A TENDER TIME OF YEAR

WITH TALK OF LOSS, PLUS PEACHES, TOMATOES, POTATOES, JAM JUDGEMENTS

The new moon has come round once again. The butterflies and insects are still feeding voraciously in the garden, focusing on the flowers of the garlic chives, as the days get perceptibly shorter.

chive flower with feeding insect

Their whiteness stands out brilliantly against the garden’s green: there’s a band of garlic chives at the deck end of the garden, and another that borders one short part of the rather overgrown flagstone path. Everything looks lush. It’s warm enough today that the cicadas are buzzing as I sit outside in the shade writing this, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, at nearly 4 in the afternoon. The difference is that when a cloud shades the sun there’s a quick feeling of coolness in the air. Yes, autumn is around the corner, whatever the cicadas’ song.

I often work out here; sometimes the bench on its own is beautiful

Early September is momentous because it’s the start of re-engagement with school, and that marker in the year marks all of us for life, I think. We see the sharper shadows, the shorter evenings, and we are triggered back into the anticipation of the first week of school, with its excitements and anxieties.

I’m feeling extra-heavy this year, loaded down with the weight of the times we lived through last fall. By mid-September Tashi’s brain tumour had stolen some of his words and part of his vision, though not his lightness or his humour. We had visitors most days, some of whom would be able to stay for supper. They gave an extra energy to the house. I could focus on taking care of meals and small eats, and was often part of conversations, so there was no time to brood. Dom was here a lot, almost continuously, once we got to late September, and that was a blessing for me as well as for Tashi. I was buoyed by the warmth and attentiveness of our chosen family, Tashi’s friends and Dom’s and mine too, all of them tuning in.

I’m remembering these things now, as I write, but in early September last year I hadn’t acknowledged to myself how little time we had left. I didn’t picture Tashi dying, I didn’t pre-grieve. I knew every moment was precious but hadn’t thought beyond that.

I’m amazed and grateful that I wasn’t haunted by longer-term anticipations. We just lived our way through each day and week, talking with Tash, joking, hanging out. In the morning after breakfast, when we usually had no visitors and his brother was still sleeping, Tashi and I would watch goofy shows like QI and TaskMaster.

Last night after supper (see below), I sliced a peach into sections for a quick bite of dessert before I headed out on my bicycle to a small unpretentious bar on Queen Street called Squirly to help celebrate the birthday of a dear friend of us all. Last year Tashi had been at his birthday gathering. This year, as the evening went on and more people kept arriving, I was introduced to the people I didn’t know as “Tashi’s mother.” It felt like a tender embrace.

the first tender anemone of the season

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS with potato options & loads of tomatoes & peaches

The new potatoes here are still exciting, fresh, and tasty. I boil them with their skins on, let them cool, and then chop them into approximate cubes. Then they’re a wide-open canvas to play with. I added the kernels from two grilled cobs of corn, and chopped up two red peppers that had been grilled the day before. With a dressing of olive oil, cider vinegar, fish sauce, and a sprinkling of chopped sorrel and mint, the salad tasted complex and oh so inviting. I had three guests for supper that evening.

boiled potatoes dressed with corn, peppers, herbs, etc

For the rest of the meal: There were small zucchinis that I sliced lengthwise and lightly brushed with fish sauce and olive oil before they went on the grill. I had chicken thighs from Ryan at Trinity Bellwoods market that I marinated in a paste made from ginger, garlic, and two serranos from the garden that I pounded to a paste with some salt. I cut the bones out of five of the thighs and left three on the bone, so people had a choice. (Some people really dislike eating meat directly from the bone; I prefer it that way. I sliced the deboned thighs into bite-size). And of course we also had a tomato salad, because…

grilled sliced zucchini

We’re still in tomato and peach paradise, though coming to the end of both seasons. (Peaches end first; tomatoes go almost until the first frost.) These days I’m eating peaches greedily at every and any occasion: sliced, just on their own, or with toast and good cheese, or in a bowl with buffalo yogurt, perhaps topped with a little excellent granola. I never cook peaches, because the fresh ripe ones feel too precious to mess with. Save the peach tart or cake for less-perfect fruit!

