Luscious Lava

I feel fulfilled regarding chutney "needs" now, but I still have plenty of fruit for pear butter, waiting to be pressurized. Meanwhile, I've discovered a whole new pear passion.

Mamie has been talking with great enthusiasm about Esther's pear honey. I came across this concept several years ago while searching the internet for pear preservation recipes, but I had no need to try it until Mamie kept mentioning her longing.

I was at a pot luck lunch honoring one of our precious people who recently died, when I came upon Esther. We got to talking about this delicacy that Mamie so desired, so I asked Esther her secrets. After coming home with a basic list of ingredients, I went online and found proportions and procedures, just in case I had any extras of the pear pearls that Richard had peeled.

I did end up with a few cups of Richard's pear pearls waiting for a home, and Josie had handed me a ripe pineapple a few days ago. Why not try something new? With a bit of whirring in the food processor, the pineapple and pears were ready to be cooked down with sugar into the golden elixir called pear honey.

For those who have never made jams and jellies, cooking down jam is like living in a kitchen with a spitting volcano. The syrup is so thick that it becomes superheated on the bottom of the pot, so that every time a bubble or a stirring spoon breaks the surface, a few balls of the molten luscious lava fly onto everything in their path. This can cause some serious damage to the skin of anyone unwise enough to be within range. And if the temperature isn't regulated just so, the whole stove and floor surrounding it become a hardened lava field upon cooling.

The pear honey is as good as it looks, so I'm now anxious to get a taste test to Esther and Mamie. Will it pass the muster of the canning queens?

As for the pear butter, I just won't have time to finish it today because I'm going back to Atlanta to finish preparing for Don's Party Into Paradise. After pressurizing the pears, I'll simply stick them in the freezer. I will, hopefully have our Coker Creek Kitchen Club going at the Smoky Mountain Christian Camp very soon after I arrive back here. Then, all the parties interested in sharing methods for good old down-home cooperative cooking and other homey endeavors can congregate for some family-style fun.

Maybe it will be the beginning of our very own Coker Creek Creative Camp, sort of like Foxfire and other folk schools, but probably more full of fun.

Trying To Train a Chicken

I went to see Mountain Mama and was a bit alarmed by the long scratch from her ear, across her cheekbone, all the way to the bridge of her nose. It looked like she had been sword fighting like The Three Musketeers. She is ninety, after all, so we worry about her health. I asked her about it, and she started laughing.

It seems that she was trying to train one of her chickens. Mamie has very nice nesting boxes for her hens, so she makes every attempt to have them lay in them; but,she says that some chickens are rather opinionated about where they want to roost. One of her layers didn't agree with Mamie's motel plan, so she set herself up on the top of a door that is still opens to the outside.

Mamie was fed up with the cheekiness of this chicken, so she decided to give her a nudge in the right direction, which would have been down to her real roost. She shut the door, hoping to have the bird relocate herself to her proper place. This method sort of worked. The hen was dislodged; in her hurry, and with a flurry, she flew down to Mamie's head. Darkness had descended,so the hen apparently thought that Mamie's hair was a nice warm bed of straw at a comfortable height and distance for her to reach in one leap.

The startled Mamie didn't see the hen hopping off her perch; all she felt was something landing on her head. This led to the natural reaction of giving whatever it was the brush off. This hen was having no part of this, and grabbed Mamie's cheekbone with her claw, hanging on for dear life. Mamie's hand was already in brushing motion, so she's left with scar from her duel with a hen hanging on to her squatter's home.

Mamie's mountain daughter tended to her wound, and it seems to be healing nicely. But I am left wondering exactly who trained whom.

Three Cheers for Chutney

Richard peeled and diced pears with care
To give our gift stash a certain flair.
Chutney's better by far than any other spread
That competes for space under our bed.

I like pear butter; don't get me wrong,
But once I tried chutney, I sang a new song.
The complexity of flavor in this exotic mix
Makes my taste buds stand up and do flips.

