Something Came Over Me

 

It must be the ghosts of my grandmothers and great-grandmothers that nudge me into things that I should not even think about doing.  Somewhere they are sitting around in their easy chairs, saying to each other, “Want to see something funny?  Let’s convince her to do this!”

It was the muscadines that started it.  A friend had a bumper crop of the tart, aromatic fruits of the fall, and I was a lucky recipient of part of the bounty.  I ate several, squeezing the skin to get the juice out and then popping the inner fruit into my mouth and spitting out the seeds.  (There is an exact method to the eating of the muscadine.)  But as I enjoyed them, something came over me. There were too many to eat.  Maybe I could make jelly.

In my almost 70 years, I have never made jelly.  I have helped my mom with jelly a few times, but I had only a vague notion of the process.  I knew it involved sterilizing jars and lids and boiling the jars of jelly in a big pot of water.  Big pots of boiling water have always intimidated me, but something came over me last Friday and I started looking at Pinterest for instructions on making muscadine jelly. Pinterest is one of the most dangerous places on the internet.  More disasters have occurred as a result of viewing its cheerful pages than can be counted.  There should be a warning at the top of the page for people like me.

I found recipes with headings like “Real Southern Muscadine Jelly,” or “Simplest Muscadine Jelly,” or “Easy 3 Ingredient Muscadine Jelly.”  I have found over the years that my expectations of simple and easy do not always line up with other peoples’ idea of simple and easy.  I was perplexed at directions that mentioned hot water baths and inversion methods and jelly bags.  There were recipes that seemed to leave out details like the proportion of sugar and juice, or exactly how long to cook the mixture and how to tell when it becomes jelly.  I got sidetracked reading about the inversion method because a lively argument took place in the comments about that method, with several people giving dire warnings of botulism and potential death and the author of the recipe insisting that her mother and grandmother taught her to make jelly, everyone in her family from the beginning of time had made it that way, and no one had died yet.  The jelly bag was another mystery.  It said to take cheesecloth, gather the cooked fruit into a bag and hang it over the pot, letting the liquid drip into the container.  What do you hang it from and where can you even find cheesecloth now?

I got out Mama’s big stock pot and my biggest cooking pot and put the washed fruit in the pot, covered it with water and turned on the stove eye.  I had to search for the potato masher, which was the suggested implement for mashing the juice out of the fruit.  So far, so good.  The aroma of the fruit filled the house and I had thoughts of hot biscuits on winter mornings with jelly made by my own hands. 

The first inkling that I might not quite be as prepared as I should be came when I started looking for small jars.  I managed to scrounge up what I thought might be enough jars, then realized I had no lids.  A trip to town was necessary – surely the Dollar General still had jar lids.  They didn’t.  But I needed a few other things and decided I might as well pick them up while I was there.  Twenty dollars later, I left for another store.  I found the lids there, along with thirty more dollars’ worth of stuff.  Chicken breast was on sale and I felt the need for donuts.  Okay, this jelly was going to be more expensive than I anticipated.  But the muscadines were free so there was that.

An hour later, I had used every pan in my kitchen, several different strainers and I had three containers boiling on the stove. 

I was rapidly running out of counter space and was feeling the beginning of panic.  The instructions said to put the jelly in the sterilized jars immediately and cover with the sterilized lids.  I had no idea how critical it was to do this immediately or how much time immediately meant.  The recipe seemed to include an incredible amount of sugar and was a little vague on the length of cooking time.  There was some kind of complicated process for using a spoon to dip out some of the liquid and deduce whether it was done by what it did on the spoon.  I could have used some help from my ancestors at this point.  They were too busy laughing to oblige.

I got the jelly in the jars, lids on and rings screwed on the top.  Now another dilemma arose.  How to get the jars in the pot of boiling water without burning myself or breaking the jars.  It didn’t occur to me until much later that I could have put the jars in while the water was still cool and just bring the whole thing to a boil.  Those first jars were wrought with danger, until I figured out that I could hold them on the top with my tongs and slide a ladle under the bottom.  Easier said than done, and one jar slipped and turned upside down in the water.  I don’t know if that mattered or not but by then I didn’t really care.  I was so busy worrying about getting the jars situated that I forgot to look at the clock, so I had to guess when fifteen minutes had passed. 

