Granulatin’ Bad

Sure. I look pretty harmless. I’m polite to the neighbors, fairly unobtrusive when I leave the house, as middle aged ladies often are. No one could look at me and know that in August, within the confines of my home, I’ve got skills, mad skills. Because when boiling sun and steamy air turn the tiny green figs into golden orbs, I’m Granulatin’. Granulatin’ Bad.

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You’re no doubt familiar with someone else who may appear mild in the outside world, but who leads a whole other life right under his neighbor’s noses. That’s right - Walter White.

Don’t think I have anything in common with Walter, or Walter with me? We’ll just see about that! Here are some similarities:

Photo Source: IMDB

Photo Source: IMDB

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Obviously we’re both bad you know whats.


1) Highly desirable product: Walter’ s blue meth is apparently the stuff of dreams. OK, fine. But you should see the eyes widen when I walk into the yoga studio with a box of twelve gleaming jars of fig preserves. Excited murmurs float across the studio. When class is over they make a beeline for every last jar. Unconditional acceptance of your product by a yoga class says only one thing: 99.1 % pure, total quality.

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2) Large amount of raw materials needed: Walter buys his in more than one location to avoid suspicion. But I HAVE to buy mine in multiple locations because no one stocks as many jars or as many boxes of pectin as I need. And unlike Walter, because I deal with a live ingredient, I can never predict the exact amount of supplies I need. They may suspect me of something at the grocery store when I dash in wearing sticky shoes and a stained T shirt and buy ALL of their eight ounce canning jars, but they know not to question me. I dare them to.
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3) Specialized work environment and equipment: We each need to set up a pristine, industrial workspace. Mine is the kitchen. Walter may have a gas chromatograph while I use a spoon and my own mouth for quality control, but the concept is the same.

My lab.

My lab.

Walter's lab. Photo courtesy of breakingbad.wiki.com

Walter’s lab. Photo courtesy of breakingbad.wiki.com

4) Total concentration: We can’t do anything else while cooking. We’re basically unreachable. When my harvest begins, I am in a flurry of picking, washing, cutting, cooking, sterilizing. My hands get too sticky to even think of touching a phone. So don’t call me. Walter and I agree that production stops when we say it stops.

5) Hazards: Yes, it is hazardous work. You are familiar with what Walter has faced through the years: beatings, torture, kidnapping, and even death. But what about me? I’ve bravely faced my share of challenges. Here is a short list:

a) Balancing on the part of an eight ladder where it says not to standDSC_0736

b) While keeping up with a bag of figs over one shoulder

These babies aren't light.

These babies aren’t light.

c) While grasping at leaves and branches and clutching them to your chest so you can pull off the figs with the other hand, sweat dripping off your brow,

d) And a swarm of mosquitoes gets close and personal with your armpits,

e) And getting down from said perch,

f) Dealing with the crazy violence that seems ubiquitous in the fig tree world

Nobody saw nothin'.

Nobody saw nothin’.

g) And even having to hide some ominous, foreshadowing symbols from my family, like this.DSC_0718

Inside the house, once I have gathered my figs I still have to endure deep, deep stickiness from spilled sugar and gooey figs, boiling water, hot pans, an extended cleanup, and last but not least, the sick feeling that comes from tasting preserves fifteen times. Let me tell you, I’ve paid my dues!

I'm tough enough to take the heat.

I’m tough enough to take the heat.

Walter and I, we’re a pair. We may threaten, cajole, and intimidate, but we get the product out. Still, we have our differences. First he sells his product for top dollar while mine is free of charge. Maybe I could sell mine, but unlike Walter I have no partner to handle the distribution end. Second, he can’t taste his product, but I can. Mr. White always uses the same recipe, while I I experiment with new flavors. This year I’ve added a little something different in every batch. Walter never divulges his recipes, but I can. I’m not trying to corner the market.

