September – Processing Homegrown Food

September Sunset on Lopez Island

It’s harvest time in Puget Sound.  My husband and I are home gardeners with a small garden but even we have extra food to process.  We have three apple trees, one Italian plum, nine blueberry bushes, strawberries, raspberries, countless runner beans, tomato plants and a variety of other vegetables and herbs in our garden.  It is remarkable how much food one can produce with relatively little effort – more it turns out than two people can eat. 

Only trouble is I am not, by nature, a person who has ever made jellies or jams, pickles or canned beans.  In fact the idea of sterilizing and boiling glass jars fills me with trepidation.  I am positive I will trap botulism inside my applesauce.  The whole process of canning, vacuum packing and sealing glass jars gives me the willies.  A few weeks ago I found myself surrounded by pounds of green beans, apples and plums.  I needed to do something with the food before it rotted.  I spoke with one of my friends – a woman who is both a professional (retired) chef and also an experienced home canner.  I asked her how to make applesauce and how to preserve it if canning in vacuum-sealed glass jars is not an option.  She suggested I freeze the sauce in 1-quart Ziploc bags.  This I can do. 

I assembled my apples on the kitchen counter, put on an apron and tuned in the Pandora Road Tripping radio station.  I highly recommend this station for cooking music! 

Step one – wash a big pile of apples. 

Step two – put a Dutch oven on the stovetop. 

Step three – cut and core the apples. 

Step four – cook the apples very slowly. 

One of our trees has an issue with coddling moths and some apples had moth damage.  I wasn’t worried.  I was pretty sure that the remains of a few coddling moth carcasses would simply add protein to the sauce.  Soon the bottom of the pot was covered with apple pieces.  I added a tiny amount of water and turned the gas on low.  As I cut and cored more apples, removing some peel and leaving some in place, the apples filled the pot and started to simmer.  A lovely scent of fresh apples filled my kitchen.  The music was rocking and I was rocking too.  When the pot was completely full I stirred and mushed the softening mixture, letting it cook slowly on the stove for an hour or more.  I had a fragrant pot of chunky pink applesauce. 

Applesauce Simmering

I left it to cool and went for a bike ride with my husband – Lopez Island is a great place to bike – rolling traffic-free roads and gorgeous vistas of Puget Sound.  After riding about 25 miles (I'm glad I've kept up circuit training and regular bike rides so I have strength and stamina), my husband suggested we stop at the local watering hole for a cold brew.  That was an excellent suggestion and with some fried oysters, the stop tided us over until we got home and cooked dinner.  That’s what I like about being retired in the summertime – any day can turn into a slice of summer vacation.

By the time we’d eaten dinner the applesauce had cooled.  I set quart Ziploc bags on a rimmed cookie sheet and ladled the fragrant mixture into the bags.  It was a messy process since my ladle is about the same diameter as the Ziploc opening but no mind.  It did not take long before the bags were full and standing up like fat little soldiers on the tray.  I squeezed excess air out and sealed the Baggies with a flourish.  Fortunately I inherited a standup freezer so freezer space was not an issue.  I lined the bags up on an empty shelf and look forward to eating the best applesauce in town. 

The Tiny Green Bean String

Next up for processing were green beans from our garden.  There the processing was a little more efficient – remove the tops and tails of the beans; string them – by that I mean pull the string off the seams on both sides; cut into ~2-inch lengths and parboil for one or two minutes; cool; bag and freeze. 

My third experience with food preservation turned out to be my favorite.  I washed, halved, pitted and dried more than 100 Italian plums.  I don’t have a dehydrator so I needed another process. 

After a bit of Internet research I discovered that a regular kitchen oven can substitute for a home dehydrator.  I put the plum halves on parchment paper on rimmed cookie sheets and used a low temperature, 200℉ for four hours.  

Italian Plums snuggling up in the oven

I turned the temperature down to 150℉ and left the plums in the oven overnight.  The next morning I had dozens of sweet plum halves.  They tasted delicious and I couldn’t resist sampling as I put them into Ziploc bags prior to freezing.

