Time In A Bottle

Settle in.  I have a little summer story for you.

I am not a good cook.  You would not want to come to my dinner party because you would be served food that was beige.  And not in a good way.  I sincerely try to cook well, but my problem is I just lose interest somewhere around the second ingredient.  I over-think it and become conquered if there are too many things happening on the stove at the same time.  My head gets in the way of just enjoying the process. 

I’m German and come from a long line of women who knew their way around the stockpot.  One would think I should kick ass in the kitchen.  But while I was in the middle of puberty, we lived near a bunch of satellite dishes and I may have received some accidental radiation overspray.  That stuff just mucks up your cooking gene. 

I knew something was wrong when someone handed me a ziplock bag of Friendship Bread when I was 28.  Raise your hand if you know what I mean.  It’s a ‘goo’, with spores and yeast from all the way back to the Pilgrims.  You babysit it for two weeks.  You burp it on day one, shake it on day two, stare at it on day three, repeat.  Then you make a parched loaf of bread from it, sending a bit of the uncooked dough off to your next victim friend, who starts the simple process over. 

It is a liquid chain letter that will burden you, trust me.  I followed the instructions and on day twelve, it turned black and developed a heartbeat and possibly teeth.  It is designed to thrive with neglect and I still screwed it up.  I was so irritated that I tossed it into the back yard and waited for the sink hole the next morning.  So, I lay this evidence at your feet.  This is why my husband stepped in by the third day of our marriage, because he saw things heading south pretty fast in terms of dinner. 

Which brings me to the fantastic irony I’m about to tell you.  Despite my failure in the kitchen, I have apparently nailed one thing.   I can make homemade Santa Rosa Plum preserves.  It has been said that it ‘tastes so good, it will make you leave your spouse.’  For some, it’s ‘A Swanky Las Vegas Night Club’ in a jar.

“Seriously?”  I said. 

“Yes,” they said. 

Cool, thought Sheri.

‘They’ are my regulars, the ones who score a jar every year.  I tell my regulars, “If you bring back the empty jar and leave it on my porch, I’ll refill it for y------“

And suddenly, there are empty jars on the porch, sucked dry and turned upside down like drained shot glasses.  They are not shy about refills. 

For me, the taste is more like Jumping On Stage And Dancing in the Dark With Bruce Springsteen.  I really don’t know why it’s so good.  Anyone could make it, but I truly think it is because of the tree they come from (in the yard next door) and the mystical training I received. 

My neighbor was a sweet old lady who looked like my grandma.  This woman poured her soul and virtues and perhaps some gypsy magic into her yard.  She planted those trees in the disco era (when I was getting overspray from the satellite dishes, if you remember.)  About 15 years ago, she decided to teach me the humble art of canning and preserving.  She has since passed away, but I continue to can every year.  I’d like to tell you it’s to honor her memory, but the reality is, I despise it.  I dread it and curse the grueling process, yet I salivate at the chance to turn them into preserves.  This leads me to believe I’ve got a tad of the bipolar, but that’s another story.  All I know, is there is a force bigger than me which dictates it shall be done.  

I watch with a heavy heart as the plums start growing around March.  Little beady pellets of hell, swelling through the spring so that they can suck up my most precious week of summer and make me slack off on my laundry.  I find myself planning vacations around that week so I can be in town, even as I fantasize about sneaking in at night to pinch their little blossoming lives off the branch.  This would be easier than wasting ripe ones, easier to snuff them out before we had a chance to meet.  But they weave a spell.  One year, I fell off the 6 foot ladder while picking them and landed face down on the hard ground.  That happened to be the best batch of preserves ever.  

The new tree-owners are a young couple whom I adore, and they too are under the same spell.  We watch in June as the sun does its final trick and turns the fruit into glowing rubies.  We can’t bear the thought of a single one wasted.  We mine the internet for new ways to quickly use up the plums, cheap and easy shortcuts to keep up with the bumper crop.  But the plums laugh at us…"We are best used as preserves," they say condescendingly.  Do they care that I don’t really have 75 hours to go the long route?  I think not.  

