"Gonna Eat Me Allot of Peaches"

"Gonna move out to the country, gonna eat me allot of peaches...peaches come from a can they were put there by a man...da-da-da-da-peaches!" I think that's how the song goes. Anyway, everyone knows peaches don't actually come from a can. Although we do call it canning, they come from a jar. Lots and lots of jars.
Do you know how they get in those jars? Child labor. Slave labor. Child-slave labor actually. When I was roughly eight years old my family, which FYI consisted more of kids than adults by a 2:1 ratio, went peach picking. We picked eight bushels of peaches. Do you know how much a bushel is? Me neither exactly, but it's like allot! I know this because I got to experience each bushel individually every step of the canning way it seemed. Picking them seemed to take hours and hours. But when you're eight your units of time and other measures are a bit different than grown ups. For example I know for a fact that it took us long enough to make necessary my mom's explanation of how to ration personal resources that you didn't even know you had. How to not only ration your water so that you wouldn't run out of water, but how to drink it in a way that will allow you to hold out on using the bathroom as long as humanly possible yet without becoming dehydrated. Also, how you should keep your sweatshirt on for as long as possible-even though you're hot and sweaty and dying to take it off-so that when you do take it off...you know even now as I'm recalling this one it's making less sense to me than it did the day she explained it. I think it was something like, so when you did take it off it would feel really, really good and the sun from the rest of the day wouldn't feel so hot. This was stuff she picked up from picking crops out in the farm lands of nowhere Washington when she was in high school. See, again I hadn't had the chance to learn any of this because I was, again, only eight!
As bad as the picking had seemed, it was nothing compared to the endless days of canning ahead. We first layed out all the peaches one by one in rows on top of blankets and sleeping bags in the parlour. This way after my brother and I were done with our schoolwork (yes this family homeshooled-big surprise) everyday we'd go around and gently, gently squeeze each peach to see which ones were ripe enough to be canned that day. After collecting the appropriate peaches we had to do our quota of peach peeling for the day. My mom would boil them and then put them in cold water in the sink and then we'd peel them-I'm sorry, is this just as agonizing to read about as it was to do?
Let me fast forward. We eventually had enough giant jars of peaches to fill the basement. My dad even had to build or somehow acquire cabinets the size of armoirs to store these jars in. Unfortunately, I believe we even had a hefty number of jars remaining when it was time for us to move and we then had to carefully, pack and move the fruits of our labors making them labors once more.
Needless to say I've had an aversion to canning anything really, but especially peaches ever since. Fast forward seventeen years later and I finally let a friend convince me to can peaches together. I really had to gear up mentally for this. I researched it online and it didn't seem too complicated or involved once you had the proper equipment. And contrary to urban myth, it could be done in just one day! So I limited the peaches and jars that I would commit to. I resolved to do it in my own kitchen thinking that if things went south I could just stop. I could quit. I could cease to can if I wanted to because I'm a grown up now and I could make decisions like that without having to explain myself to anyone. I continued to say things like this to myself in hopes that I would succeed in convincing myself of such.
The day of the canning started out well. Daria and I were ready to tackle this feat and chalk one up for the next generation of stay at home moms and homemakers who were dedicated to carrying on traditions as quaint as canning.
We ran into a glitch when we realized that Daria and I had acquired different varieties of peaches as well as different brands and size jars. We decided to do all of her peaches and jars first and then do all of mine. We read and re-read the directions out loud together trying to interpret them as we went along. I must admit there was more than one step we eliminated as we found no more value in them than we did in doing the hokey-pokey.
Half way thru all the peeling, slicing, boiling, and sweating I started having flashbacks and the "see it's not so bad" pep talks were wearing off.
So for the record, it kind of is so bad. It doesn't help that canning peaches at their prime means laboring in a hot kitchen during the hottest part of the year. But I got to send my dad several jars of freshly home canned peaches by yours truly and they were such a big hit and so much work that I'm thinking of sending him more for Christmas just to make it all worth it!