It's hard to describe what makes it so tasty,
With firm morsels of pears, it's never pasty.
The ginger adds a certain spice,
And the tart cranberries are ever so nice.

I eat it on turkey, and pork roast, and ham;
For toast, it makes a really fine jam.
I like it alone, out of the jar with a spoon.
The flavor's so special, it makes me swoon.

We give it away as Christmas presents;
If the Magi had it, it would have been pleasant
To present some of this chutney to the Holy Family,
A little something as tasty as tasty can be.

For families that are holy and families that are not,
We like to give food gifts from our cook pot.
We love to play Santa for the adults kids,
While they're planning holidays that flip their lids.

A little something to soothe troubled souls
Is the object of our holiday goals.
If we can bring a smile to Santa's face
We feel that we've won the holiday race.

Muscadines and My Man

Talk about explosive personalities. Not only are my emotions land mines waiting to detonate, it seems that most things I touch are either going to explode or implode. I made such bilious green muscadine jam last year, that I decided to really be careful and create marvelous muscadine jam with this year's crop. Well, life is what happens when we're making other plans.

I had so many muscadines I could barely fit them in my largest pressure cooker. Being an impatient person, I still filled the cooker past the "legal" limit. I was actually pleasantly surprised when the pressure cooker neither exploded nor blew the pressure valve across the kitchen.

After a cool down period, I ground the mess through the food mill and came up with mud-colored mash. I pointed this out to Richard, who allowed as it looked like sick baby's poop. Upon reassuring him that Mamie said it would come out okay in the end, he quipped, "Most poop is better after it comes out of the end." So much for his culinary encouragement.

Because of Deborah's impromptu birthday bash and having to go to Atlanta for the second of Don's Party Into Paradise planning sessions, this was as far as the jam juice got before being refrigerated until a later date. Today was the day for jamming.

After a relatively event-less first batch, I had to remake the second round because I can never do any repetitive task the same way twice. I don't know at this point if it's my ADD or my senility.

Having come to the limit of my ability to concentrate, I decided to freeze the rest of the mash for future jam sessions. The stove was, at this point, beyond recognition from all the burned sugar and dribbled jam. This is where my major missteps came into play.

As is my habit, I labeled a couple of zipper closure bags with contents and date; I then ladled in pre-measured muscadine mash. After zipping, the bags would be ready for the freezer. Except for the little problem with the zipper on the first bag failing, spewing beige blobs all over the counter and stove-top. At least the closure on the second bag held, allowing me to gingerly carry it to the auxiliary freezer with which Richard shares his work-shed.

I so softly placed the bag on top of other frozen foods, being careful to lay it flat for efficient use of storage space. As I turned to close the freezer door and retreat from the shed, the dam (or is it "that damn zipper?")burst, spewing what looked like a mudslide all over me, my clothes and Richard's work-shed. Now, I had debris from two tsunamis to tackle.

I laughingly called Richard to see my latest "Perils of Pauline." Bless his heart, the same man who always told me that he'd call 911 if one of the grandchildren was left in his care and exploded in his or her diaper, calmly began cleaning the similar-looking mess out of his shed while he sent me to the showers to wash myself up. He didn't even laugh at me, just took out the hose and started spraying the
shed floor.

Chivalry comes in almost infinite incarnations.

A Gift of Soup, With Strings Attached

I cleaned the freezer out of last year's veggies,
Forgetting that the green beans had strings.
I made wonderful tasting vegetable soup,
With its own dental floss, of all things.

Richard suggested that I add some heft,
So I added a good bit of spaghetti.
The extra cooking softened the strings,
So I guessed the soup was then ready.

I gave some to Mountain Mama
Who said of strings, she's not afraid.
She liked the part about having built-in floss;
She is certainly not a bit staid.

Since we had about four gallons,
There's enough soup to be shared;
Although we'll have to be careful of those
Who of stringy beans might be scared.

Drama Mama

Do you know how hard it is for some of us to be "no drama" mamas? When I was coming up, women weren't supposed to think for themselves. They were supposed to have two coping strategies, terrible tantrums and illness. When one didn't work a "lady" could immediately take to one's bed.

