POSTING #123

A GENTLE NOTE TO MY READERS:

I am going back to my earlier practice of having a weekly Letter from Virgil.

Writing the every-other-week Icewine Guru Postings took more time and effort (especially for research) than I had expected.

But I am not abandoning the Guru blog. The Postings for it will now be sporadic, appearing when I feel steamed up about an important public issue that I don't feel is receiving sufficient attention. But they will be in addition to the weekly Letter from Virgil Postings--- they will not replace them.

I will put a note in this Letter from Virgil blog telling you whenever there is a new Guru Posting, along with the subject of the Posting, and a link to it.

Thank you for your patience and tolerance as I experimented with the idea of alternating Postings!

A Bountiful Harvest

It has been a great summer in the Niagara Peninsula---probably in the whole Province--- for fruit and vegetables, both in quantity and quality. A wet spring created an abundant supply of ground water and a hot summer spurred the growth of just about everything.

A nearby farmer's stall has a sign advertising hampers of peaches for only $10.

All of this brings back memories of the women of my hometown, Arthur, 'canning' fruit for the winter---in quart glass sealers.

Here is a story about that.

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The climate in the Arthur area was fine for apples and pears but not for soft fruit such as peaches. They were brought to Arthur stores by wholesalers like Sam Bondi from Mount Forest, a large man with a large cigar. He would load his red truck early in the morning with fruit and vegetables at wholesale markets in Toronto and then work his way north, dropping off supplies at local grocery stores.

At a certain point, when the fruit was ripest and cheapest, Mom would buy several 12 quart baskets of peaches at the local store. Then she would go to the basement, collect quart sealers emptied over the course of the past winter and wash them carefully (even though they had been washed carefully before being taken to the basement). Then the jars would be sterilized by pouring in some water and putting them in a hot oven in a pan with a little water.

While the jars were sterilizing, Mom would place the whole peaches in boiling water for a few minutes to make them easier to peel. When they were 'blanched', she would  put them in a pan of cold water and my brothers and I would juggle the still-hot peaches as we peeled off the skins with paring knives. As Mom was slicing the peeled peaches into generous segments, my brothers and I would crack some of the peach stones on a concrete stoop using an old hammer. We would pass the almond-like pits to my mother,  who believed they added flavour to the peaches.

(There are scientific studies now that show that peach pits when raw contain a small amount of hydrocyanic acid---one of the chemicals used in gas chambers!---but that the chemical is rendered non-toxic when cooked. I remember trying one of the raw pits but spitting it out because of its bitterness. I understand that the bitter almond flavour, is extracted from pits of almond-family fruit, such as the peach.)

Mom would take the steaming hot jars from the oven, tip out the water, put a peach pit in each, fill them with the sliced peaches and then add a boiling-hot sugar syrup. Next, she would seal the jars by fitting on a sterilized red rubber ring (this was before Mason Jars), put on a glass lid and then screw everything tight with a zinc top. (During the winter as the jars were emptied, we used the rubber rings to hold catalogues against our shins for hockey games on ice patches in nearby fields---homemade shin pads!)

The contents of the sealed jars were then cooked by placing the jars in the oven in a pan with boiling water (later on, home economists decided that cooking the jars in a hot water bath was  a better way of sterilizing the fruit and thereby preventing spoilage and reducing the risk of things like botulism).

When the peaches were cooked the jars were placed on the counter to cool. Then they were tested to make sure there was a 'good seal',  wiped clean and taken to the basement to be stored on shelves near the furnace.

How delicious those jars looked---all lined up and full of  succulent, golden peach slices!

You may be saying, "Where's the story? Enough already with the detail, get on with it!"

My answer is that to appreciate fully the story---which is coming right up---you need to know the amount of work, not to mention the money, involved in canning peaches.

Besides, if I am to be totally honest, I have to say that I have been enjoying this little trip down memory lane!

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I should start by saying that this story is more than just a story, it is also a test for you, the reader---a test of  your ethics or home economics.

I am not sure which.

You'll see in a minute.

One of Mom's friends went through all the peach-canning palaver described above. As she was placing the jars of peaches on the basement shelves she saw a very white, very small and very dead worm floating in one of the jars. I suppose I should make the point for younger readers that all fruit in the period I am talking about---the 1940s and 1950s--- was 'organic'. This meant that although the fruit contained no harmful pesticides, they often contained worms.

After talking about what to do, Mom and her friend came up with three options.

May I suggest that you consider the options and decide which one you would have taken.

Option 1: Throw out the contents of the jar with the worm and keep the rest of the jars.

Option 2: Keep all the jars but turn the jar with the worm to the back of the shelf so no one could see it. When opening the jar in the winter, one would carefully fish out the worm before the family could see it.