Have I turned into a pioneer woman in my late sixties?  Who’s kidding whom?  A dozen or more quarts of frozen beans, dried plums and applesauce do not a pioneer make.  After all I’m going to the supermarket to buy most of my food.  But our small garden kept us well supplied all summer with fresh salads and other veggies, berries and apples.  It was also a wonderful reminder of the joy and relaxation that working in a garden and growing some of you own food can bring.  Plus, it was fun to preserve our own fruits and vegetables.  I’m already looking forward to pulling the beans out on Christmas day.  That will be special.

Last week marked the fall equinox – when the path of the sun crosses the imaginary line above equator.  In the northern hemisphere, the fall equinox marks the beginning of autumn and the gradual shortening and cooling of days as the sun moves away from the northern hemisphere.  The days in Seattle are still warm and sunny but there is the beginning of chill in the evening air.

Early Morning Mist on Puget Sound

Summer has been a continuous carousel, time flying by, shared conversations and outdoor meals, short vignettes and images of flowers and trees and water shimmering in the sun, friends and family biking, boating, walking on the beach and enjoying fresh food.  It is a privilege to be retired and have the time to exchange visits with loved ones.  My husband and I have moved back and forth from Seattle to Lopez Island tens of times, catching early morning and late evening ferries.  Puget Sound shines in summer and Indian summer.  We watched the full moon rise over the ferry landing and felt as if we’d lost our bearings in the early morning mist.  The flowers in my garden welcomed me home to Seattle and at Lopez we picked fruit and caught Dungeness crab.  I saw orca whales and harbor seals feeding in the kelp off Lopez Island and went canoeing at my brother’s house in South Puget Sound.  I watched kingfishers, great blue herons and Bald eagles diving and flying in the clear skies.  While hiking across Lopez Island as part of the fourth annual Lopez Walkabout, I saw the giant nest of an osprey on top of a doug fir snag - a first for me.

Despite the seeming abundance of wildlife in Puget Sound, August was the second hottest month on record in the Pacific Northwest, following in the footsteps of July.  I read that the Arctic ice caps, the preferred habitat for giant polar bears melt and freeze a good three and a half weeks earlier and later than historical records.  The meaning of this is obvious – polar bears have seven fewer weeks to wander and hunt and find mates on the ice – a limitation that threatens the health of the species.  

There is an unfathomable gap between the beauty of the San Juan Islands and the global changes we are experiencing.  It makes me appreciate the resilience of the earth but, at the same time, I feel humble in the face of change.  Both my children are married now and all four are working to effect change for the better.  Their, and their cohorts’ optimism and energy is encouraging.  In addition to our daughter's wedding, we helped celebrate the weddings of three other young couples that we’ve known virtually their entire lives.  In the midst of the too often chaotic world we live in, it was wonderful to see young adults embark on the adventure of married life.  These folks are smart and work across multiple fields that have the potential to improve our world – medicine, music, art, hydrology, alternative energy and finance – all arenas that need new solutions to sustain our world and our imagination.  Let’s hope their efforts contribute to a better future – a future where everyone has the ability to grow a little food and experience how delicious just-picked fruits and vegetables can be.  And a future Puget Sound that is still home to healthy populations of people and wildlife.

Love, Joy and Respect – A Summer Wedding on Lopez Island

Roses in the garden

It is little more than a week since my husband Jeff and I celebrated the wedding of our second child, daughter Sasha to a wonderful man Dustin.  Four years ago we experienced the same feelings of love and joy as our first child, son David married an extraordinary woman Katy.  The two weddings were different but the same positive emotions filled the air.  Feelings of love and joy and just plain fun permeated both ceremonies and all the celebrations before and after.  Marriage isn’t for everyone but for some of us it is a powerful and rewarding institution.  That is true for Jeff and me.  As we look at our two children and their chosen partners, we see in them the same love and joy and very importantly, the same respect for each other that have sustained Jeff and me for almost 40 years.  We feel very lucky.

