From Scratch

Except for my unwavering preference for canned, wobbling, slice-able cranberry "sauce," I think I've always been The Root Girl at heart. I remember having an intense desire as a child to see a pumpkin pie through from its natural pumpkin state to its more delicious reincarnated dessert self. This weekend I finally got to check that off my bucket list. Last weekend, I made my first batch of (free range organic) chicken soup. I suppose the theme of my most recent undertakings have been "items from scratch."

It is such a strange thing that we have gotten away from - this idea of taking whole, growing items that we have in our everyday environment and turning them into something we might normally pry from a metal can. Through this "from scratch" process, we somehow take out the mystery but maintain the magic. At the end of each process as I stand staring at these recognizable foods that weren't there a few hours ago, it amazes me. I think it would for many of my generation. We have grown up shaking things out of packages and not knowing our local butcher. Now so many of us find a desire to return to the root of things and find satisfaction there.

When I am in the midst of these projects, onlookers, and even myself at times, question why I would want to do this thing. Why am I laboring for half a day over something that could be picked up at the store in 15 minutes? I don't always know why (though I can usually come up with several valid points afterward), but I know it feels good. I also come across many discoveries that remain hidden behind the scenes ordinarily. For instance...

Chicken soup Jello. After the work of boiling bones and picking apart meat and ladling off fat, adding spices and vegetables and canning what could fit into 10 pint jars, I still had leftover chicken noodle soup that found its way to the refrigerator. Well. I found myself shocked to see that after chilling, this homemade concoction had turned itself into one shivering gelatinous blob. I guess this is the idea behind Julia Child's aspics, but that wasn't exactly what I had been going for. When heated, everything goes back to normal soupy soup, but this gelatin had me a bit concerned about what could be a ridiculous cholesterol content or some misstep I had made along the way. Turns out that the normal process of using bones to make the broth is really very nutritious, that the gelatin is basically pure protein (only the yellow top being fat) and we probably don't find this from our commercial chicken soups because they are likely making things as cheaply as possible from things like chicken bouillon cubes. The homemade version is not only more nutritious, but there is a whole lot more chicken and it's actually cheaper!


The pumpkin pie experience was a bit quicker than the chicken soup canning, and it also reminded me a bit of jack-o-lantern making. What began as a lovely cheese pumpkin from the farmer's market found its way to an outdoor chopping, seed scraping, and became a pile of wedges in a big steam pot. The wedges eventually softened into pumpkin goop to be mixed with lovely sweet fall spices, and the seeds were roasted with butter, Worcestershire sauce, and garlic salt. My very first ever homemade crust was slightly temperamental, but no different from working with crumbly clay. The result from one pumpkin was two lovely brown pies that have the soft taste of something like a heritage recipe, and one quickly eaten pan of savory seeds. This is what the bounty of the harvest means to me.

Agri - Culture

This weekend was what I believe will become an annual tradition for me and mine: Pick Fest. The way I came to discover this little gem was through a new favorite local band, Foxhound. I fell in love with their folksy sound when they were featured on a radio program, but I was disturbed to find that they had no recorded tunes available for purchase. The saving grace was that they would be playing again at a local orchard in a few months. I had forgotten entirely about this until I saw it advertised with tickets at a low low price of ten dollars, and realized that I could also pick my own apples while at this outdoor folk fest concert! While we talked it over, imagining what it might be like, some thoughts came up: Would they be picking through our bags to find our smuggled food items? Would there be pick pockets among the crowd? Perhaps they would be pickling the apples for $5 a jar?



When we arrived, it was even better than I had expected. A shuttle took us to the top of a large hill where we were surrounded on all sides by many different varieties of small apple trees. Winesap, Johnathan, Rome, Golden Delicious - they're all here! People milled through the rows with big baskets hanging off their shoulders and tried not to twist their ankles on the fallen apples hiding in the grass. In the middle of all this, food and drink and hippie tapestry vendors flanked a big area filled with straw and bales for sitting. A red truck bed formed the stage where the musicians picked banjos, maneuvered fiddles, and tooted into jugs. An unruly bunch of two-year-olds tossed themselves around in the straw in front of the stage, making giant nests and jumping into them, throwing bits of straw into each others' faces, and mashing their own fashionable fall caps into saucers while their parents enjoyed hard cider a few yards away.

We managed to get a recording of Foxhound via a small portable device stealthily placed on the truck bed. The other bands were great also - Vinegar Creek Constituency and Manatawny Creek Ramblers. See a theme in these folk band names? In the midst of much toe-tapping and hand-clapping, we ate an apple dumpling, three kinds of cheeses, crackers, and hot apple cider with the sweet smell of the day all around us. One break we took from the music found us among the trees, picking the best apples for a sauce that I would can the next day. There's just something about homemade applesauce picked, cooked, and canned by hand in the course of a chilly fall weekend.