There hasn't been much canning around here lately, but that's not to say there hasn't been much planning for future mason jar exploits. I've been reading Oded Schwartz's Preserving which is really wonderful. This is not your grandmother's canning book. Mr. Schwartz includes many kinds of preserving recipes and techniques in addition to a complete history of preservation with commentary on sugar and salt, as well as an entire section of pictorial instructions. It's a beautiful book and I highly recommend it. I'm pretty sure the first recipe I'll be trying is onion confit. I also got a notice from my library that Janet Chadwick's The Busy Person's Guide to Preserving Food is ready to be picked up. I foresee a summer of sweltering kitchen and rack after rack of great food. And, if I'm organized, all have all my equipment, jars and recipes ready and in order of how produce ripens so I can really get it all done efficiently (you can't hear me laughing at myself, but I am).


Last weekend I gave a little party for my husband's thirty-fifth birthday. I didn't serve much of my canned stuff, mostly just because my can-make-them-in-my-sleep party dishes don't require anything really involved or fancy. (Our friends Jiffy and Donna who were visiting from New Jersey with their two children have seen all my tricks and weren't super impressed. The new Charlottesville people seemed to be pretty impressed with the spread - which is what I really like in a guest. Soon enough, though, they'll have seen all my tricks, too, and I'll either have to get new tricks or new friends, or move again.)


One thing I made that is a cocktail party standby for me are the marinated olives from the cookbook Cooking with Friends, a book based on, I kid you not, the television show "Friends." It has recipes for things like "Marcel's Banana Muffins" and "Mrs. Geller's Currry Chips." It's really just beyond cheesy. The thing is, it's a great cookbook. The recipes all work and none of them are terribly difficult (and, the recipe for hummus is one of the best I've ever made). If you can get your hands on a copy, grab it. You won't be sorry even if, like so many of us, you feel that The Friends have overstayed their welcome.


Anyway, the olives go something like this: get a bunch of pitted, mixed olives from the olive bar that your supermarket no doubt has just installed. Put them in a mason jar and insert about half a cup of olive oil, a sprig or two of rosemary (or thyme), add a couple peppercorns, a couple cloves of garlic (sliced very thin) and the zest of a small-ish lemon. Put a lid on the jar and let sit at room temperature for a day or so. Serve at room temp, too. These, with a couple varieties of spiced nuts make a very good snacky to have around when friends (no, not those friends) come for drinks.

Seven or so years ago, when I was well into my twenties, my mother and I found ourselves in San Francisco with nothing to do but shop, eat and generally look around. My father and husband were attending a trade show and had to work "the floor" all day. Mom and I, on the other hand, were women of leisure and took to meandering around the city with no particular agenda. One day, I forget where we were going, we decided to take a cable car toward our destination instead of a cab or, Lord forbid, walking. As we approached the car it began to pull away. "Run," mom shouted, "we're going to miss it!" We ran and hopped on the back just as it was getting too far out of reach. On board I was consumed by an astonished silence. Who was this woman? My mother never, ever ran for anything, much less a moving vehicle. I didn't know it at the time, but that moment signalled the beginning of a gradual shift in our relationship.


Over lunch, I tried to get a grip on what has surprised me so much. I explained to mom that I was prepared to wait for the next car, that I would never have suggested we run for it, since I would have assumed that she wouldn't want to. She asked why I would assume that. I had no answer, really, except that she's the mom and for my whole life she had been very appropriately mom-like and kept us away from the rails at Niagara Falls and trotting horses at Williamsburg and made sure our hands and heads were inside the cars at all times at Disney World. Safety first, buckle up, brush your teeth and don't cross your eyes like that. She laughed and laughed and finally said, "Marsha, I had young children. I couldn't very well jump onto a cable car while trying to herd the three of you on at the same time. Someone would have been either left behind or hurt. You've arrived into adulthood safe and healthy and now it's your choice if you want to jump onto moving cars. I, for one, am happy to get back to it." So, it was true. Moms really do have inner lives.


