Saturday, June 27, 2009

Favorite Times of Year...

I love this time of year. The strawberries are coming on and it's time to make jam. I can't think of anything more rewarding than canning and preserving fresh produce, grown by farmers who use the organic approach. Things taste so much better and are so much better for us. At the end of canning season I love to stand back and look at my accomplishments, which I believe is a form of art.

Performing this age-old processing of foods brings back recollections of my Grandmothers and Mother who worked together to "put up" all the wonderful goodies that would take our families through the winter months. They baked together every week, producing the breads for the upcoming week. They also created unbelievable pies and angel food cakes to delight the senses of a small child. My Mother whipped up the most amazing fudge (by hand, no electric mixer or Marshmellow Creme), filled with home gathered, dried and cracked black walnuts. I regret she died too young, before I had the opportunity to write down all the family recipes she kept neatly stored away in her mind. (The painting I posted months ago depicts me as a young girl accompanying my family on one of the walnut gathering expeditions. How I would love to take a trip back in time and have the opportunity to once again partake of those family outings.)

2 comments:

  1. I'm glad I found your blog!

    Now I'm hungry for some local strawberries. Aren't they wonderful at this time of the year? And luckily, my mother wrote all her recipes down, so I still have them. She loved to cook too -- her grandmother was French -- and I still make some of her things.

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  2. I love to garden and my husband does most of the canning. I'm so grateful that he does, especially when January roles around! And I agree - it definitely is an art form.

    I also bake most of our bread and approach it almost the same way I approach the rest of my art - studying how things turned out, trying to figure out why and building on that info.

    Glad there are others out there who feel the same way!

    :)

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