POSTING #126

Hankerings

Anyone who has lived abroad knows about 'hankerings', those powerful urges for something from home. This week as I watched apples being picked in local orchards I remembered a hankering I had in England---one that landed me in the dog house.

After I wrote the title and the first paragraph, I began to wonder whether 'hankering' was a generally accepted word or was it yet another rural-Ontario expression that I grew up with and have been using uncritically ever since.

In other words, I wondered whether using 'hankering' was labeling me as a hick.

I checked the Internet and found that the Word Detective has this to say about hankering:

"But even if you find yourself unable to break your "hankering" habit, you can take comfort in the fact that "hanker" does not automatically brand you as either a rube or a wannabe cowboy (goodie!).  The first appearance of "hanker" dates back to about 1600 in England, and such literary luminaries as Milton and Thackeray used the word without being mistaken for Jed Clampett.

"The origin of "hanker" is a bit obscure, but most authorities have come to the conclusion that it arose as a form of the verb "to hang" used in a "frequentative" or "repetitive" sense, and originally meant "to hang around, to loiter with expectation or longing."  Thus, in this original sense, a lovesick swain might "hanker" in the vicinity of his beloved, hoping for an encounter (as in Thomas Hughes, 1859: "I used to hanker round the kitchen, or still-room, or wherever she might happen to be").  By the late 17th century, "hanker" had lost its "loitering" connotation and had settled on its modern meaning of "to long for or crave something." "

I find that interesting---and reassuring!

Now, overseas hankerings can take all forms.

A British colleague in Moscow pined after Heinz baked beans with tomato sauce---not pork and beans, just beans in tomato sauce! He was ecstatic when a local store started importing them.

A few years ago I was in the Rideau Bakery in Ottawa and watched as a  woman who said she had moved to Florida was stowing loaves of freshly-baked rye bread into a couple of carry-on bags. Smiling, she said she was on the way to the airport, "Tonight, ex-Ottawa people all over Miami are going to have a treat".

I have known Canadians overseas who would have given anything for a box of Timbits ("lots of chocolate ones, please").

One of my hankerings while living in England (the one that got me into trouble), was for---don't laugh---apple butter.

Now, I asked you not to laugh.

I think I can hear some ask, "Apple, what".

Wikipedia to the rescue. "Apple butter is a highly concentrated form of apple sauce, produced by long, slow cooking of apples with cider or water to a point where the sugar in the apples caramelizes, turning the apple butter a deep brown. The concentration of sugar gives apple butter a much longer shelf life as a preserve than apple sauce. Apple butter was a popular way of using apples in colonial America, and well into the 19th century. There is no dairy butter involved in the product; the term butter refers only to the thick, soft consistency, and apple butter's use as a spread for breads." 

When I was growing up, we would drive in the autumn to Elmira to an apple mill run by a Mennonite farmer, a Mr. Martin. Farmers brought trailer loads of 'wind-fall' apples that he would, for a small charge, crush and turn into delicious cider. We had no apples, we were just there to get a few gallons of cider and some containers of apple butter.

There was nothing nicer after playing in the snow to come in and have some of Mom's home-made bread covered with 'real' butter and then slathered on top with apple butter!

Finally, (and not a minute to soon, I can hear you saying) we have come to the story about how I ended up in the dog house.

The home we rented in the Golders Green area of London had a prolific apple tree in the backyard. The apples looked good---large with a shiny green colour--but they were really sour. We didn't eat them, that is, except for one of our boys. On one occasion, our family doctor who lived next door phoned to say that our two-year old son was in the backyard eating apples off the ground. "I just thought I would call to save myself a trip later on."

One fall as I was preparing to rake up the apples, I suddenly had an idea. Why not turn some of them into apple butter? No one in England at that time sold apple butter, not even Harrod's Food Hall. Remembering Mom's bread slathered with apple butter, I developed a plan to turn the windfalls into a delectable spread.

Early the next Saturday morning, I collected some bags of apples, got out a large, antique brass jam pan (see picture), and filled it with peeled, cored and quartered apples along with some sugar, vinegar and seasonings. Soon the gas stove had the apples simmering and well before noon they had broken down into apple sauce. I turned the gas down a bit to a medium heat that would turn the sauce into the thick, brown apple butter I loved.

I was sure that the apple butter would be finished well before our dinner party guests arrived.

Oh, I didn't mention about the dinner party?

Just slipped my mind, I guess.

The afternoon went on and the apple mixture started to turn a little brown but it was still too thin. I was afraid of turning the gas up too high for fear of scorching the mixture.

Meanwhile, Pat was trying to prepare a special meal for our guests---with one of the gas elements taken up with the jam pan---and feed the children. Around 5 PM (the guests were coming at 6), the apple mixture was finally approaching apple butter colour and thickness.

Just then, Pat asked if I had got the wine for dinner. Nope, had slipped my mind. No problem, I would just slip down to the local wine store and be back in a jiffy.

I asked Pat if she would give the mixture a stir from time-to-time and took off for the wine store.

Something I learned about apple butter, was that when it approaches that critical point of thickness---critical mass, as it were---things start to happen very quickly. It bubbles and begins to spit and splatter. Some splatter can reach as high as a kitchen ceiling!

Amazing!

When I arrived back with the wine, the guests had arrived, the apple butter was sitting on the back of the stove with the gas turned off, and Pat was very unhappy.

Fortunately, Pat hadn't been burned by the spitting apple butter.

The dinner party was a little strained but it went all right, I guess.

The next morning, I reheated the apple butter and bottled it.

It was all a waste of effort. We never ate any of the apple butter. It looked fine but didn't have the tang or flavour of the Elmira stuff. I learned later that good apple butter is made with a mix of different varieties of apples, some tart and some sweet.

At the end of our London stint, we had to clean the house to give it back to the owner. Part of the cleaning involved removing apple butter splatter from a huge area of the kitchen ceiling, splatter that we had lived with for over a year.

I like to experiment with making-my-own things, but never again with apple butter!

 Great Ontario apple butter (for example, the Wellesley brand made by the Jantzi family in Wellesley Ontario) is available everywhere, thanks to globalization.

In doing research for this Posting I found that there is a Wellesley Apple Butter and Cheese Festival on the last Saturday in September that features Wellesley apple products as well as cheese from the J.M. Schneider Cheese Factory. The festival sounds like a lot of fun 

I think I may go next year, but I will probably have to go alone. 

Some scars take longer to heal than others.

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See you on October 30th for Posting #127th 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 on 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---at http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/