I fished the jars out, set them on the counter and looked around at the mess I had made.  I thought things were going okay when I started hearing the little pops that meant the jars were sealing.  That was about the extent of my knowledge of canning food.  When they had cooled a little, I moved them to the dining room table.  The jelly was beautiful, a clear light purple.  It just seemed to be more like syrup than jelly.  Surely it should be a little thicker than this.  Two hours later, the kitchen was still a mess, and I still had syrup.

 I had been at this now for two days with eight little jars of syrup to show for it. And I had a whole bunch more juice left in the refrigerator.  I did some research and found that you could open all the jars, pour the stuff back in the pot, add more pectin, and cook it longer, repeating the sterilizing of jars and boiling of the filled jars.

Sunday after lunch, I went back to the store and bought more jars, lids, pectin, a better set of tongs, and a pot of mums.  Twenty-five more dollars went out of my bank account. I was not going to let this thing beat me.  It was now day three of this project, and I was convinced that the price of jelly, which I always thought was outrageous, was a bargain and I would never complain about it again.  Those people who make jelly deserve every penny they charge.  I figure mine cost me at least $15 a jar.

I decided to start fresh with the extra juice in the refrigerator and decide what to do about the eight jars of syrup later.  I mixed the juice and an obscene amount of sugar in my big pot, sterilized my new jars and lids, and added twice as much pectin as my recipe called for.  When it seemed the juice was beginning to thicken, I poured it into the jars and put them in the stock pot.  This time I waited until the jars were inside before bringing the water to a boil and I remembered to look at the clock.  When I removed the jars, they immediately started sealing and I took that as a good omen.  I decided to tackle yesterday’s syrup, so I emptied it into my pot, added another box of pectin with reckless abandon and sterilized the empty jars. 

Another hour later, and I was amazed to see that today’s new batch was beginning to thicken a little.  After supper, I looked again and all fourteen little jars had JELLY in them!  Real, honest to goodness muscadine jelly! 

In my quest for jelly recipes, I ran across a recipe for muscadine cake that sounds good.  I still have just about as much juice as it calls for.  Tomorrow I will go to the store again for the ingredients I don’t have and try to find my bundt pan.  At least I am familiar with the process of making a cake and it doesn’t involved pots of boiling water.

Whatever the fever was that caused me to decide to make jelly at this point in my life, I believe it has passed.  I hope my ancestors are satisfied and have had their laugh.  Next time they decide to inspire me to do something uncharacteristic, I hope they will pick something easier, like maybe chopping firewood or butchering a hog. 

 

The Other Me

 

Sometimes I think there are two of me.  One of me doesn’t cook much.  The other occasionally has these days when something comes over me and I am compelled to do things I have never done before, like cook a turkey or make my mama’s rolls.  This morning it was pickles.  I have never in my life made pickles of any kind.  Today I made pickles.  Whether they are edible pickles or not remains to be seen.

It started with the corn.  I picked a laundry basket full of sweet corn early this morning to “put up” in the freezer.  Thankfully, the hot dry June weather didn’t seem to hurt the corn, or the cucumbers either for that matter.  So I got up early to try to beat the heat and pulled off enough corn to make two batches, I hoped.  As I was pulling corn, I kept almost stepping on cucumbers that were planted right next to the corn.  I hated for them to go to waste, so I picked them, even though I’m not fond of cucumbers at all.  I do like pickles, however, and I think that’s where the other me took over and persuaded me that making pickles would be a worthy thing to do on a hot Fourth of July day. I am sure my mama, if she happened to look down from heaven, was astonished.

It was getting hot when I sat at the picnic table and shucked the corn, which filled two large dishpans I found in the basement. 

I put on my favorite John Prine music on the porch and went to work.  It took about one album worth of music to finish.  It took most of the rest of the day to cut off the corn, cook it and put it in the freezer. I was reminded of what a small amount of corn remains to actually be eaten after you cut it off the cob.  A large laundry basket makes one batch of four packages, in case anyone wonders.

 In between tasks, I hunted a recipe for refrigerator pickles, which seemed like the easiest pickles to make.  The instructions say that they have to sit in the refrigerator for three days before eating them.  So, it will be later in the week before I know if they are edible.  They were pretty simple to make; the hardest part was scrubbing off the sticky residue from heating the vinegar, sugar and salt that was poured over them.  Naturally, I spilled it down the sides of the jar and on the kitchen counter.  I also used up all my sugar and salt and almost all the vinegar.

