Autumn is here

It's noticeably cooler, leaves are cascading, spreading color across the grass. Geese practicing their precision formation, crying in the wind. Winter is coming.

This time of year is also canning time. For the next 10 days, it's tomato heaven around here. Am doing 12 quarts at a time in the water bath. It takes a while for them to cook down so it's possible to stage the process and be able to accomplish other things while they cook.

Here are some photos:



The tomatoes seem to be an heirloom variety called Oxheart. They are almost solid meat and cook up beautifully.



These are almost ready to go. The foam is changing color, turning darker, and they have thickened considerably.


The finished product. The fruit kept its color with no added ingredients, salt or anything else.

I have the last 30 pounds of maters on the stove, cooking. The first two batches were around 25 pounds and the extra 5 was just enough that I had to get a second stock pot for the excess. I am "guesstimating" that I might get as many as 16 quarts from this batch. Have another 2 bushel coming this week so will continue with this. She offered another 4 bushel in the weeks to come and I may take her up on it. (We need around 124 quarts of tomatoes to get us through winter as we use a LOT of them.) 100 pounds of tomatoes for $40 is one hell of a deal and well worth the money.

Have spoken to a number of people over the last week who can't imagine doing anything like canning tomatoes. "Why don't you just buy them? It's a lot easier." Well, yeah, I suppose it is but I get something from doing this. Not just wonderful, fresh-tasting produce in the depths of winter but some kind of personal satisfaction. Like many home canners, I take pride in the fact that I can do this, do it well, and do it quickly. (I also take just pride in the fact that over the 30+ years I have been doing this I have had only about 5 jars that didn't seal and only one that broke in the pressure canner.)

I started quite young, learning the process, in my mother's kitchen. Back then, if you didn't grow it and put it up yourself you were likely to get darned hungry by the end of winter. We did tomatoes, beans, beets, froze corn, made jelly... all that kind of old-timey stuff. Mom didn't really enjoy the process, though. It was a matter of survival and it had to be done. Dad liked it better than Mom and he ended up being drafted on weekends.

The pickles are done, for the most part. I may do a few more pints to share but we don't use a lot of them so there is no need to make up a bunch. I wish I had been able to find more sweet corn but it was such a bizarre season that it was horribly expensive. Beans and peas are long since gone but I may be able to find some beets, if I'm lucky. I need a dozen or so squash and must remember to call the grower for potatoes and onions before it gets too late.

Have 2 dozen chickens coming next month, a beef in November and another hog in December. We are only get a whole half-beef this time and hoping the cost goes down before we need more. Even with the higher producer's price it is still cheaper than buying it. The quality is much better, too.

Man dies after eating chilli sauce

Tragic news from Doncaster where an inquest has been opened and adjourned following the death of a keen amateur chef. Andrew Lee passed away in his sleep after eating a tomato sauce spiced with chillies from his father's allotment. He and his girlfriend's brother had an ongoing friendly rivalry to see who could create the hottest sauce.

On going to bed that night Mr Lee started scratching all over, finally falling asleep as his girlfriend scratched his back. When she woke up he had died. A post mortem showed he had not suffered from a pre-existing heart condition and toxicology tests are underway to establish whether an allergic reaction was to blame.

Pepper sprays which cause temporary blindness and respiratory difficulty are widely used for self defence and by security personnel. Some experts have warned of the potentially lethal effects of the sprays but this seems to be the first case on record where voluntarily consuming chillies is suspected of having fatal consequences.

Life is what you are used to.

From the Guardian, Max Hastings:

"Churchill, during the second world war, explained this phenomenon to the head of the army, General Sir Alan Brooke. He called it the "three-inch pipe" theory of human response. Human beings, he said, can only absorb so much drama - up to the capacity of say, a three-inch pipe. Thereafter, everything that happens around them rushes past, along an emotional overflow.

Many people, including Brooke himself, experienced this in Britain in 1940. So many sensations crowded upon each other that many failed to achieve the impact that they deserved - happily for national morale.

A little knowledge of history makes it easier to achieve a perspective upon misfortunes that befall us. Bedtime reading of Samuel Pepys's diary provides a wonderful corrective to anyone silly enough to suppose our own times extravagantly dangerous.