Southern women even had "fainting couches" back in the "good old" days. Of course, these strategies were only effective at getting women out of work, and couldn't be employed well by women who had no servants. This lack of supplying servants on the husband's part could sometimes be made up for by having a passel of children and assigning all unpleasant duties to the oldest of the brood. I was not the oldest.

I had two older siblings, a brother and a sister. I also went through the first years of my life with several servants coming in and out of our lives. I was absolutely born to be a princess, but something terrible happened long about the time I turned four-years-old. We moved and my mama's rich uncle died, leaving her not a penny for servants or other household help. All the foot stomping and temper tantrums in the world couldn't bring my magic wand back into working order.

This didn't mean that I took to becoming useful. My closest little sister wanted desperately to be big, so I watched while she worked at mastering all manner of talent. I followed my big sister's lead and became ill every time things weren't going my way. I was content being left alone in La-La Land.

This worked pretty well until I became a wife and mother myself. I had absolutely no skills to take with me to that table. What was a princess to do? I had managed to learn to cook, so I took to the kitchen and never wanted to come out, except to write an occasional poem or throw a lavish party. This made me popular, but kept me in La-La Land until I hit any bumps in the road. Then my fall-back position was to fall into bed, especially if a river of tears didn't wash away my woes.

Now, here I am at almost sixty, still crying rivers of tears, but now while I work my way through, which so often does still involve party preparations. If only I could figure a fuel that didn't seem so dramatic; maybe people would be less likely to head for the hills when I start rumbling. And in a teeny tiny hamlet like Coker Creek, it's plain old unseemly for a married woman to act out in public.

Thankfully, Richard likes a lot of hot sauce, but many don't know what to do with a such a drama mama.

Dancing With Don

You’d be surprised how much planning has to be done for a proper Party Into Paradise. We’re under a lot of pressure to do Don’s departure up right; after all, how many of us will ever have the opportunity to make a presentation at a governor’s mansion? Folks are flying in from all over the country to fete their friend and mentor in the window washing industry and in how to grab for the gusto in this life.

This is nothing like the ease with which we can bury our dead at a funeral facility where the staffs are all instructed to speak in soft voices and smile such gentle smiles. Where we are encouraged to choose from a Chinese menu of official options for caskets, cremation urns, services and songs. Don wanted us to have nothing to do with all that. He even left a list of his favorite songs to be played while we party.

Our group comes over to Holly’s for supper, and laughs out loud at the stories we’ve all got to tell about Don and his wacky ways of relating to his world. We’ve got Molly, a marketing manager who works for the governor helping to plan protocol, Bob, a professional photojournalist and editor working on photos and the eulogy, Mary, a corporate executive assisting her journalist husband in choosing the proper pictures and keeping him from crying as he remembers all the good times he and Don had getting the greatest shots.

Professional project manager Art is putting all the pieces together to come up with a multimedia presentation that will do Don proud. The professional technowizard, Scotty is consulting on the equipment and programs and is scheduled to set up the video and sound systems for the service at the mansion and the after party at the across-town clubhouse. Richard will do last-minute framing of the photos chosen for Don’s “shrine.” I’m pretty sure there have been heads of state who have had less talented folks working on their send offs.

Executive chef Holly and her mom prepare the suppers for our planning sessions, while Richard and I tend bar, and generally help where we can. Our big parts will come later when we apply my cooking and catering skills to preparing the mostly Cajun menu that was requested by our honoree.

The ever-patient Richard will provide a steady eye and hand to videotaping the service. He is also going to apply his sobriety skills to being the designated driver, transporting the many party people safely to and from their hotels. He supplied this same skill when we celebrated Holly’s fiftieth birthday in the same area of Atlanta, so we know he’s prepared for whatever the guests may say and do.

I feel honored to be a part of this wonderful group of “pretty damn terrific” people putting their passions into the finale for their friend. I guess you could call me the producer and director of Don’s final dance.