not least, is a tangy sweet mixer called shrub.  I discovered this beverage enhancer on the Food in Jars blog.  Anne-Marie turned me onto this site, which has become a bit of an obsession because of the author's focus on accomplish-able batches.

Anyone who like sour beer will immediately see the potential in this one.  Zoe's been digging on the non-alcoholic versions of this one too.

Ingredients:

1 c raspberries (or other fruit)
1 c sugar
1 c vinegar (apple cider works well)

Combine raspberries and sugar in a 1 quart canning jar and mash until juicy (How many times can I use this word) in one post?  I don't know, but I hope this is the last). Put in the refrigerator for 2 days.

Remove from refrigerator and strain through a mesh sieve into another wide mouth quart jar.  Add vinegar, cap and place in the refrigerator.

You may need to shake it up a few times to incorporate all the sugar.  It tastes good immediately, but the flavor evolves over time.

Like the raspberry syrup, you can use this in vodka tonics, champagne, seltzer, etc.

If the shoe fits

One of my most unfortunate traits is that I think I can solve the world's problems on the drive from Glenburn to Orono, or Bangor to Veazie.  Complicated issues might require something longer, like the the drive to camp in Dover, but you get the idea.  So please, bear with me on this one.

During the financial collapse of 2006 I became acutely aware of all the storage facilities that had popped up on the rural American landscape.  The normally pastoral drive down Forest Ave. between Glenburn and Orono was interrupted by a hulking steel U Store It type facility.  I am not going to lie, these squat, utilitarian buildings offend my aesthetic as well as my philosophy, and their proliferation is more than I can stand.  You can hardly drive for more than 10 minutes without passing one on the roadside.  Their signs boast more amenities that any apartment I have ever lived in: climate controlled, 24 hour video survaillance, keyless entry, drive-in access.  The list goes on I assure you.

It began to occur to me that perhaps part of the reason we are where we are, is our obsession with stuff: its aquisation as well as its maintenance.  As a nation, we are crippled by credit card debt, mortgage debt, educational debt, business debt.  Sadly, our ever inflating McMasions can't hold all that we have aquired even though we keep increasing square footage.

So when we were nominated for the Family Business Award and I needed something swanky to wear to the reception, I was forced to face my demon: the racks, shelves and boxes of clothing, shoes, and accessories stored in my parents' garage.  Sure my treasures of years gone by are stored in a garage built to look like a 100 year old red barn, but the truth is still the truth: This is stuff I haven't touched in 2 years.

We put it in my parents' garage 2 years ago, just for a couple months while we renovated the store and our living space above it.  And I left it up there because I was pregnant with Grant and the clothes didn't fit.  Then I waited because, well, after Grant was born, they still don't fit.  They may never fit.  And even if they do, they might be vintage by the time I get back into them.  This is not an article about my ever changing form though.  This is an article about my shoes.

I quickly and rightly rebuffed my mother's suggestion that I shop the racks up there for something to wear.  However, once I had my new outfit, I was happy to have an excuse to dig out my Pucci print kitten heels to wear.  As I didn't have time to get over there and find them myself, I tasked my ever-willing parents to find them.

When they met me outside the venue to hand over my shoes, my mom eagerly told me that they hadn't found just these shoes, but that she had pulled out ALL my shoes and would BRING THEM OVER.  I'm not gonna lie.  I had a hard time breathing.  I don't have space physically or psychologically for all those shoes.

They don't fit in my living space and they don't fit who this incarnation of Betsy.  Am I really going to wear 3 inch heels with my 27.5lb 11 month old riding Boba on my back?  Probably not.  And yet, I want them there.  I am having a hard time letting go of the money I spent on the shoes and the Betsy I was when I wore them.

In parenting, as in much of life, you can't hold onto what you actually want to hold onto: the joyful moments.  So what you hold onto is the stuff associated with them: shoes, baby clothes, a hair cut, and it ends up being the baggage that holds you down and keeps you from growing.

The upshot of all this is that while I am still working on my new style, lifestyle and fashion style,  I did rescue a few pairs of shoes that still fit the new me...

Strawberries up the Wazoo Take 2: Strawberry Wine

What better fate for the final 2 quarts of strawberries than to become strawberry wine.  Simple and refreshing strawberry wine has a comfy old time-y feel and is as easy to make as strawberry jam. It is so easy in fact that I couldn't think of anything funny to say.  I made it once with honey which makes a strawberry mead, and once with sugar which makes a strawberry wine.