Pepys lived and worked as a government servant, during a period in which almost everybody was frightened for their heads, health and fortune. While he shared in rejoicing at the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, throughout the years which followed King Charles II's polity never seemed less than precarious. Pepys's own career prospered at the Navy Office, but he lacked the slightest sense of security.

In 1665, the great plague struck London. The following year, Pepys witnessed the great fire. The nation's finances tottered. The diarist wrote on September 8: "Up, and ... by water to White-hall. I stopped with Sir G Carteret, to desire him to go with us and enquire after money. But the first he cannot do, and the other as little, or says: 'Where can we get any, or what shall we do for it ?' He, it seems, is imployed [sic] in the correspondence between the City and the King every day, in settling of things."

It seemed to them all in those days that matters could scarcely get worse, but they did. The following June the Dutch fleet sailed up the Medway, and burned Chatham dockyard. Pepys, panic-stricken, sent his money out of London, and wrote: "The truth is, I do fear so much that the whole kingdom is undone ... God help us, and God knows what disorders we may fall into."

The crises of peace, precipitated by disease, natural disaster or financial collapse, are often harder to endure than those of war. People find themselves confined to the role of victims, impotent to influence their own fates.

A significant element of Churchill's genius in 1940-41 was his understanding that the British people needed to feel themselves participants, rather than merely to stand passive in the face of the Nazi juggernaut. All that trench-digging and Dad's Army duty served little practical purpose. But it was invaluable in enabling ordinary people to suppose that they were "doing their bit".

Long after the real threat of German invasion had passed, Churchill kept alive a pretence. He knew that defence against descending Nazi hordes sustained the illusion of useful activity among millions of British citizens who might otherwise have slumped into despondency and inertia."

This is an excellent reflection on our times and times past... worth the read.

gawd, really?

From The Agitator:

A Carefully-Planned, Not-At-All-Slapped-Together Number Pulled Out of Thin Air

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

I don’t know about you, but when this administration says, “just trust us,” I think we’d all be justified to run screaming in the other direction.

[White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony] Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks by administration officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse it, but he said this should be enough.

That was Tuesday morning. Tuesday afternoon an article went up at Forbes.com with this passage:

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

Link

Honest, you just can't possibly make this shit up. You just can't.

He's done it again

Driftglass over at blogspot has a good one up today.

It's funny in a cynical way. Not funny in that it is awfully close to the truth.

Especially the part about BOHICA.

Um, NOT a good idea...

Photoshopped, yeah, but still...

Dear Fashion Mavens,

I am sorry. I know you are doing your utmost to assure my wardrobe is stylish and upbeat. You have a hard job, to be sure. There are so many of us out here, dressing badly, that you must despair on a regular basis.

I must say, though, that regardless of new trends or old trends coming back, I will not wear metallics. You think I look bad now? Just put me in gold lame. I'd look like the antenna on the space station only not so sleek.

Then there are animal prints, faux though they may be. I don't care if it is a knee-length leopard-motif silk-charmeuse dress, lynx-like satin, pony hair (pony hair?), zebra print scarf... I just don't care. I simply will not wear that stuff. I was in high school in the early 70s when animal prints were all the rage and had a furry suit-thing that looked more like a holstein dairy cow than a leopard. I'm embarrassed about it to this day.

I certainly am not going to purchase, let alone wear, a baby-doll dress. Maybe if I were 18, sure. Not now. I'd look like Miss Piggy in pajamas. There won't be any spike helled additions to my shoe closet in the future, either, not boots, ankle boots or anything else. I can fall off my Keen sandals and don't want to think of what would happen wobbling around on spikes.

Then there are the patent leather bits and pieces. There, again, been there, done that, won't do it any more. I just object to the look of patent leather. Doesn't matter what color it is, I just don't like it. I have leather purses, for instance, but they're just nice leather, even if one of them is red.

The idea of your advising the populace to combine all those things just gives me the willies. Going out and about is bad enough but being in herds of fashionistas wearing combinations of lame, animal prints, patent leather and so forth just makes me feel faint.

So, thank you. I truly do appreciate your efforts on my behalf but I think I will stick with my jeans, t-shirts and tennies. I might not fit in on Madison Avenue but when have I ever?