By 5:30, I was too tired to go to the Fourth of July fireworks event in town.  And I still had to get rid of all those corn cobs, water the tomatoes (see my previous story about that!) and feed the horses.  So, I ate two ears of corn then ended up sitting on the front porch with Scout, Sophie and Bear, enjoying the fireworks in the distance, listening to Willie Nelson’s Picnic on the radio and wondering how much more corn I can pick and what to do with the rest of those cucumbers.  Sophie’s puppies slept through the fireworks and Willie Nelson.

I guess this is the same other me who used to make almost all my own clothes.  I also did crafts.  Today, I hardly recognize that person.  One Christmas, I made a couple of dozen Raggedy Ann dolls to sell for extra Christmas money.  I even made a quilt one time.  I think back on that now and wonder who that person was.  If someone told me now I had to make a Raggedy Ann doll, I would just say “shoot me now.”  I can’t even bring myself to hem up a pair of pants I bought a year ago and still haven’t worn.  I also have a pair of curtains that need to be hemmed before I can hang them.  I’m not sure that will ever happen.  I still have a big box somewhere full of leftover craft supplies.  I kept it because I always thought when I retired, I might take up crafting again.  Hah!  That’s not going to happen unless that other me returns.  If she does, please, someone come and check on me.

Mama's Rolls

 

You can ask anybody around here and they will tell you that my mama was a good cook.  You can especially hear it from the children she kept in her “retirement” years when she baby sat a couple dozen kids during their growing up years.  And you can hear it from their rueful parents, who will tell you how many times they heard, and still hear, “it’s okay, but it’s not as good as Gertrude’s.” 

The good cook gene seems to have skipped me, although I can do okay with some things.  Maybe because I spent most of my growing up years riding horses, working with my 4-H calves, pigs and lambs and avoiding anything that was too girly.  Or maybe because I had my nose stuck in a book so much of the time or was busy writing my own stories.  I wish I had paid more attention to how my grandmother created her homemade fudge and lemon pie.  I wish I had asked more questions about exactly how Mama mixed up her cornbread dressing and, most importantly, her homemade rolls.  I have the recipe, but the directions are a little vague about some things.

I am almost embarrassed to admit that I am 68 years old and have never cooked a turkey.  Or made Mama’s homemade rolls.  But this year, two years after Mama died, I offered to have Thanksgiving at the house for Mama’s family, a group that could range between a dozen people or two dozen.  My aunt in Maury County had Thanksgiving the last couple of years of Mama’s life, when it got to be too much for her to cope with, and last year we skipped holidays altogether because of the pandemic.  Back in the early fall, my aunt mentioned how great it would be to have dinner again around our big table and I said, before I had time to think about it much, that I would have Thanksgiving this year.  

I have to admit, I had a few qualms about my plans, when I had more time to mull it over.  I had never cooked a meal like this for 20 people.  I had cooked meals for small groups.  For large groups, I had served finger foods, sandwiches, chips, brownies and cookies, but it was casual entertaining at its most literal.  Casual, like telling someone, “the crackers are in the cabinet right beside the sink” or “the glasses are over the sink.”  I used to have a waffle brunch on New Year’s Day, but someone else cooked the waffles and all I had to do was fry bacon and sausage and put out the plates and forks.

This was different.  Turkey, dressing, corn, peas, mac and cheese, my mom’s homemade rolls, two kinds of pie.  And then, just to make things more interesting, I decided to use my mom’s good china and crystal.  If I am going to do this, I might as well go the whole way.

I went to the store every day last week.  I went twice on Wednesday, Thanksgiving eve.  I had decided to make a fudge pie.  After emptying one entire pantry cupboard, I discovered that I had no cocoa.  I also had to empty an entire cabinet to find the container of sage I was almost sure I had bought last year.  So, Wednesday morning, off I went to search almost bare grocery shelves for cocoa.  Then, Wednesday afternoon, I discovered that I had no appropriate cheese for a last-minute casserole I thought we needed. (We didn’t.)

I looked up cooking turkey so often on Google that I started getting suggested turkey sites every time I logged on.  First, I had to figure out how long it would take to thaw.  Then I had to cipher how long to cook the thing.  Fifteen minutes per pound was the most common answer to that, which meant multiplication and thoughts of “that can’t be right.”  A turkey is not the easiest thing to handle, especially when directions call for rubbing it with oil.  I had plenty of suggestions from friends, including to buy a cooked turkey from someone.  That felt like cheating, however, so I persevered through the do-it-yourself route.  As I tend to do sometimes, I became obsessed with cooking turkeys, during my waking hours and my dreams. 