Walter in his work clothes

Walter in his work clothes. Photo: breakingbad.wiki.com

As fig season winds up, so does Walter’s last season. I don’t have a good feeling about his prospects, but he may surprise me yet. While we wait to learn his fate, won’t you try some of my fig preserves? Really. They’re free, and you won’t have to worry about going to jail!DSC_0710 Postscript: This years flavors: cinnamon, cinnamon and ginger, rosemary and port, pepper, basil, amaretto, and that’s all I can remember. Tell that to the D.E.A.

Kite Grabbing

Have you ever found that intending to do one household task quickly leads you to another, and another, until suddenly it’s two weeks later and you’re still in those same gym clothes? And you feel as though you have been hanging on to the end of a kite tail whipping in the wind? Well, good. Because I don’t want to be the only one.

Here’s how it started for me this time. You recall that we are in the process of building a pergola? Fine. In the last two weeks there has been lots of activity directed toward that goal. In the aftermath of all this hubbub, which included eight house guests, I simply wanted, in some sort of misguided attempt to feel in control of my environment, to pick up some of the unripe figs which drop from the tree onto our pool deck each year. “Luckily,” I said to myself as I approached the pool deck, “you have a couple of weeks to recover before the “Fig Season” is upon you”, But no, what I found on the tree were definite signs of quickly ripening figs. Millions of quickly ripening figs. If this were a movie I would pan over my horrified face while playing some “Psycho”- like music.

I truly love my fig tree and all the delicious goodies I make from its bounty. But in the last three years the harvest has been so generous that this little City Farmer has had to go into overdrive to handle the massive amounts of fruit. There will be more on this topic later, but for background I’ll just say that a few years ago the few figs I had made a nice appetizer or pizza topping or two, but by last year I made over 150 jars of fig preserves and only stopped because my brain refused to give my hands any more orders. Or maybe the orders were sent but the hands refused.

Last year’s fig preserves

Anyway, I knew I needed to inventory what preserve making supplies I had from last year. But that would mean going into my pantry, where I had shoved my remaining 2011 jars of preserves plus empty jars and unused bags of sugar. As hints to my recent house guests had not inspired those people to do it for me, I resolved that I would have to clean out the pantry myself prior to the inventory if I did not want to cause an unwelcome avalanche of cans and jars raining down on my head. For yes, the pantry had gotten completely out of control.

But a certain discovery earlier this week booted the pantry cleaning right to the top of the list. This was when I heard my husband shout from inside the pantry. “We’ve got BOTULISM!” I came over to investigate, because he tends to get upset about these things. There he stood with a corroded and/or exploded can of ten year old jackfruit in his hand, no doubt with his mind reeling with all the grisly possibilities of WHAT ELSE could be found within those unsavory recesses of the pantry. ”Not to worry,” I consoled him as I disposed of the offending can. “On Friday I will clean out the pantry.” And just like that I was committed to a horrible task that I only perform once every ten years or whenever I move, whichever comes first.

I somehow forgot to take a before shot of the pantry, so you’ll just have to trust me, but here are some shots of what was emptied.

Feel sorry for me yet?

How about now?

Here is the empty pantry.In the end it wasn’t as awful as I had feared. I can honestly report that here were no more exploded cans. But I did throw some away preemptively.

Like this one.

It is somewhat reassuring to know that with four cans of baking powder, I need not fear running out of the vital ingredient in the middle of an important baking session. And it is gratifying that for the first time in my life, the snack foods are completely unprotected from the grubby hands of children and teenagers, which means that I too, if I have a mind to, will be able to reach the pretzels on the bottom shelf instead of leaping several times into the air toward the top shelf like a trained poodle grasping for a treat. And look at these cute estate sale finds I had shoved in among the bags of sugar and cans of soup.

Here is the finished pantry.

NOW I can inventory my existing canning supplies, so I know what to buy, so I can wash all the jars and have them ready for when I bring in loads of figs twice a day, so I can wash and prepare them for canning. Whew! And for your information, I am still in my gym clothes. Some days are just like that.