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frog's egg jam exchange & lana wilson

updated thu 10 jul 03

 

primalmommy on tue 8 jul 03


Between pounding thunderstorms my kids and I went out to the yard to
pick gooseberries this afternoon. If you aren't familiar with
gooseberry, it's a thorny bush loaded with plump, green berries the size
of your thumbnail, hanging in rows like christmas tree ornaments...
translucent, lime green, with ribs on the skin like the seams of a
parachute, running from stem end to blossom end. Remember punch ball
balloons? like that. Crunchy/juicy, sweet/sour, they grow wild around
here, and when planted tame, will make a new bush every place the old
one puts an berry-laden elbow into the soil.

Every year we make gooseberry jam... the old fashioned, cooked-down,
kettle kind, since the berries are loaded with their own pectin. It
means sitting and pinching stem and blossom ends off nine cups of
berries at a time, which my kids and I do around a table like some folks
play cards -- talking, singing, making up jokes.

Once canned into jam, though, the lime green color fades, and the brown
inner seeds seem to float suspended in the cloudy gelatinous stuff...
like clusters of frog eggs. So we call it frog's egg jam. It is just
incomparably delicious... functional, if not particularly decorative.

Somewhere along the way it occurred to me that a handful of bright
purple elderberries (another local native that I grow organically in the
back yard) would add something to my gooseberry recipe... so this year's
frog egg jam is pink, and looks much more attractive on the average
english muffin...

My point: I would be willing to offer up my own little regional bit of
cuisine for our international goodie exchange. Organically grown,
processed using child labor ;0) and with all meticulous USDA boiling
water bath timetables... I can (and do) also make fruit-juice-sweetened
jam... and will (if the rain pauses tomorrow) be going after the heavily
laden red currant bushes for my next batch... I don't have enough red
raspberries here for jam but we go picking, ditto for blueberries... all
our own mulberries and cherries end up in pies instead of jam jars.
(mulberry stems don't pull out so we cook them up, soft purple stems and
all... call them "bug leg pies".)

So anybody who is interested, let me know. Offer good while limited
supplies last. If you're just a nice clayarter who wants some jam I have
those little gift-size jars... let me know and I will send you some.
Enough clayarters have sent me random acts of kindness that I feel a
need to roll that karmic wheel...

If you want to trade for something, I might consider sending a bigger
jar. For, say, one of Arti's carved teabowls... a lockerbie kickwheel,
maybe... a Bison tool.. or something nice for my burgeoning collection
(did I mention I am getting a Richard Aerni pot for my birthday?)

And as for Lana Wilson... allow me to say (in my usual mature style) --
"neener neener"... I am going to the Appalachian Center for Crafts in 2
weeks, (my annual pilgrimage) -- to a week long Lana workshop (woohoo!)
I can't wait... I love the ACC, and some of my old clay-camp buddies are
going to be there. My first workshop there was with mel and Dannon,
which set the bar pretty high... but I have never been disappointed. I
came damn close to disappointment when those dangerous Clennel
foreigners weren't allowed across the border but Hendley-Held-Hostage
made it all OK...

I loved Lana Wilson's article about procrastination. So many people talk
about time like it's given out more generously to some than others. That
dance of work and time, play and commitment, necessity and priority is a
fascination for me. Don't you love folks who say "I wish I had TIME
to... ( be a potter, homeschool my kids, read clayart, have a garden,
whatever) -- and then wind up with, "gotta run! can't miss "survivor"
and "bachelor" and "friends"... yikes. I tease my hubby about spending
his saturdays watching men on TV work on their houses (and fish and cook
and play golf and etc.) ... this time I talked him into coming to ACC
with me, he's going to turn bowls on a lathe. With my luck he'll end up
as obsessed with wood as I am with clay. Then NOTHING will get done
around here...

I do need to sleep occasionally, so off I go...

Yours, Kelly in Ohio... where molly turned 5 sunday and so tomorrow for
the 4th day running will get up and put on the fairy costume grandma
gave her and off she goes, wings trailing behind... what a lot of
snapshots in my head this weekend... the pontoon boat regatta watching
fireworks and fireflies on a little michigan lake... a little girl in my
clay class who so detests the feel of clay but so wants to make things,
moving from pot to wet sponge to pot to wet sponge... my berry-smeared
fairy on her tip toes after my crunchy snow peas on the vine.. her
brothers hanging their newly tie-dyed shirts on the line, proud and with
rainbow fingers...

thunderstorms this week so sudden and violent that I have made a
rug-nest in the corner of the basement in case I need to move the kids
in the night... (our impromptu homeschool lesson this week, the names
and shapes of lightening strikes...) a week of hot, wet, steamy,
weed-growing, zucchini-blooming, jam making weather. Not the soft,
constant rain of Eugene, Oregon but a branch-waving, rumble-flash,
pounding torrent on my kitchen windows, the henhouse windows, the rabbit
hutch, the birdhouse roof, that makes us all grateful for shelter and a
breath of cool.



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