Option 3: Throw out the contents of all the jars.

To give you a chance to weigh the options (and to make sure you don't cheat!) I'm going to tell a joke that killed us in Grade 3.

What is worse than finding a worm in an apple?

Give up?

Finding half a worm!

Sorry about that---just a little bit of pre-adolescent Arthur humour.

Back to the quiz. Here is what happened.

Mom's friend chose Option 3 and threw out all the peaches.

My mother would have voted for Option 2. Her view was that the peaches, syrup---and the worm---had all been well sterilized.

As I recall it, Mom was horrified at the waste but respected her friend's decision---that she wouldn't be comfortable serving any of the peaches to her family knowing that the batch had once had a worm in it.

How did you come down?

Personally, I am with Mom, but like Mom I will not object if you came to a different conclusion.

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I would like to end this Posting with another 'harvest' story but this one has been taking  place this summer, in Virgil.

I call it the Great Squash Mystery.

When I was young one of my favourite vegetables was the pepper squash---some people call them acorn squashes, but that's OK. 

I liked it when Mom cut one of them in half, horizontally, scooped out the seeds, filled the hollow with lots of butter, a little brown sugar, some salt and pepper, and then baked them until they were tender.

Oh, that was good! The flesh of the squash was a deep orange, solid and meaty, sweet and full of flavour.

But as time went on, the pepper squashes available in the stores changed until now we have imitations of the real thing, squashes that have a flesh that is pale-yellow, soft, watery, with an insipid taste. I blame the growers for choosing varieties that ripen early, travel well and 'weigh heavy' (i.e. full of water) since squash are sold by weight.

This year I set aside a small space in our backyard to grow some 'real' pepper squashes. I found a variety in a Stokes Seeds catalogue that promised old-time texture and flavour.

Great!

I set out 6 plants, which caught quickly and soon produced large yellow blossoms. The catalogue said that each plant would produce an average of 8 squash. I did the math and that meant something like 50 squash. There would be enough so I could share them with our children who have grown tired and skeptical about Dad and his stories about the delicious squash of his youth. And the remainder could be stored in our cold room so we could have delicious squash dinners in February and March.

I watched with delight as the bees did their thing and the blossoms turned into little green oval balls and then into softball-sized fruit. Everything was going well.

Then one morning I noticed that the two largest squash had disappeared. As I was scratching my head and muttering, our neighbour who is a retired farmer came over to see what the trouble was. I told him about the missing squash.

I said I was wondering whether a raccoon was responsible.

No, he said, raccoons are messy. If they had eaten the squash, they would have left bits of skin and seeds lying around.

Every few mornings, more squash were missing.

And then early one morning when I was backing out of the driveway, I saw a bulky animal heading down the side of our garage toward the backyard. I rushed around the house but he (or she) had disappeared. There is a wooded area with a pond off to the side behind our house and my hunch was that he (or she) had headed home.

Convinced that we were dealing with a raccoon, I installed---near the squash patch---one of Lee Valley's electronic gadgets that is designed to scare off cats. The gadget has a motion detector and emits a high frequency squeal that cats can't stand. I wasn't sure whether it would work for raccoons, but it seemed worth a try.

The thievery ended.

Now I am left with only 6 or 7 small squash, and I am not sure whether they will mature before the frost hits.

So that's my tale of woe.

But the interesting question is what did the raccoon do with the squash. He (she) didn't eat them on site because there was no mess. Therefore, he (or she) must have taken them home---as a treat, presumably, for the family. ('Yum, yum, more delicious squash from that nice man up there!')

But how?

Did he (she) roll them home? Or did he (she) clutch a squash to his (her) chest and do a three-legged hop back to the pond?

If I had been able to capture the nocturnal activity via a night-vision video camera, it would surely have become a viral hit on YouTube!

Next year, I'm going to put out the anti-cat gadget earlier in the season.

And, given the intelligence of those bandit-eyed critters, I might even back that up with a little electric fence, one that has enough amperage to provide a deterring but non-lethal jolt.

We'll see.

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See you on October 9th for Posting #124th with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

I have now uploaded four Postings to The Icewine Guru blog: one about the dangers of the US income gap; one about a possible lesson the US could learn from Canada about how to deal with its unemployment crisis: one about whether 'Western' countries should ban the wearing of face coverings by Muslim women; and, one which asks the question, 'Is Obama a Wimp?'. The topics are serious but I have tried to give them an entertaining treatment. If you haven't tried the Guru blog yet, you might like to browse these Postings by clicking on the link below. The next Guru Posting will appear when I feel I have something to say about an important public issue--- http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/