A refurbished lantern for the deck

The picnic table gets a new coat of paint

As many of you who read my blog know, I’ve not posted since returning to the United States from Brazil in late April.  It’s been a hectic three months – re-connecting with our friends and family in Seattle and on Lopez Island, weeding, planting and pruning our overgrown gardens, and preparing for Sasha’s wedding on Lopez Island – everything from dress fittings and mani/pedis and travel logistics for folks unfamiliar with the Washington State ferry system to painting picnic tables, spreading 5 cubic yards of wood chips and repairing and installing outside lights at our Lopez property in the weeks leading up to the wedding.  

Times Square, New York City

During the same time I was also busy with my “normal” retirement routine: keeping up my exercise regime of circuit training, biking and walking – all the more important as we age, as well as taking a most helpful class in how to revise a work of fiction, continuing work on my books-in-progress and on my volunteer “job” as president of my homeowner’s association.  In between, I managed short trips to New York City to celebrate my sister-in-law’s birthday and recovery from cancer, to California and to Long Beach to celebrate Jeff’s and my wedding anniversary.  Whew! 

Blueberries ready to ripen behind bird nets

Now, with the wedding behind me, and Pacific Northwest summer at its height, I plan to post blogs more regularly again and harvest some of the fruits and vegetables in our gardens.  There is certainly a lot to contemplate as we careen into a highly political season in the United States and the continuing political and economic challenges in Brazil, not to mention Brazil’s hosting of the Olympic Games.  It has been a tough few months in both countries and in the world as terrorism and gun violence has resulted in too many unnecessary deaths.  The deep sadness of these deaths reminds me how important it is to live each day fully and open up our hearts to each other.

The bride and her dad practice their entrance

One aspect of our daughter’s wedding that I greatly enjoyed was the opportunity to speak during the ceremony.  As my family knows I love to talk!  Sasha and Dustin invited six people, including their two mothers, to participate in the wedding ceremony by reflecting on specific words they chose as having relevance to their life together.   My assigned word was respect.  Each person’s presentation was different and delightful – ranging from poems to prose to song.  I’d like to share what I said about respect… a practice that I believe is often forgotten.  Mutual respect is a necessary component of a successful marriage and, in my opinion, a mandatory part of all our relationships both personal and public.  Perhaps if we practiced respect for each other there would be fewer senseless killings.  

Here is what I said at the wedding:

When Sasha and Dustin asked me to talk about respect at their wedding all I could think of was Aretha Franklin's song.  R-E-S-P-E-C-T came out when I was in high school (in Philadelphia). It was 1965 and the idea of women having independent rights, equal rights to men was revolutionary and just penetrating my consciousness.  Post World War Two was not a time of female liberation. All around me I saw men controlling everything - money; businesses; families; politics. The idea of getting respect from any man let alone a boyfriend was very appealing to my 16-year-old self. It turned out that the whole concept of mutual respect between a man and a woman was even more important and more fundamental than I realized at the time.

Ten years later, by the time I met Sasha's dad, and 21 years later when Sasha was born, I was a committed feminist. Respect was a baseline condition for any love relationship as far as I was concerned. Sure, love and mutual trust are important - but in my book, respect for each other is the critical element to a successful relationship. 

Truth is you don't know what's going to happen in the future. That’s why respect is so important.  No matter how close and "in love" two people are, no one can predict their partner's behavior or feelings. They won't and don’t always coincide with your own feelings.  Sometimes you disagree with your partner. That's why you have to respect the other person. You need an intrinsic belief that the other person's thoughts and actions are worthy of respect even if you don't understand them.  Respect gives you the patience to listen, to explain, to debate.  Maybe one or both of you will come to a different decision or take a different action.  Respect for each other gives you the confidence to live with, and explore your differences and stay open to new opportunities. No two people will always see eye to eye.  But having respect for each other enables you to be open to your partner's different opinions. Respect for each other makes life and happiness together possible.

I ended my piece with a haiku:

Respect is

The place you want to be

Where all the things you love

Are free.

