Normally canning tomatoes goes like this:
Get up before dawn, without an alarm set, just from the excitement. A sensation not unakin to Christmas morning.
Tie hair back
Brush teeth
Wear something that likes tomato
Tiptoe downstairs
Make tea
Peer outside
Turn on Puccini
Put blanching kettles up to boil
Wash tomatoes
By the time it's Saturday morning for the rest of the world, serious progress has been made. I feel virtuous and aesthetically pleased. I feel like I've been to church.
This year, er, not exactly that.
Everything was off schedule: our house, the market, the lands. We had just gotten home from PEI, and I had placed an order for heirloom San Marzanos. When I saw them, it was love at first sight. Yet to start all of this on a Monday, one day before a Big Family Visit, and work deadlines looming, made for less than ideal conditions.
And so: Wash. Blanch. Grind. Cook. Can. All of it in fits and starts. R. did the bulk of it: early, late, in small spaces in between. It all felt disjointed; hollow; burdensome.
Ah, but then, a moment of grace-- As I was coming home from a late meeting, and several breaths before I turned the key in the front door, I was already able to detect the glorious scent of my tomatoes emanating from every brick and stone: sweet yet, now, burnished; their depth discernable. My senses trilled with them. Is it any wonder they call them love apples? It was the incense of our home. It was church after all.
Copyright 2008. All rights reserved for photos and text.
Comments