L to R: toast & St Albert cheese with sliced tomatoes for the first slice, peaches for the second; cherry tomato diversity; pasta dressed with fresh tomatoes and pounded anchovies, with green beans

The awareness that this luxurious plenty will soon be over pushes me to eat tomatoes as often as possible: sliced, on toast, with or without cheese; chopped fresh onto hot pasta (see the seductive recent post about this by Nancy Harmon Jenkins of On the Kitchen Porch); sliced or chopped, topped with thinly sliced cipollini onion, a drizzle of olive oil, and a sprinkling of salt, with fresh chopped herbs optional… Recently, in the large cast-iron skillet, I cooked a scattering of cherry tomatoes with some thinly sliced onion, then poured a whisked load of five eggs over them to make an omelet. What luxury.

Yesterday evening we had a simple supper of smoked Ontario trout, broken into shards, tomato salad as described above, and a heap of haricots verts boiled in salted water and dressed with a little sesame oil and fish sauce, plus a splash of cider vinegar and a sprinkling of salt. Perfect. And beautiful.

smoked trout, tomato salad with cipollini onion, haricots verts

A NOTE ABOUT DAMSON JAM, with a recipe

Though I thought I’d sworn off making any more jam, last week I bought a basket, a scant 3 pounds/1.3 kg of damsons from Milan of Bizjak farms. That meant I needed to process them. I’ve now got five one-cup glass jars of dark red jam. It tastes wonderful, but I was inattentive: with the plentiful rains we’ve had, I should have added no water to the fruit, or at most a small splash. Instead it got over ½ cup. And the result is thin and runny. I don’t mind. It’s a lovely liquid to drizzle onto toast or ice cream, or to use almost like a syrup to flavour a hot drink.(see the photo below). But I want to warn you about the water. The recipe for damson jam that’s in HomeBaking calls for 1 cup of water for 3 pounds of fruit. That’s too much. It worked when I tested it nearly 25 years ago. But dawnthebaker tells me that these days she adds no water at all to her damsons.

Here are the proportions and instructions:

About 3 pounds of damson plums, washed and de-stemmed

2 cups sugar (I prefer using raw sugar)

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

4 or 5 one-cup glass jam jars with lids

Wash the fruit, cut a few of the plums in half and prick a bunch of them with a fork, to encourage them to soften. Put them in a heavy pot over low heat. Splash in a touch of water, or not, as you see fit (see above). As the fruit softens it will give off liquid so that you can raise the heat a little. Once the fruit has broken down into a softened mass of fruit (after another 20 minutes or so), gradually stir in the sugar. Cook at a low boil for about 10 more minutes, then take off the heat and stir in the lemon juice. Set the jam aside to cool.

Sterilise your jam jars. I do them in the oven: First I put my clean small jam jars on a heavy baking sheet, each filled with a little water. The lids go onto the sheet too. I put the sheet in the middle of a 230F/110C oven. You may have another method for sterilising your jars and lids.

Once the jam has cooled, pick out the pits. The easiest way to place a large colander over a big bowl and pour the fruit and liquid into the colander. You can start feeling with your fingers, locating the pits one by one and discarding them onto a plate or small bowl. It may seem a daunting task but it goes quickly; you emerge with red-tinged hands. I lick mine off before washing them, lovely tartness on the tongue.

Put the jam back in the pot and heat to a simmer. Take the baking sheet of jam jars out of the oven and leave the jars on the sheet (to catch drips). I transfer the hot jam to a mixing bowl with a spout that means I can pour the hot jam directly into the jars. You can instead use a ladle or a (sterilised) funnel to fill your jars. Top each jar with a lid and a ring and leave out to cool and seal. If you have a little jam left over, pour it into a clean jar and refrigerate it. Use this one first, before opening any of the others.

Once the jam has cooled, label the jars. Store them in a cool place.

yes, my latest damson jam is thin, but I’m still happy to eat it! here with aged cheese and toast