Rudbeckia shine in my garden

The wedding and the days before and after were full of love and joy as well as fresh air and relaxation.  So many of our friends and family helped make it all happen.  Together we made endless great meals, chopping salsa and making salads; baking brownies, barbequing burgers and boiling fresh crab.  It was a perfect opportunity for us to share Lopez Island with our extended family and friends.  The island shone – a rainbow over the beach; brilliant sunsets; rolling fields full of Queen Anne’s lace, grazing sheep and haystacks; a memorable barbeque at the State Park; bike rides and beach walks; rock climbs and kayak rides; even a bald eagle flew over in the middle of the ceremony.  We are lucky to have this beautiful place as part of our family’s life.  We welcome our new son-in-law and his family into our expanding clan.  As one of my sister’s said after the wedding “We shouldn’t just wait for the next wedding to come back.  Let’s just plan to come back.”  I hope that happens soon.  Thanks Sasha and Dustin for a wonderful week.

A ferry leaves the Lopez Island dock

On the Beach

Praia do Forte, Bahia, Brazil

I’m in beach mode this month, living as I am in one of the great beach cities in the world, Rio de Janeiro.  It’s a pretty good place to be in your sixties or frankly at any age.  Who doesn’t like the beach?  As my daughter says: “[there is a …] joy in being on a beach, simple, stress less, magical, and sun kissed!”

In honor of the USA’s National Poetry Month, April, I share a beach poem I wrote.  It is called appropriately enough:

The Beach

We like to go to the beach

Our wicker baskets packed full

With thermos’s of tea and sandwiches

Crammed in plastic boxes.

Flippers, buckets, spades in tow

Folding chairs half rusted from winter rain

Their canvas seats stretched thin

Their colors faded from the summer sun.

The beach is where you can relax

The sun is burning your back

The air feels soft and sweet 

The surf rolls in forever.

The water tastes salty

You wait for the perfect wave

It breaks and pulls you to the shore.

Your swimsuit fills with coarse sand.

No matter where you find the beach

The best one and the place to be,

The one that takes your breath away,

Is the one you’re sitting on today.

Praia Toninhos, Ubatuba, São Paulo, Brazil

Beaches give all of us a feeling of peace and freedom: the off shore breezes, the swaying of palm trees or pine trees, the endlessly enthralling waves breaking along the shore.  Right now, I’m sitting by a beach in Rio.  I can hear the sound of surf rolling in.  There isn’t a beach in Brazil or any other country that I have visited that doesn’t delight me.  That is the glory of beaches.  Regardless of age, beaches are liberating.  Their beauty is universally appealing.

When I was a young child, my grandparents lived in a beach town in England.  Their town, Bournemouth, is on the southern coast of England, bordering the chilly English Channel.  We moved away from England to North America more than 60 years ago but I still remember that wonderful beach – Sandbanks.  My grandmother had a small cabana at the back of the beach in which she kept beach chairs, buckets and spades, teacups and other essentials.  In my memory there was a small propane stove on which Grandma boiled water for tea in the afternoon – thus beginning a family tradition of tea on the beach.  I remember sitting in the shallows on the golden sand with my mum and my older sister.  I remember my dad, my uncle and my older cousins digging deep holes in the sand, deep enough that if I got in, I couldn’t get out without help.  All I could see from the bottom of the hole was a square patch of bright blue sky.  I remember my mum telling my sister and me to change out of our wet swimsuits, sitting as we were, exposed on the beach.  As a little girl I was modest and horrified that someone might see me without my pants on!  My mum would say, “No one is interested.  Just get changed.” Of course she was right.  No one even noticed two small girls taking off their wet swimsuits and putting on dry shorts.  I gave the same advice to my kids when they were little.

