Vinegar, sugar and pretty jars can get you through a lot. Or, have you tried my mango chutney?
By Martha Frankel
When I first moved to the Hudson Valley in the early 1970s, I met a group of older women who let me in on an important secret—vinegar and sugar could change and rescue anything. Or at least any fruit or vegetable. They taught me to can stone fruit and tomatoes, showed me how to pickle cucumbers and carrots. I sweated with them in their kitchens and then started doing it in my own.
Like everything else I’ve ever loved, I became totally addicted to it. Every late summer I would make 50 quarts of sour dill pickles, one for each week. I canned peaches and plums, and the rule was: no opening them ’til the first snow. By March, we’d be shoveling fruit into our mouths, trying to finish them before strawberries came into season. I pickled huge jars of cauliflower and spring onions and every single vegetable that came my way.
I once entered my pickles into the Ulster County Fair, already imagining how the blue ribbon would look in a frame in my kitchen. But they didn’t taste the pickles, they just judged on what they looked like. In the end, the prettiest jar won, and I was left in tears.
I made jams and jellies, chutneys and sauces, put pretty colored ribbons around them and always had the perfect hostess gift.
As you may recall, at the end of August 2011 Hurricane Irene swept through these parts. First it took out
the bridge to our house, then it deposited six feet of water in the building where I had my office and, although my office was on the second floor, the staircase got washed out.
I was home with bushels of fruits and vegetables. I was rescued but had no electricity for 17 days. The fruit rotted. The vegetables got moldy. I put the canner away and didn’t take it out for a decade.
I learned how to eat fruits and vegetables when they were in season—strawberries in the spring, melons and peaches in summer, apples and pears in fall. I stopped hoarding and just enjoyed what was plentiful.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I came around to canning again. When hurricane season starts up, I soothe my PTSD by making small batches of the things I love—mango chutney, peach salsa, preserved lemons, spicy fish sauce. I make a few jars of each, which I savor. And now I see it makes each bite sweeter.
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