The Smell of Vanilla

Is there anything like chocolate chip cookies? I mean there are other delicious baked goods like pies, bars, brownies and cakes. There are even other fabulous cookies. But the chocolate chip cookie is comfort food at it's finest. Your mom maybe sent you some in college, which though they were days old and had been who knows where by the time they got to you, stopped you in your tracks and reminded you of all that was important in life. Maybe you even broke down into tears right there in the mail room...anyone?
Chocolate chip cookies live in my earliest baking memories. The ones where I am sitting on the kitchen counter wearing a child size apron that says "Mother's little helper" on the front and stirring with a wooden spoon. I am using a wooden spoon either because electric mixers had not yet become household appliances, my parents were too strapped to buy one or because my mother wisely chose not to turn me loose with such a dangerous power tool. I do remember the first time I used one though. I think it was chocolate chip cookies again that we were making, and the thing seemed to move on it's own-right out of the bowl in fact! Anyway, clearly they have improved the design since then...and the colors.
Chocolate chip cookies used to take hours to make! Each ingredient seemed to require a trip to a different cabinet, a new measuring device, and knowing my mother, probably a washing of the hands. Once all that was done, we had to wait for them to bake and then cool. By that time I had moved onto something else and was so excited all over again when they were ready to eat, because, "What? We made cookies? That's right! It was so long ago, I forgot!" Yeah, let's go have cookies everyone!
Maybe it was because of all the delayed gratification that I got hooked on the dough or maybe it was just because the dough was so delicious! I mean come on, can anyone resist the power of cookie dough? I had a babysitter once who was making ccc's with us and once the dough was done she said, "Okay, everyone can use their finger to take a lick of dough." I think she meant off of the beaters, but I went hand in the bowl style and came back up with a couple of cookies worth of dough. "Jessica! I said a lick of dough!" She gasped. But I put fist to mouth so fast she didn't know what to do. I kept my mouth on the lump of dough until it was gone lest she make me put it back or something awful.
Recently I was at a friend's house who had made the most amazing ccc's ever! I knew it was a slightly different recipe than the Toll House, but didn't know how different until she gave me the recipe (which I of course insisted on). It uses...are you ready for this? A cake mix. I tried it at home and felt so weird baking the dough (which didn't taste the same). The cookies came out and looked just like hers did...but somehow the magic was gone. They didn't taste the same, in fact the more I tried them, the less I liked them! And it wasn't until a week or so later when I was making oatmeal cranberry cookies that I realized you can't shortcut the comfort factor out of cookies. You can enjoy packaged cookies such as Pepperidge Farm or some such at a baby shower or even from a coffee bar, but if you feel like making ccc's at home, it's about so much more than the finished product! It's about the way using your old worn mixing bowl makes you feel. It's about the way the ingredients seem to form a poem as you combine them. The way the brown sugar holds it's measuring cup form even after it's been dumped in the bowl. The white sugar cascading down off of the butter sticks makes a mountain. And even if it's imitation, the smell of vanilla-oh, the smell of vanilla!

The Real World

"I just found out there's no such thing as the real world, it's just a lie you've got to rise above." John Mayer

It's a reality show on MTV. It's an intimidation factor adults use on high schoolers. It's a looming threat that haunts college students. But mostly "the real world" is, ironically, pretend. When you are told in a college class how it's going to be in the real world, you are really being explained the rules of the game, in case you choose to play. What people don't realize early on is that they have a choice of whether to play or not.
For most people your degree is how you get into the real world. When they hand you your diploma, they are really just handing you your game piece. Maybe, by way of major declaration, you've chosen to be the horse or the car or the top hat and now people expect you to do something horse-ish, car-like or top hat-esque. People forget that when you chose to be the horse you were only eighteen or nineteen and strong armed into playing the game they so cleverly disguised as "the real world". When you are handed your game piece, you are only twenty-one or so and are just approaching the age in which you should actually be considering your game piece. But by this time it's too late. You're in the game and probably are actually chomping at the bit (especially if you're the horse) to play.
Sometimes real life gets in the way of the real world. One minute you're rolling the dice, playing the game and the next you're drawing a card that says take your four year degree to the nearest coffee house and start pouring.
There is such guilt and shame when you have a shiny new game piece and you've been reduced to placing it on the jail square indefinitely. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, just sit there and hope that you draw a get out of jail free card soon. But this is real life and don't let the real world players make you feel guilty for living it.
There is freedom in not playing the game, but in living out real life. The real world players are only happy when the game is over and they own the most real estate with the most hotels. Why pursue the appearance of happiness when you can pursue joy?
"You will show me the path of life; in your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore." Psalm 16:11
"Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Hebrews 12:1-2