Lopez Island beach, Washington, USA

Since going to that first beach, I have had the good fortune to spend time on so many beaches that I can hardly remember them all.  They blend into a collage of sun and surf.  Fresh water beaches; salt water beaches; cold temperate beaches; warm tropical beaches; ocean beaches on the northern and southern coasts of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and once, on the Bay of Bengal in Thailand; lake beaches and river beaches; sandy beaches and rocky beaches; beaches on manmade ponds, on reservoirs and beside acid bogs – the latter a beach on Cape Cod being unfortunately memorable for where I broke my nose at the age of 21.  Although I am not a real surfer I am a life long body surfer.  I am a strong swimmer but I treat large ocean waves with great deference.  I came too close to drowning in rough surf once when I got caught in an undertow in my early fifties.  Luckily a young man on his surf board saw me and rescued me, paddling me safely ashore – much to my and my family’s relief.  One of my favorite beaches in the world is a rocky beach on Lopez Island in Washington State – where we never swim.  The water is so cold your feet ache even if you walk briefly in the shallows.

Kids at play on the beach

When my own children were youngsters, we lived in Brazil and visited the beaches along the São Paulo coast – both our children learned to swim in the warm waters around Ubatuba and learned respect for the breaking waves.  Just as I did as a child, they played and dug in the fine sand.  They built castles, with moats and dams intended to preserve their structures. I remember my kids and their friends running back and forth in the water to stop the tide from melting their castles away.  Of course they could not succeed – the tide waits for no one.  When a castle collapsed into the sea, it only took a few minutes to build another one. 

Another favorite beach of mine is along the coast of France, on the Bay of Biscayne by the coastal town of Seignosse.  Seignosse is famous for its surf.  My English brother-in-law discovered it almost 30 years ago when he, a life long surfer, and my sister re-located from California to England.  Not wanting to give up surfing, he sought out the European surf capital.  It turned out to be the beach at Seignosse, just north of the Spanish border.  My sister’s family goes there virtually every summer.  My family joined them for several happy holidays and we hope to go again.  Seignosse is a dune beach, with high manmade sand dunes above the beach, built to protect the village from coastal storms.  To reach the beach proper you have to climb over the dunes, slipping and sliding delightfully in the warm sand.  This is the beach where my brother-in-law taught my son, now a proficient surfer, how to surf.

My parents moved to Los Angeles when I was in my twenties and we spent many a happy afternoon sitting on the Will Rogers beach drinking tea and eating tomato and feta cheese sandwiches.  Thinking about this now, the nostalgic taste of milky tea poured from the thermos, mixed with the sandy sandwiches brings back fond memories of times gone by.

In many countries coastal beaches are public property.  Everyone owns the beach and there is no such thing as private property along the marine coasts.  This is true in Brazil.  As a result everyone has access to the coastal beaches.  They are a shared natural resource.  However in much of the United States, including in my own state of Washington, coastal beaches can be owned privately.  There is something appealing about public ownership of beaches – shouldn’t beaches be there for everyone.  After all can anyone control a beach?  I don’t think so.

Pick up futebol on Copacabana beach

A beach is something you can enjoy regardless of your age and physical condition.  Along the famous Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro I see people of every age and type – often I see very old men and women who are wheelchair-bound sitting and enjoying the beach.  I see young kids building sand castles; teenagers jumping in the waves and flirting with each other; surfers, or surfistas as they are called in Portuguese, catching the waves; folks of all ages playing beach games in the sand: beach tennis, futebol (the Brazilian name for soccer) and volleyball; and everyone looks remarkably relaxed and happy.  It is hard to be stressed on a beach.   The waves literally wash your worries away.   

Brigitte Bardot looks out at the beach 

This past weekend my husband and I went to a Brazilian beach that was new to us.  It is a beach made famous during the 1960’s by Brigitte Bardot, who went there and hid out with her Brazilian boyfriend.  The village of Búzios was a small fishing village when Bardot first went there – now it is a beach resort – and a favorite of people from Rio.  Along the shore is a bronze statue of Bardot, dressed appropriately in blue jeans and a blue and white striped t-shirt.  She looks forever out towards the sea, taking in the azure water and the fishing boats as they bob up and down.  Although Bardot is still very much alive and living in France, I suspect that she likes the idea that when her life ends, she will still sit forever, looking out across the Búzios beach. 

Next time you go to the beach, and I hope it is soon, don’t forget to stay for the sunset.  It will be worth your while.

Sunset over the Atlantic Ocean