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Sufficient unto [someone else altogether]
Jun. 30th, 2012 09:20 amIt takes a village to raise a barn, we're told. Sooner or later I'm going to introduce California to the raised pork pie, which is a wholly different matter - but in the meantime, there is apparently no need to be self-sufficient in fruit, in a valley where other people are sufficient unto the day and very likely tomorrow also.
Friends come around with bags of lemons, until such time as my own baby tree is able to support my habit.
More immediately, friends have found that they don't after all have an apricot tree, oh no. They have three apricot trees.
I have been furnished with, um. Conservatively, five kilos of apricots? Very likely more than that, and all on the firm condition that none of them make their way back in our friends' direction, in any form whatsoever.
I may be unsound on transformative literature, but I'm big into transformative fruit. There will very likely be a lamb-and-apricot event in our immediate future; in the meantime, I am playing this morning with an apricot preserve.
It begins with making a sugar syrup. This begins with Chaz ruining a panful of sugar-and-water, because that is what happens. It is what has always happened: syrup or caramel, whichever directions I follow (stir constantly! stir with metal spoons only! never stir at all! brush down the sides with water! don't ever brush down the sides with water! don't use water at all!), I always end up with a crystallised mess. Sometimes I never find a solution (hee, d'you see what I did there?). This time I started again with a small pan and a metal spoon and brushing-down-the-sides-with-water, and lo: it neither burned nor seized nor exploded, and I have sugar syrup, tra-la. Which I have now transferred through three separate saucepans in the search for the right size to simmer apricots. Which we are now doing, while jars sterilise in the oven. Now I am going to drink a second pot of coffee, because I have earned it.
Friends come around with bags of lemons, until such time as my own baby tree is able to support my habit.
More immediately, friends have found that they don't after all have an apricot tree, oh no. They have three apricot trees.
I have been furnished with, um. Conservatively, five kilos of apricots? Very likely more than that, and all on the firm condition that none of them make their way back in our friends' direction, in any form whatsoever.
I may be unsound on transformative literature, but I'm big into transformative fruit. There will very likely be a lamb-and-apricot event in our immediate future; in the meantime, I am playing this morning with an apricot preserve.
It begins with making a sugar syrup. This begins with Chaz ruining a panful of sugar-and-water, because that is what happens. It is what has always happened: syrup or caramel, whichever directions I follow (stir constantly! stir with metal spoons only! never stir at all! brush down the sides with water! don't ever brush down the sides with water! don't use water at all!), I always end up with a crystallised mess. Sometimes I never find a solution (hee, d'you see what I did there?). This time I started again with a small pan and a metal spoon and brushing-down-the-sides-with-water, and lo: it neither burned nor seized nor exploded, and I have sugar syrup, tra-la. Which I have now transferred through three separate saucepans in the search for the right size to simmer apricots. Which we are now doing, while jars sterilise in the oven. Now I am going to drink a second pot of coffee, because I have earned it.