TIME PRESENT & SHARING PLENTY

WITH TALK OF FRIENDS, SHARED SUPPERS, CRABAPPLE JELLY, & MORE

Here we are just past mid-August, and also past lots of momentous events, all peaking on August 12: the solar eclipse for those in Spain and nearby, the Perseid meteor showers, the new moon. Here in the immediacy of Toronto and my small garden, with cloudy weather and the odd rain shower, I’ve felt connected to earth-bound life and remote from celestial events.

the last of my lilies, in spectacular form

Today a friend came by on her bicycle to sit in the garden and chat for a couple of hours. We don’t see each other often, but when we do, the decades-long tapestry of overlapping friends and events that we have together is a pleasurable source of memories to dip into. We also talked about the stresses our grown children feel and the awfulness of many things in the world. I wonder if, a generation ago, people who were then our present age felt the same way. Perhaps. Are we fogies? Likely!

The wear and tear of life, the scars both physical and emotional, the griefs and the causes for joy, aren’t very visible to others. We walk past people on the street, sit opposite them in a streetcar, queue with them at the grocery store check-out, exchange a few words with them in passing, but we can only imagine their inner lives. I’m so glad to have novels, and stories from friends, to give me a sense of the possible shape of things for others

I’m back to thinking about time as the present, despite the pull of remembrance. The others are less real: time past disappears into patchily remembered strands and images and scars; time future hovers, but with no lived reality.

I’m not sure why I’m in this place… I guess it’s partly Dawnthebaker telling me a few days ago that she’d had a very vivid dream of Tashi. And also my sense that he’s around, because I find myself occasionally saying something to him, while knowing very well that he’s not here. If I speak to him, it makes him solid for a moment, as I imagine his reply.

I think this is a kind of simplistic magical-realism way to keep a sense of coherence in this loss. I can think about and picture the presence of other dear people who have died. But I don’t usually bring them so immediately to mind that I have a conversation with them. I just picture them appreciatively. Certain street corners can remind me of a person, or can start me thinking about a long-ago event.

I’m grateful for this capacity to live a kind of imaginative continuum of time and space, while staying anchored in the present. I can wrap remembrance of events, emotions, and people around me like a warming blanket. Do you do this at all? It’s a way of taking refuge. And it’s a version of the technique, when I’m in an uncomfortable place, let’s say unavoidably cold and wet on cross-country skis and far from shelter, of picturing myself elsewhere in warmth and comfort, say drinking a hot drink and drying off. It’s a balm to the mind and the body, if only for a moment.

a hot day pleasure to dream of: Dawnthebaker’s semifreddo sandwich

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS with talk of market plenty, floury potatoes, and crabapple jelly

This post is loaded with food, and no wonder, with the markets overflowing with ripe local produce of all kinds. Corn, zucchini, eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, peaches, nectarines… One way to revel in it all, and to justify generous shopping, is to have people over for supper, preferably a casual supper, so the bounty can be shared relaxedly.

Yesterday a crowd of us were at Dawnthebaker’s place for supper. My contributions included a large wooden bowl of green and yellow beans dressed in a version of Georgian style. Instead of walnuts I used Ontario hazelnuts, whizzed to fine crumbs, and then pounded in a mortar with fresh (homegrown) garlic and salt. I stirred the paste into a mix of lemon juice, olive oil, and chopped tarragon, then poured it onto the hot beans.

I don’t top and tail the beans…

Dawn pan-cooked brined spiced chicken thighs and served them, with their pan juices, over fresh chopped tomatoes, a brilliant combo. She also made a salad of finely shredded raw zucchini with tiny shrimp. Carole, another baker (@motherdough) made green-tinted japapeno cornbread. A friend fried up huge zucchini flowers stuffed with ricotta and parmesan…

It all felt like a market celebration.

Last Tuesday at Trinity Bellwoods Market I bought some new potatoes, white ones, from Footsteps Farm. I washed them and then cooked them in a little salted water, still their fine skins. They cooked quickly. After I drained them I pushed down on one with the back of a large spoon to check their firmness and it yielded; it smushed softly into a floury potato tenderness. I usually have firm potatoes, not floury ones like these. It was time to experiment.