The rolls were another endeavor that became larger than life.  My mom had this roll recipe that produced the lightest, fluffiest, tastiest rolls in the known world.  She made them every Christmas and Thanksgiving for decades.  Since I had already gone for broke on this meal, I decided to tackle “Gertrude’s rolls” too.  Why not?  I did at least have sense enough to make (and eat) a couple of trial batches.  The first was edible, just barely.  The second were pretty good, but not exactly like Mama’s.  I did what I usually do – I researched making rolls on Google to try and figure out what I was doing wrong.  I concluded that the main thing wrong was that I am not Gertrude, but it did seem that I had been a little overzealous in the mixing of the dough.  I hoped the third time would be the charm.

On Monday I took inventory of dishes.  I think I have mentioned several times before that I live in a house that is over 100 years old, lived in by five generations.  Several generations left dishes in the house when they passed on.  So, there was no shortage.  What there was is a shortage of dessert plates.  I would have sworn my mom’s china had dessert plates or bread plates or whatever you call them.  If it does, I can’t find them.  I had options – I could pull out another entire set of china that belonged to my great grandmother.  I could use a mishmash of small plates, or I could just use paper plates for the pie.  I don’t always do well with a lot of options.  I found myself obsessing over dessert plates almost as much as over the turkey.  Turns out, nobody cared what kind of plates they used for dessert and most of them just used the same plate they ate their meal on.

On Tuesday, I discovered that there was a dead mouse, or mice, somewhere in the vicinity of the hallway that led to the kitchen.

On Wednesday, the dogs brought part of a deer they found somewhere and presented it as their contribution to Thanksgiving.  Scout scattered torn papers faster than I could pick them up.

I saw a post on facebook about what to do about dogs during Thanksgiving, to keep them from bothering guests as they eat.  I started reading it but after the first tip, I realized that the author had obviously never owned a dog.  “Feed the dog his meal at the same time the family is eating their meal,” it read.  Unless your family can eat an entire meal in less than one minute, that’s not going to work.  Or maybe it’s just my dogs that can inhale their food quicker than I can unfold my napkin.  I didn’t finish the rest of the article.  My family is used to dogs anyway.

I had a mild mental breakdown Wednesday afternoon, becoming convinced that people might leave the table still hungry.  Something about this house, where I am sure no guest ever left the dining room without being full, must have brought this on.  I can still remember my mama and my grandmother serving three different meats, two kinds of pie, and two kinds of cake when the only guests were the preacher and his wife.  I made an extra pie, then got up Thursday morning and made brownies and a pineapple casserole.  By late Wednesday night, I had stopped hoping for the turkey to be good and just hoped not to kill anyone with it being under-cooked.

Come Thursday morning, the house at least smelled like Thanksgiving.  I broke one of my best casserole dishes.  Four people were subtracted from the guest list because of an ear infection. The turkey turned out tender and juicy and DONE.  The cornbread dressing was pretty good for an amateur, but when my aunt arrived and mentioned gravy, I could only give her a blank, deer in the headlights look.  It was probably a good thing I forgot about it, because my gravy making skills are hit and miss and she offered to make it. Even more amazing were Mama’s rolls.  Either she intervened from above or my experimentation and research paid off because they were pretty close to what she made.  My aunt, two cousins and I sampled them right out of the oven, and we all agreed they were good.  We had way too much food and I am still eating pie and brownies, three days after the feast.  Scout had his first taste of Thanksgiving leftovers Thursday night and now gives me an incredulous look when I fill his bowl with plain old puppy food at mealtime.  I’m happy about the abundance of leftover food, since I am way too tired to even think about cooking anything else. Leftover Thanksgiving food beats almost any other kind of food anyway.

When my aunt was packing up her leftovers to go home and everyone was filling traditional plastic containers of each other’s leftovers to take, we briefly talked about Christmas dinner at her house.  She asked if I was willing to tackle the rolls for that feast.  At that moment, I felt like I had been awarded a gold medal.  Now, if I can just remember exactly what I did that last time.  Maybe I need to make (and eat) a couple more practice batches.  Scout will eat them, even I don’t.  And this time, I don’t have to cook the turkey!