Now I'm the one who watches to make sure my son doesn't walk too far ahead (how far is too far? Can I reach out and touch him? Can I still see him? Can I still hear him?) and doesn't jump on loose grates. I can't even imagine a future where I'd let him jump onto a moving cable car, let alone encourage him to do it. We live fairly beyond the reach of fast cars or streams and yet my stomach flipflops at the thought of letting him play outside on the patio by himself - what if something happens? So this is what it is become a mother. My son will grow up wondering why I have so many rules and regulations and why I insist on bike helmets and water wings. He will see me as a both as a protector and someone who must be protected, from his own flirtations with risk. Just as I didn't tell my mother about some of my, ahem, dumber moments, he won't tell me of his. But some day I will astonish him with my human-ness, my non-motherness. I just hope it doesn't take him 26 years to see that I am a woman and a person in addition to his mother. I hope it doesn't take me that long to show him that I am a woman and a person in addition to his mother.


So when mom calls and wants to know why I'm messing with "all that canning stuff" when I have sufficient income to purchase most of the products I make and she only did it because she was broke, I'll tell her it's because of the lessons that she taught me. That there's a place for safety and a place for risk and a place for doing something with your own heart and hands even when it could be bought for far less trouble and mess. It might be more trouble to run for a departing cable car, but you get so much more out of it than you would by, say, taking a cab, that it seems a shame not to run for it.

We're in a strange, in-between time canning-wise. There's not much that's really in season at this moment except for maybe early onions, some lettuces and radishes. I don't even have that much since the the dog ripped up my "salad bed" (planted with exactly those items) the day after I planted it. She seems to be a digger, the dog - we have 9 inch by 6 inch holes surrounding her house and "potty area" like little Mars craters. What she has in cuteness and overall willingness to please, she definitely lacks in outdoor living space design sense.


But back to the garden. We've had just awful weather lately. It rained for three straight days last week and we're gearing up for more of the same starting tomorrow. We're in a "flood watch" according to Weather.com. So I've been avoiding the larger garden down at the bottom of the yard. I don't even want to think about what all of this water has done to my not-yet-improved soil. We basically have clay, to which I've been adding lots of compost and some sand. But it's not finished yet and I just know that all my little veggies have wet feet. Not the best conditions to grow lots of canning fodder, as was my hope. Plus, I still have stuff to plant, but I can't get down there to actually do it. I know that come mid-summer we'll be glad for the rain, but right now I'd really just like some sunshine and a little warmth.


The gardening/canning lull has, though, given me lots of time to plan my summer domestic exploits. I really want to make some gardeniera (hot pickled veggies), pie fillings (blueberry and apple), dill slices, more dilly beans, some scented geranium jellies, maybe some herb and wine jellies, tomatilla salsa and so much more. Of course, I'm going to have lots of time in between painting the kitchen (including cabinets) and powder room, figuring out what's weeds and what's flowers in the to-big-for-me gardens surrounding the house and, you know, just trying to keep up with the laundry and stuff. Oh yeah, and there is this crazy job thing that sucks up a lot of time, too.

The strawberry jam didn't set up at all. The recipe might be guilt-free, but it also seems to be success-free. I toyed with adding some pectin, but in the end decided to trust the recipe. My bad. Still, it's not a total waste because I now have strawberry sauce. We're having a party next weekend so I figure I'll put the sauce in a pretty bottle and serve it with some sparkling water so people can make strawberry fizzies. Maybe I'll have lime slices, too. I find that strawberry and lime are excellent together.


I also didn't go to the farm market, after all. I'm pretty cranky about it, actually. The weather is completely awful - cold, misty and gray. May in Virginia - not what I expected. On the bright side, there's still a lot of stuff to do around the house (hang pictures, organize the pantry, etc.) so maybe the absence of temptation to be outside will turn out to be a blessing and we can get some things done.

As it turns out, there was something at the market that tempted me. Gorgeous, perfect local strawberries. You should smell them - they're just incredible. So after eating a few on the drive home, I decided to be more virtuous and make some strawberry jam. There's a recipe in This Organic Life that I'd like to try. It seems too good to be true - just berries, sugar and lemon juice. The book's author, Joan Dye Gussow, writes that the recipe is "guilt-free" so I figure it's got my name pretty much all over it. Guilt-free is definitely something I can cozy up to. The rest of the book is interesting, too, if a little unfocused at places. A good thing to check out of the library.