I put them in a wide bowl, gently crushed them all with my large spoon, and added a dollop of butter. I chopped the zucchini slices that had just come off the charcoal grill and added them to the potatoes, along with chopped herbs from the garden (sorrel, parsley, basil, mint). There were three or four cobs of grilled corn in the fridge, left over from a few days earlier; I cut off the kernels and added them to the bowl. After a splash of cider vinegar, and a dollop of olive oil, some salt and a few grinds of black pepper, and a mixing together, we had a tender unexpected potato and vegetable dish. The little hits of sweetness and flavour from the corn were bright notes.

the potato-zucchini etc combo, with grilled lamb and white currant sauce (for the lamb)

The leftovers were delicious the next day. I sliced a beautiful cipollini onion finely and softened it in olive oil over medium heat, then tossed in the leftovers. They were almost better than the first day’s version, with that touch of onion…

garden herbs are such a lively addition to many dishes…

I have a new appreciation of floury potatoes, or at least this variety. Paul of Footsteps Farm told me that Dakota Golds are best picked early and small; he’ll have them for only another ten days or so.

Last week I wrote about the crabapple tree’s abundance nudging me into acknowledging that I should gather some of the apples. A couple of days later I collected some from the ground, but most were high up on branches, some of them right outside my office windows on the second floor. Tempting! I climbed out a window onto the small roof above the front door and managed to pick some handfuls of apples from there. Most of the tree’s bounty is going to feed the birds, the squirrels, a small rabbit who hangs around, and the occasional human who walks by and picks one to taste (they’re surprisingly sweet for crabapples). The birds are mostly robins, the young ones, now fledged but still a bit stupid and slow with palely speckled breasts. They hang around the front steps and barely notice when a someone walks up. Perhaps they’re drunk on the fruit.

the bunny, on my neighbour’s walk, with a few scattered crabapples

I weighed my small harvest (about 1.5 kilos, or 3.3 pounds), washed the apples (leaving the stems on), put them in a large pot, added 4 cups of water (they were just covered), and brought it to a boil. They cooked at a medium boil until softened enough that I could mash them with the back of a large slotted metal spoon (about 20 minutes).

I put my largest colander, lined with a tea towel, over a big bowl and then poured in the fruit and liquid. It sat draining and cooling for a while. Once it had cooled, I confess I massaged it, squeezing and twisting the fruit in the towel to get as much liquid as possible (while remembering that my mother would ask us to please not squeeze the jelly bag, because that would make the jelly cloudy). The debris went onto the compost pile.

gathered apples; and cooking in the tall pot

I put five one-cup jars half full of water, and their lids, on a small sheet pan in a 250 F oven.

In the end I had 4 cups of tart red crabapple juice. It went back into the pot. Various recipes I had looked at called for a cup of sugar per cup of liquid. That seemed like too much to me. I settled for a scant 3 ½ cups of sugar, that I stirred in as it came to a low boil over medium heat. I didn’t have a lemon handy so I added about ¼ teaspoon citric acid instead.

The liquid cooked at a low boil for about ten minutes, maybe as long as fifteen, before it seemed ready to set. (I used the cold metal lid in the freezer technique to test for setting.) I took the tray of jars out of the oven, emptied each one of its water, and filled them with the hot jelly. There was a little extra, which went into a small jar for immediate use. The hot lids went on and there they were, my jars of crabapple jelly.

The tree is still loaded, and the ground too is bright with scattered apples. I should make another batch…

the open half jar of jelly; delish with cheese, with bread, with grilled meat…

AND A BOOK NOTE

After being happily hostage to the four volumes of On the Calculation of Volume that are now available in English, I have moved on. I’d read a mention of Nobel Laureate Laszlo Krasznahorkai in Margaret Atwood’s memoir. I knew nothing about him, so went looking for his work in the Toronto Public Library. And now I am on the last few pages of his most recent novel Herscht 07769. It took me about 35 pages to get into it, but then I was mesmerised. Whew. Amazing.