Autumn's Here

Ahead of schedule, I might add. The calendar might not yet have reached the Equinox, but the rainy cool weather has arrived decisively, and I am experiencing my usual irrational fear of not having put in adequate supplies for winter.

It is a nonsensical fear, for a city-dweller. There are three major supermarkets and any number of smaller greengrocers within a fifteen minute walk of my house, and none of them in my experience have ever had empty shelves. The price of dry goods does not increase during autumn and winter, and some staples actually go on sale. None the less, I find myself pacing in front of the glass jars on the pantry shelves, critically eyeing the level of jasmine rice and wondering if there isn’t room for one more variety of lentil or shape of pasta.

I wouldn’t feel this nervous tide rising inside me, I think, if I had managed to do any preserving this summer. It has been years since I did any serious jam-making and, these days, usually if I make chutney or relish it’s on a one-off sort of basis. It takes us forever to use up any condiments other than hot sauce and mustard, which probably says something weird about our personalities or habits. However, even on the hastiest of summers, I usually manage to put some quartered plums in the freezer for future cobbler, and make more than a measly two cups of applesauce from the tree in the backyard.

I have never been caught in a food shortage. We may not have had much money when I was a kid, but my mother could make fairly amazing meals out of almost nothing at all. The occasional snow-in may have meant that we would run out of milk. I don't think we ever ran out of jam. Late summer was always a flurry of freezing tomatoes, plums, cherries and apples, of making jelly and jam and relish and pulling up the onions to cure in the sun, pulling up the carrots and potatoes to put in the shed for the winter. Finding exciting ways to hide zucchini.

It's not really as though I feel like I'm betraying my heritage and the thrifty values that my mother tried to instill in me to have fallen so far out of the practice of putting up, but I suppose that there's an element of that involved. I like the idea of being self-sufficient, and while I'm not likely to apply to concept to my life in any great detail, I like to think that I can take care of myself. Having a freezer and pantry full of staple goods and carefully prepared and cunningly preserved food is oddly reassuring.

I have fond memories of making apple cider with friends of the family, using one of those big old wooden troughs and thumping paddles that look as though they came straight off an Amish farm, and would be carted straight back when we were done. I suppose it’s possible that they were but, to my knowledge, there aren't a lot of Amish on the Sunshine Coast. I remember bashing away at the apples, probably more for entertainment that efficacy, and I remember being thrilled to watch the cloudy amber liquid flow from the pipe into the waiting glass gallon-jugs. I miss the sense of conspiratorial cooperation involved in getting together with friends and family to cheat the winter months of the threat of hunger.

I miss the sense of being involved in the harvest. By the time I was the last kid in the house, our preparations for winter were substantially reduced, although produce from the garden was always lugged off to the shed or prepped and frozen. Now, everything is done for me by people that I don't know, and received fait-accompli. I feel like I’m not pulling my share of the load, that I’m being irresponsible by nipping out to buy a jar of jam, rather than hunkering down in a cellar, choosing one of several homemade concoctions from a dusty shelf.

I could probably survive for several tedious months on what I have in the house, although I’m sure I would emerge with a violent hatred for lentils. If whatever disaster has potentially mired me inside for that long without possibility of fresh vegetables (or more hot sauce) hasn’t been resolved by then, I’d probably be doomed anyway. Maybe I should be stocking the freezer with cake, instead, just in case. Then I'd be ready for anything.

September 2004

PSSST!

Welcome to the brand new look for Always in the Kitchen.  The new site was developed by Julie McGalliard, who sorted out my barely coherent ramblings about what I wanted, and developed the art and technical components for the entire site.  Thanks, Julie!

The older pages will be brought into the new format gradually, as I find the time to do it.  In the meantime, please be patient.  Let me know if you find any broken links, or if the site is acting weird, though.