Friday, September 01, 2006

Hokey Smokey

How I enjoyed cutting the crisp green apples and cooking them all up in a big pot, 12 lbs. worth for a big batch of apple butter. In went the finely grated zest and juice of 2 bright yellow lemons, cloves and cinnamon and sugar. Dad set up his food grinder out on the deck railing and we stood in the warm August sun churing out all this Christmasy smelling concoction. He scooped the sticky mass into the grinder and I turned the wheel. The discarded pulp plopped onto the gravel on the other side of the railing. Dad explained that we do it this was so as not to get the kitchen floor all sticky. The yellow jackets really loved the pile of apple mash lying on the gravel. So did the chickens.

The pan that would fit under the grinder would not hold all the resulting butter so we had to make several trips in and out of the kitchen emptying the pan (and thereby dripping on the floor).

The recipe was for baked apple butter. So as not to have to stand and stir the butter for an hour while it reduces and developes a spreadable consistency, we were instructed to place it in pots and bake it at 300 degrees overnight. We had it in the oven by 4:00 - perhaps overnight should have ended at 2:00 a.m. Perhaps the oven was too hot.

When I got up this morning and stepped out of the cottage, I was relieved and so happy that the air was clear of the fire smoke from the night before. I took a deep breath of the clean, fresh air - aaahhhh.
I stepped into the house and immediately noticed a strongly scorched, smokey smell in the house. 'Eeewww, what happened?' Dad was standing in front of the kitchen sink with two blackened pans. Beside him were 5 jars holding something that looked pure black. He had dutifully canned up the thick sludgy concotion but had not tasted it. I tasted it and it was truly scorched and had the consistency of tar.

It was a culinary failure of spectacular proportions, and now the house smelled as bad as the smoky air we had tried so hard to escape the night before. Ooh, and don't even get me started on the amount of clean up that little escapade generated!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

testing

Ken said...

All of your experiences in Gibbonsville land have made us a bit envious - except for a couple. Dave's air-conditioned tent comes to mind. The apple butter burn is another one that shows you are human after all. Other than a few glitches, it sounds like you have perfected the idyllic life.