Sweet and sour
Jan. 9th, 2012 10:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceI finished the copy-edit. Rejoice, he said, in a voice like Eeyore.
Yeah, I know. We've been here before. You hit the end of something endless, and suddenly run out of road; it's all crash.
As witness, I didn't even finish my bottle of wine. Didn't want to. Work done, suddenly drinking alone loses its point. I cooked dinner, and ate, and watched a little TV but I seem to have lost my taste for that too; so I came up and noodled on the internet, and had a bath, and pretty soon now I'm going to bed.
But in the meantime, I have beenangsting thinking about stuff, and the removal of stuff. One of the many many things I need not to be taking to California with me is a box of preserving-jars: so obviously I should preserve some things, and give them to my friends to make them love me remember me by. And it is Seville season, and so I was thinking about marmalade (tho' they are rather large jars, but hey); and I happened to mention this to Karen and she said, "No, no! You must give me all the marmalade! All of it!!"
So then I was thinking about pickles and chutneys and so forth (I made a lime pickle, eg, that I am seriously proud of); and this evening my noodling took me to certain Vietnamese and wokkery sites, and - here's a question that I seriously need an answer to, if I am to up from these shores to those: why do Americans call it canning, when they put food into jars? To us it's pickling or preserving, it's named for the process not the container - but even in the US, aren't glass containers called jars? To me, cans are made of tin, and canning happens in factories. I went to a sardine-canning factory once, when I was a child. That was a fun day out. (Well, it kind of was, actually; it was in Vigo, in Spain. But even so. Hey, kids, let's take you to a fish factory...)
Anyway. I actually have a host of chutneys to give away anyway, for I cannot take them with me; but if anybody wants anything pickled before I leave, speak up. Will trade jars of food for empty cardboard boxes...
Yeah, I know. We've been here before. You hit the end of something endless, and suddenly run out of road; it's all crash.
As witness, I didn't even finish my bottle of wine. Didn't want to. Work done, suddenly drinking alone loses its point. I cooked dinner, and ate, and watched a little TV but I seem to have lost my taste for that too; so I came up and noodled on the internet, and had a bath, and pretty soon now I'm going to bed.
But in the meantime, I have been
So then I was thinking about pickles and chutneys and so forth (I made a lime pickle, eg, that I am seriously proud of); and this evening my noodling took me to certain Vietnamese and wokkery sites, and - here's a question that I seriously need an answer to, if I am to up from these shores to those: why do Americans call it canning, when they put food into jars? To us it's pickling or preserving, it's named for the process not the container - but even in the US, aren't glass containers called jars? To me, cans are made of tin, and canning happens in factories. I went to a sardine-canning factory once, when I was a child. That was a fun day out. (Well, it kind of was, actually; it was in Vigo, in Spain. But even so. Hey, kids, let's take you to a fish factory...)
Anyway. I actually have a host of chutneys to give away anyway, for I cannot take them with me; but if anybody wants anything pickled before I leave, speak up. Will trade jars of food for empty cardboard boxes...