Jammin'

We're headed into summertime. Just a few days away. This is the time of year I most think about my grandma. Probably because I spent a lot of summer days with her.

Most summers I get the itch to do some canning. Seriously. Stop laughing. I'm not being sarcastic. I put up food. It's in my DNA. Country mouse style. I don't think canning has anything to do with food though - for me.

It's the process. Hot jars, fruit, the steam in the kitchen, the familiar pop of the seal. It takes me back to being a kid. Makes me remember being sprawled out on the floor, just about ready to fall asleep in the afternoon, listening for the metallic pop followed by her saying, "there's another one!"

I wonder what she'd think about this canning business today. I'd say something like, "what? you canned all the time."

To which she'd respond with, "I didn't have a job. I wasn't busy like you."  Because running that house with military precision wasn't a job to her...

She 'wasn't busy' and 'wasn't in a hurry' - just two of the many reasons she didn't have a microwave. Why cook things fast if you aren't in a hurry?

Now there's a pretty big difference between Aileen Henley canning and me canning. I'd really like to be more like her, but, the Moore* blood...

I find canning goes a lot better with a couple beers. Maybe more than a couple. I'm fairly certain that she never had a canning buzz. I'd love to be wrong on that one...
Side Note: I'm pretty sure that she'd be a little disappointed in my level of social drinking. Unless the Ladies Aid or the F.A.N. Club were more fun than I suspect.

She listened to music in the kitchen and hummed along. KHQ on the old radio. So, in this case we're sort of similar. Except, I'm 'singing' at the top of my lungs to Bob Marley. Because, it's funny to me to sing the 'Jammin' song while literally jamming.

I like to keep it casual - it's a hot and sort of miserable set of tasks. I wear Converse, she wore Keds. I wear shorts. She would never. Also, they're too short. Are not.

She would can first thing, before it got too hot. I tend to can later in the day, sometimes even late at night when it's more socially acceptable to have a couple drinks. Oh, and it's cooler then too.

Our berries this time were picked at a U-pick - not quite on a whim but pretty close. I didn't even have all the things I needed to can that day. I didn't plan days in advance what I was going to do. Not only was I not fully prepared for canning, I picked berries in the middle of the day. Without a giant sunhat. Without. A. Hat. I should be ashamed of myself.

I never really learned how to do any of this. I think I just imitate what she did. When a jar doesn't seal I flip it over, this confused the husband.

I couldn't really tell him why, it's just what she did. And that thing sealed.

I do a lot of jam and I've done peaches and applesauce. She did those and cherries, apricots, pickled beans and pickles. Those others seem intimidating to me. Plus, I'm slightly afraid that if I start eating canned apricots, I'll also start eating molasses cookies. If I do that, I'll forget how to adult. I'll regress into that eight year old falling asleep on the floor. 

I wonder if my kids will have nostalgic canning memories. They have fun picking berries and fruit and they're possibly addicted to toast and homemade jam. Maybe it skips a generation and their kids (shudder) will want to participate. Or maybe buzzed canning grandma won't be that inspiring...

Jars and jars.

*Anytime any Henley ever did anything wrong, Dorothy Henley attributed it to 'The Moore' blood. Works for me.

There's No Place Like Home

In a recent conversation with some friends, I mentioned that I love the house I live in but it doesn't seem like home. The couldn't understand, "because it's so awesome!" It is. It is an awesome house. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

It's been two years, feels like it should be home by now. Don't get the wrong idea, I love the house. A lot. And, as my hobbies are puttering and tinkering, I love having a project at my fingertips at all times.

Bottled beer taste in a can.

I'm starting to think that it doesn't feel like home because 'home' is so much more than where you sleep. This past weekend I went 'home'. To where I was born. And spent most of my childhood. I went for a run on my favorite gravel road. I had a Keystone Light in The Pastime Tavern. Two actually. That my mom had to buy for me because they only take cash. And, I only carry plastic. Where some other 'kids' I grew up with were also hanging out for a beer on a hot summer night.

Is it that home is where your childhood memories are? That spot on the sidewalk you can point to where you fell and earned your first stitches? The old dirt road where you learned how to drive? How you got that scar on your forehead? Which is a post all on it's own...

I come from a small town. Very small. Where there is one pay phone. That makes local calls. For free. Where the road is clearly marked, 'Primitive Road. No warning signs.' Out in the dry alkali dirt. Dirt that feels like powder. A place that is so cold in the winter your nostrils freeze shut and so hot in the summer you can see the heat waves rise off the road and water evaporates before it hits the ground. It smells like wheat, dirt and grease. Heaven.

It's quiet and still and when it's dark you can see the stars. All of them.

Favorite road.

As I sat at a kitchen table with people who have known me my whole life, laughing and catching up over a couple cocktails, let's go with a couple... I got to thinking... this is it. This is home. This place is what made me who I am. The women at the kitchen table (and a couple others who weren't there) all had a hand in that. These women, my mother being one of them, to put it bluntly, get shit done. I've never thought I couldn't do anything I ever wanted to. Because the example I always had was that I could.

Home is where you become who you are, where you grow up. Literally and figuratively. There's no place like it. So says Dorothy.

I believe that where I sleep will be home to my children. This is where they'll become who they'll be. Where they'll sneak in late and make a lot of memories with their friends and our friends. Their home is a nice house in a nice neighborhood with sidewalks and a lawn with a sprinkler system. There are no rattle snakes to avoid and there's no worry that the house cat will be eaten by a coyote.

Their home is rather boring, I'm afraid.