I made a complete idiot of myself talking to the guy who sold me the strawberries. I couldn't believe how utterly amazing they looked (and, they're organic!) and told him how impressed I was and that I was never able to grow more than a dozen edible berries per year, but that my plants still made nice ground cover. He looked at me oddly and said, "Well, I do have 50 acres of plants. Some of the berries are bound to turn out nice." In other words: he farmer, me stupid suburban woman. Oh well. I must have turned a dozen shades of (strawberry?) red and assuaged my embarrassment by also buying some beets and onions. I might go back to the market on Saturday, if the weather doesn't suck too badly and I get up early enough. This weekend is UVA's graduation so we're expecting a population surge of about 20,000 people. Doesn't make for good hunting and gathering conditions downtown. I kind of feel bad about it, because it's not like all those extra people are going to go out of their way to buy produce and other farm goods but their presence is likely to keep most of the people who would away. Plus, I really want to see the guy who sells goat cheese as an act of civil disobedience. Yes, you read that right. Looks like I'm talking myself into going after all.

The process of making the mushrooms was completely consuming and, as much of a hassle as the mushrooms were, I'll probably make more anyway. They're really great, but two pounds of 'shrooms only makes 2 and a half pints of product.

The basic process is simple enough, there's just a lot of knife work (which I'm neither industrious nor foodie enough to enjoy). I cleaned, trimmed and halved the two pounds of mushrooms, chopped two shallots and removed about 3 tablespoons of fresh thyme from its stems. These were heated in several tablespoons of olive oil before adding a quarter cup of white wine vinegar and a quarter cup of balsalmic vinegar. I feel like I'm forgetting something here, but I can't think of what. Anyway, once all this was heated together, I packed it into hot jars, sealed and processed for 10 minutes. I'm thinking that these will be great in little radicchio cups as a starter, or maybe as part of a relish tray.

I had originally intended to spend Mother's Day canning some blueberry pie filling, but decided to wait until the berries are in season (doh!). Instead, I was spoiled by the gifts of a new sewing machine, three links for my zopinni charm bracelet and lunch at an Indian buffet. After lunch, my son took a two and a half hour nap (which means that mom and dad did, too) and we finished the day by puttering around the garden and helping the kid master his new little bike (given to him by his friends Connor and Shannon, who aren't using it anymore; Connor because he has a big boy bike and little sis Shannon because she has a brand new girl bike) . An all around fantastic day. This weekend we're going to be getting ready for holiday weekend company, but I might try to make some key lime marmalade. We'll have to see how it goes. Tomorrow is my first visit to the local farm market, so I might see something there to push the marmalade further down the agenda.

I am exhausted. We returned late last night from a whirlwind trip to Philadelphia where I became emotionally overwhelmed by family and events. Not to mention the stress of being back in the neighborhood from which I recently, and not one hundred percent happily, moved. My mom, youngest sister and two of my nieces were also in town, which added logistical issues - when you have three kids to tote around, you're talking multiple cars and multiple carseats and, and, and...Plus, since my sister is expecting and was having what she described as a "pregnant moment" (that lasted all weekend!) she wasn't exactly serene. Add to this a friend being shot, trying to assist my aunt and cousin with some issues they've got going on, and two impromptu parties and you've got a recipe for complete emotional overload. Driving past the old house nearly put me over the edge - I wanted to drop in to tell the new owners to get moving with the yard work and, jeez, could they weed or something? But I restrained myself and kept driving.


So now I'm back in my own house and ready to do something seriously domestic and sort of nesty, to reassert my claim on my space and my life after feeling so much at loose ends. So I've made an executive decision - mushrooms will be bought no matter the cost and marinated mushroom melange will be made. I've read that the cause of much dismay in some peoples' lives is shopping and overspending in times of stress. No doubt that dynamic is in play here, but somehow I don't think dipping into capital to buy mushrooms is the typical overindulgence. Better that, I guess, than Jimmy Choos or some Prada.