At loose ends

It's funny how when you're really under a heavy load of responsibility, and that load lifts, you kind of find yourself not knowing what to do. Or at least I don't. Several times Friday afternoon and yesterday afternoon I found myself thinking, "Okay, what do I have to be doing next?" And the answer was, really, nothing.

Oh, okay...I did pack my clothes and some other things I Must Not Forget (my mother's birthday present and a journal article manuscript I plan to work on). And this afternoon I edged, mowed, set up timers for the sprinkler in back and the soaker hose in front.

And I harvested the rest of the beans that were coming on, and pulled up the largest of the beets. And I did something I have never done before: I blanched and froze vegetables I grew in my own garden. I used my memory of how my mom did it (She used to have extensive gardens, back in Ohio, and she both froze and canned - both hot-pack and pressure canning, depending on if it was pickles or a low-acid food) and the instructions in my big fat Settlement Cook Book.

Beans only take a few minutes; the beets, even though they were about the size of golf balls, took 25. Blanching is a necessary step because it denatures enzymes that could otherwise lead to spoilage or an off taste. You pop the food in rapidly boiling water, boil it for a set time, then plunge it in cold water for an equal length of time. Then you let it drain dry, package it, and freeze. (I don't think blanching is necessary for most fruits but it seems to be for vegetables). With the beets it's also a good idea to slip the skins off before freezing.

I have to say that Settlement Cook Book - it's a 1950s edition - has to be one of the most useful cookbooks I own. It has all KINDS of recipes, it's where I was able to get information on what would be served at a Seder, it tells you how long to blanch vegetables for freezing, it tells you how to safely can, it even tells how to make soap and pasteurize raw milk. So I think of it as kind of a "survival" cookbook - it contains descriptions of skills our mothers or grandmothers knew, but that mostly didn't get passed on because of Bird's Eye and milk sold at the grocery. But it's stuff that's good to know.

I'm not sure I'd feel totally confident about canning, though. I probably could safely hot-pack can pickles or a high-acid type of fruit or jam (Jam is pretty safe because of the high sugar content). Pressure canning, not so much. I remember it as being kind of an ordeal, starting with taking the pressure canner somewhere early in the season to get the gauge tested.

A funny memory: years later, when I was a student in Plant Physiology, we had to use pressure to force xylem sap out of soybeans. They were enclosed in plexiglas chambers so the pressure could build up. However, no one had checked the gauges....one group's chamber actually exploded, which was really scary and I'm still somewhat amazed no one got injured by plexiglas shrapnel.  So I know that pressure gauges have to be proven to work right.