• Place a santizied muslin sock over a sanitized 2 gallon bucket. 
• Wash and hull 2 quarts strawberries into the sock

• Squeeze the sock nto the bucket to get the juices going.

• Add 1/2 tsp pectic enzyme, 2lbs dextrose or honey, 7 pints water, and 1 crushed camden tab

• Place lid on top of bucket and wait 24 hours
• Remove lid and sprinkle yeast
• Let sit for 1 week before removing fruit.
• After 1 month, rack wine to a sanitized 1 gallon clear growler with airlock
• Let sit until clear and bottle.  You can rack it back and forth a few times, or just wait it out.

Yes folks, it is that simple...

Part 1 of Strawberries up the wazoo: Jam-a-lam-a-ding-dong

Long story short, I found myself with 3 flats of strawberries late on Thursday night.  This is the age old story of Maine summer- that intense need to capitalize on the bounty it offers.  Long mostly sunny days, warm alligator-free lakes, bushels of fresh produce coming at you for a week or two at a time.  As soon as you think to yourself, "I need to preserve some of these berries for the dark days ahead," strawberry season is over.

Maybe because it comes first it seems the most frantic to me.  It is, after all, the first in the list and therefore the one that forces you to dig out your canning supplies, or run around town in search of pectin and quilted jelly jars. Their sweet, ripe moment is so ephemeral that by the 4th of July, you are already forcing yourself to remember it.


Freezing is the easiest method, but freezers require energy, and freezers only hold so much, which brings us to canning.  

Anne-Marie, valuable frienployee and author of the Green(ish) Monkey blog, was kind enough to teach a class at the store that demonstrated how to can a beautiful 3-pint vanilla strawberry jam from Food in Jars and how to use the BPA-free Tattler lids we sell.  As a person who makes tasks too big (i.e. canning always requires cases of jars and hours of time) it was a refreshing approach that made me feel like under present circumstances (mother of two and store owner, generally frazzled) that I too could carry some summer with me into the winter.


I wanted to try canning with honey as it is one of our local sugars and we sell it in the store.  I also wanted to try a low sugar recipe so I chose a Pomona Pectin recipe, requiring only 2 quarts of strawberries and 1/2 cup of honey (or sugar), yielding 3 pints.  I used smaller 12oz quilted jelly jars so I would have some to give away.

The Pomona Pectin was simple.  It is a pectin that binds with calcium, requiring you to mix up a calcium water solution first.  The solution can be stored in the refrigerator for a long time and used throughout the canning season. Then the pectin is stirred into the heated jam solution for 1 minute before jarring and processing.

Simply put:

• wash, dry, hull and mash 4 cups of strawberries (about 2 quarts)
• stir in 1/2 c honey or sugar (more if you wish)
• stir in 2 tsp calcium water
• heat the berries until boiling
• remove from heat and stir in 2 tsp pectin
• place back on stove and bring to boil
• Fill and process jars

What made the Pomona Pectin so cool is that is allows for less sugar and the reduced boiling allows the fruit to retain more nutritional value.

Of course Grant woke up twice while I was canning, and Zoe refused to go to bed (11:00 bedtime 4 nights in  a row), but I still made it happen.  Bring on January.  Not really.  You get what I mean.

Swan Song

Courtesy Anne Schmidt Photography

Grant is our swan song.  It is a bittersweet decision not to have more children.  I love everything about parenting, except the 24 hour/365-ness of it.  Every once in a while I wish I could step outside parenthood for 5 minutes, maybe an hour.  Of course there is the desire for a night of uninterrupted sleep, which, truth be told, this post comes on the heels of.

The twisted part is that is what I will miss the most and I am having a hard time acknowledging that I will never have it again.  The addictive crack of early motherhood is the cozy high I get from being needed all the time.  Outside of motherhood, that never happens.  When Grant wakes up before I get back into bed and I watch him sleepily feeling around the bed for me on the video monitor, two thoughts enter my mind: 1.  Argh!  Not yet, I am at at an intense part of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo!  and 2. Ahhh, he needs me.  Twisted, right?

The look a baby has when he spots his mother in a crowd of unfamiliar faces- never happens again.  They are always happy to see you.  It is a beautiful thing.  Beautiful and painful somehow.  Maybe just my longing for it to never end is the painful part.Years of teaching middle and high school students has taught me that the space is there looming in the future

Lying awake in bed, nursing him for the umpteenth time, I felt like Mario during his first liaison with his paramour Beatrice in Antonio Skarmeta's Burning Patience, "This moment.  This moment. This. This. This moment."  The urgency of his desire to hold onto the ephemeral moment in time, even as it slips through his fingers is palpable as he repinpoints it over and oper again.  Makes me tear up just to think of it.

