Dilly PIckles

If flowering dill weren't so dern tasty when it's floating in a spicy brine, I'd put the stuff in vases all over my house. That yellow of the flowers is nearly the color of paint covering the walls of our living room and man, I cannot get enough.


Where was I? Oh yes, PICKLES. Usually I'm more of a refrigerator dills sort of a girl, thanks to the expert tutelage of my friend Gerik, but we really wanted to complete this trifecta of canning projects with something more savory. Tomato sauce seemed a bit risky and we'd heard mixed reviews of canned salsa, so with little hesitation we picked up this hefty bottle of vinegar at the store and mixed it up with several shades of carrot and bean.





Keeping with our habit of beer pairings, we sipped a dark porter whose name I can hardly recall. I swear that at the time the beverages were clouding our minds just enough to numb the swell of our ankles and dull our sense of time's passing, not enough to get sloppy in our sterilizing and incubate the makings of botulism. Promise.


In the end, this was probably our least successful of the three recipes, mostly because we lacked the foresight to anticipate how beautiful purple carrots when bathed in hot brine would turn the whole mess violet! Also, we should have erred on the side of stubby vegetables instead of tall ones because while processing them in boiling water, we lost some brine out of the jars. Now the tips of some of our vegetables protrude above their liquid, which is no way to craft a crunchy pickle. Worst case scenario, they'll grow mold. We were really too tired to worry much about it at the end of the day. Total cost for 8 quarts of pickles? $9. If they're inedible, we'll live.

From this insane project I believe we gleaned a few lessons:

1. Jam is best made in small batches to ensure you can get a nice pectinated result.
2. A dishwasher is not for chumps. It is one of modernity's conveniences and comes in handy for washing jars.
3. Refrigerator pickles are probably easier and just as tasty as canned ones. While living in California with year round produce, canning pickles may be actually unnecessary.
4. Three canning projects in one day is a bit of a stretch, but doable.
5. Holiday weekends are perfect settings for crazy projects.

{High Five!}

Full of Beans

Check out the texture on these beans that Bert brought us. He's learning lots in the way of roasting coffee, and shared a miniature batch of French roast with us last week. Grinding them up for brewing in the French press, they dissolved into papery, oily little flakes before my eyes; like some precious metal, they actually sparkled a little. The whole pot felt very ceremonious, delivered in that hand stamped tiny bag. It was a nice treat, a step above our usual fare.



I've been feeling like an especially lucky person recently. Bert brought us coffee and gave us a really amazing old Indian cookbook. Miriam gave us surplus heirloom tomatoes and quince jam. And Karrie gave me recently TWO lovely bottles of bitters out of the goodness of her heart. Whatever I did to have such generous friends, I do not know, but I'd like to become that sort of friend myself one of these days.

Today though, I'm happy to count these blessings and put off repayment until tomorrow.

Use of Space

Recently on a visit to my local coffee hole, I went to use the ladies' room and found they'd recently painted the walls. If memory serves, they went from being dark, black maybe, to now being starkly white. While black walls might be attempting to deter graffiti from accumulating, white walls almost certainly invite it and certainly the transition from black to white sends some sort of message.

Added to this, they've attached a whole slew of paint markers to the walls, strung up by chains to make marking territory that much easier. As I was sitting in there the other day, I got to thinking about spaces like this, truly bowing to destiny by encouraging what is probably inevitable.



I wonder how the same idea would carry in less contained spaces, that is more public spaces. Surrendering control intentionally, allowing use to shape the form of a place and watching as (human) nature unfolds.

Cupcake For Your Troubles

Turning in job applications for food places & retail spaces, I often feel pressure to purchase something while handing off a resume as a matter of course. The times I haven't done this, I feel like I may as well drop the crisply printed copy of my sum experience into the trash can instead.

On Thursday I went to apply at Love At First Bite, a small cupcakery in Berkeley and following my usual regimen, ordered a coconut cupcake while applying for their recently posted counter position. To my pleasant surprise, Pat (the bakery's owner & very nice lady) offered me a complimentary cupcake in exchange for my application. As by now I've learned, this is not customary in other such places and I so appreciated her respectful gesture, a subtle nod to my lack of income, that I tipped her a dollar. The little exchange put me in a lovely mood the rest of the day.

By the way, that 80's-issue athletic themed Pee-Chee folder is my new resume holster and I rather like it...


**EEK! Not five minutes after posting, Pat called me for an interview....EEK!