Life in Nowhereland, Part 2 - Fruit

In Part 1, I mentioned we lived for a period of time in rural North San Diego County. Why? Because the husband wanted to live near his best friend and his best friend wanted to get away from it all, grow his own food, and build his own church. Did I want to be there? No. I knew very well that food came from grocery stores with parking lots and I already had enough of his church. However, I left civilization because I thought a good wife should support her husband’s goals and ambitions. That’s what my mother taught me. We were both stupid. I’ve previously described our rural home in great detail. What I’d neglected to mention was that we had no air conditioning of any sort and we lived in the land of eternal sunshine where the thermometer often topped 115 degrees. Not all of it was bad. Nothing is entirely bad. I made two best friends for life when I answered an ad in a Science Fiction newsletter only to discover the authors lived a half a mile down the road. Other than that, it was pretty much all bad. Today I’d like to share my adventures with fruit, ending with the Mystery of the Disappearing Plumbs, just to support my claims that I’m not born to be a pioneer woman. The prevailing culture among our circle of friends was that we should be vegetarians and make everything ourselves. The fact that we were raised in the warm arms of city life where marinara sauce was sold in jars was of no interest to my husband. No, we would till the land and reap our rewards, having no qualifications or training whatsoever. I guess we kind of duplicated my parents’ vain attempt to be chicken farmers, only we didn’t eat chicken. It was deep summer, or whatever time of year you pick tomatoes. Friends told us of a commercial (organic, of course) farm where you could pick your own, $10 per pail. It was a BYOB affair: bring your own bucket. So, insane person that I was, I made my way to the growing fields with a bucket on each arm. On that day the thermometer topped 120, but it was okay. I brought a hat. My so-called friends neglected to tell me you have to bend over to pick tomatoes. I will never eat another strawberry, zucchini, radish, or other field crop without bowing my head in a moment of silence for the fallen heroes who harvest our foods by hand, get paid buckwheat, live in sheds, send all their money home to families in far-away lands, and die from backache. Just short of heat stroke I stopped picking and staggered home with 100 pounds of tomatoes squashed into two big pails— alright, maybe it was 20 pounds, but it felt like two elephants. Then I realized my mistake. Having harvested fresh fruit, you need to do something with it before it goes bad, which in that heat takes in about three hours. Out came every pot I owned and in plopped the tomatoes. My kitchen was a sizzling hothouse reeking of warm tomato juice. Once the glop was reduced to pulp, I dumped in all the Italian herbs I owned in a frantic race to make spaghetti sauce before someone could start asking for dinner. I don’t know who was sweatier, me or the red slop spattering everywhere. Eventually, the sauce got poured into canning jars which went into the shed; the pans, stove, walls, and floors got scrubbed; and I emerged the victor. I felt really good about my output. When I finally ran away from home, I left behind a shelf lined with homemade tomato sauce for someone else to toss. It was right above the shelf lined with pomegranate jelly. I told you we had pomegranate trees, right? Why does everything mature at the same time? Why can’t we harvest pomegranates in winter? Never mind, the little apples that Eve ate were falling off my trees and it was up to me to keep them from going to waste. However, this time I got smart. Rather than peel pomegranates in the kitchen, I set up a makeshift food factory on a shaded porch and put the children to work helping me. After peeling and pulling for hours and only harvesting six pomegranates, I gave up on the recommended approach and dragged out a 1930s metal juice squeezer my mother used her entire married life. It was a heavy device where you lifted a big handle, placed half an orange on a fluted dome, shoved down on the lid handle with all your might, and waited for a little juice to dribble into a cup. That kind. Dressing us all up in my husband’s blue work shirts, I started sawing pomegranates in half, squeezing them, collecting the juice in bowls, and throwing all the vitamins and nutrients away with the smashed rinds. The children just played in juice. Do you know what pomegranate juice is good for? Dyeing things purple. It makes a fabulous dye on hands, faces, shirts, tables, patio furniture and concrete. Purple everywhere and forever. Add some pectin and sugar, do some boiling, and you end up with little jars of pomegranate jelly that would cost $120 each if time and effort were factored in. We didn’t eat those either. What we did eat were the plumbs and that’s because I gave up, cut them in half, tossed the pits, drowned them in sugar, shoved them in plastic bags and froze them. They tasted great if boiled and poured over vanilla ice cream. Before I resorted to freezing the plumbs, I did try canning a few. That’s how I learned how marshmallows were invented. If you let sugary fruit juice boil over the pan and into the burner wells, the fire turns the sugar syrup into sweet marshmallowy puffs. You have to buy new burner wells because the residue never really washes off, but if you scape off a piece of burnt puff and taste it you’ll see what I mean. You may be asking yourself why everything I’ve mentioned so far ended up boiling over. It’s true what they say about watched pots never boiling. I could never really watch a pot because while I was boiling, I was also trying to prevent my toddler from dismantling the toilet or doing whatever he did when Mommy wasn’t looking. Alas, in spite of all my trickery even the successful plumbs proved to be too much for me. The trees dropped fruit faster than I could cook or freeze them. In desperation, I snuck out one night after everyone was asleep, filled up my buckets with all the plumbs I could find, then dug deep holes near the back fence and buried them all. Yes, I did. I stole out in the wee hours of the night to escape the torture of hearing plumbs scream at me, “Do something before we turn into a mausoleum of rotted sweetness!” I never told anyone my secret until after I ran away. My ex husband still doesn’t know. Don’t tell him I told you.