I spend a day retooling my entire house to get ready for good old Plum Week.  I am bitter at having to put my life on hold for seven days, with an aching back and neglected family in my near future.  From my porch, I watch the hanging scoundrels (the plums, not my family.)  I look at their color and size and the way they look in the sun, but I say, “Not yet.”  

Then one day, it’s The Day.  In my head, I hear, “Now.”  I mutter and sigh as I take the claw/cage on the end of a broomstick and head next door.  I pass the cage through the branches like the donation basket at church.  I get little satisfaction at the jackpot the tree decides to drop in.  I remind you that at this point, I’m still full of resentment and dread at all the work ahead of me.  So much work for 5 bloody pints!

I hand pick certain ones and I can’t put it into words, but they are the ones that have three months of trapped sunshine in them.  I can smell several heady summer afternoons steaming from their skins.  My hands always know which ones to grab.  My husband is fascinated that I, a total screw-up in the kitchen, can use the same set of instructions as anyone else, and yet seem to create a one-of-a-kind orchestra in a jar. To tell you the truth, I’m morbidly curious as well.  He thinks, gosh, she really looks like she knows what she’s doing.  We both know I don’t know what I’m doing, and yet, somehow, I’m doing it by feeling my way and listening to the plums.

When I get them home, I am lulled by the age-old process of canning.  I like the concentration it forces upon me and suddenly I am multi-tasking.  I’ve got lids boiling here, the oven preheating there, the plums bubbling, the jars getting rinsed, the sugar and pectin getting measured.  All by little old me, pulling all the levers and pulleys of a huge machine, not overthinking it.  All that’s missing is a lit cigarette clenched between my teeth.  I do have my to-die-for playlist going on my iPod, because I believe if you’re in a great mood when you cook, you will produce things that taste fabulous and give joy to your guests.  It's the first step to world peace. 

For six hours, my kitchen looks like a butchery, complete with bloody floor and clothes.  There is red everywhere, even on my forehead and on the ceiling.  The kitchen is hot and the work gets faster and more critical.  I am sweating like a blacksmith as my face burns hot in front of the smelting pots.  We finally get to the crowd pleasing summit: the Pouring of the Boiling Gem Liquid Into The Glass.  I swaddle each full jar in a cloth and carry it like a warm newborn to the waiting arms of the cooling table.  

Miraculously, I always seem to estimate it to the last perfect plum.  I have just enough; not too much, not too little.  I attribute this to the good karma from my grandma’s magic stockpot and ladle.  I glance as my counter has two, then four, then twenty pints of home-wrecker preserves.   Suddenly, I hear the PING!!!! of every lid as each jar gives me the thumbs up that it has sealed the hatch.  I go from tired and depleted, to absolutely ready to propose.  

That’s how the transformation happens…my cold and bitchy heart starts to warm as these become like my offspring.  

But it doesn’t stop there.  These glass children have a hold on me.  When I started giving them out during those first years, I jealously hoarded them.  As I sent them off into the world of Texas, Arkansas and the East Coast, I had to check in on them to see if they arrived safely.  Were they loved? I hoped they represented me well.  One time, someone said, “Oops! I dropped it on the porch.”  Or this brutal confession: “Darn! I forgot about it and it spoiled in the car.”  My eyes narrowed, and I added their names to the list of the No Longer Deserving.   

Mistreat my jam, and you stab me in the heart.  Wink, wink. 

I look at the hours put in by me, the sun and God.  I think, that jar has my entire Sunday in it.  Made while listening to Van Halen, Prince and the Black Eyed Peas.  There’s a lot of stuff going on in that jar, and especially stuff that happened prior to that jar.  Those could be jars of the epoch one day. 

My husband said I could be the Plum Whisperer.  But I think perhaps, the plums are taming ME.   

I wanted to tell you this story for two reasons.  One is because a weight loss journey sometimes has to be placed on ‘pause.’   This is so that you can have your hard-earned plum jelly on fresh biscuits, to celebrate tree jewels and summer’s bounty.  

Secondly, I wanted to tell you about one thing I’m good at. 

Because this month, it wasn’t weight loss.   

Thank goodness that’s what they make July for!!!!