I try to feel a little more Buddhist about it.  A little more Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese monk's Being Peace "Dwelling here in this moment, I know it is a beautiful moment, " about it.  A little more love this moment and let it go because every moment is a beautiful moment about it.  But it is hard.  .

The urgency and need is profound and heady.  And exhausting.  It has to end someday because I really miss myself.  I got pregnant with Grant right when I had reached the point that I could go out for an afternoon or evening.  When The Frock Affair, a new stylish boutique opened down the street from our store, I went to the opening party with Grant in my most stylish Boba and aimlessly fondled beautiful clothes that didn't seem to fit my current lifestyle.  It sounds funny, but I was unsure what "MomBetsy" would wear.  It is certainly different than "ClubhopperBetsy" or "TeacherBetsy", but I want to be a few steps away from "SpitupalloverBetsy".

The other sad part is that I feel like I am just getting good at this.  Becoming a mother a mother to Zoe was fraught with anxiety about making the "right" decision.  Everyday of my pregnancy I entered my food choices into caloriecount.com to analyze my vitamin intake.  Obsessive much?  Having Grant has relaxed me a lot.  It has helped me understand the gradations of right.

It is almost a shame I will never do it again....

Columbine and sleepless nights

I was in my first year of teaching when the Columbine high school shooting happened.  As with the recent Chardon High School shooting, adults were left to ponder what could drive a kid to such extremes.  (As Chris Rock says in Bigger and Blacker, "What music was they listening to?) And then as now, the recurring theme is that each adolescent needs one adult they can talk to.  One adult who takes them seriously.  Notice that it is not one adult who CARES; most of the kids have that.  It is the listening and taking them seriously that we have trouble with.

As a young teacherI was struck by how much we dismiss adolescents' experiences.  It is hard not to roll your eyes when you hear a 14 year old go on about how she can't go on now that her boyfriend (of 2 weeks) is seeing someone else.  Or even if you are incredibly empathetic, our first instinct is to minimize the emotion, tell them that they won't remember him a year or two because WE know that on the scale of human suffering, there is much more to come and that, with perspective, this really is a small thing.

The problem is, that they don't have our perspective yet.  This may be the biggest heartache of their life to date.  And our effort to put it into perspective, might be seen as a quick dismasal of their experience.  An adult saying, "Your problem isn't real."

And when it comes to kids trying to get help for or with another kid, adults actually tell them not to "tattle."  Adults tell kids to work problems out themselves all the time, making sure they get the message that their problem isn't real, or that they need to be more independent.  In short, we create their parallel universe.

Case in point:
A teacher in a school I taught in caught a student trying to commit suicide.  It turns out he had attempted suicide a number of times in front of other students, both in and out of school.  We thought we had close, open relationships with our students and I asked a student why she hadn't told us what she had witnessed and she told me she had tried.  She reminded me of the day she told me he was so depressed and I cut her off at the pass, saying he was just melodramatic.  Read: Get over it.  He'll get over it.  And he may have.  Or he may not have.

So what does this have to do with my sleepless nights with Grant and Zoe?  As I was laying there for the 10th time in that angry place between the depths of sleep and full cognition, thinking that if I ignore Grant's wimpers that he may go back to sleep, I remembered that his problems are real to him and that I need to listen.  He's full enough.  He's dry enough.  He's not in any pain that I can perceive, but apparently, he still needs me.

If we want our children to come to us as adolescents with their problems, why do we begin teaching them in infancy that they should sort it out themselves?  That they should "self soothe"?  Why do we tell them as elelmentary students that they shouldn't tattle and should work it out?  They come to us because they don't have the language or the skills.

For well over a year I have been using trusty frienployee Ruth's phrase, "Can I have the next turn please" to prompt Zoe when she is in a tugging battle.  Usually it works.  She needs help knowing how to negotiate the tricky world of toddler toy sharing.  I hear her using it and coming up with her own scripts more and more.

So, here we are almost 15 years later, still pondering instead of listening.

Tip to try:
When your child (or adolescent or adult even!) comes to you with a problem figure out what they want before they even launch into the story.  Ask if they want help, commiseration, or just a friendly ear.  It's really frustrating to have someone try to solve your problem when you just want empathy or to get something off your chest.