Ants for a day

Jam, I mean good jam, simple jam, is a beautiful thing. I love it, and I hope for your sake that you do too. I am not talking about Smuckers or some other gelatinous paste that you smother over Skippy, but real jam, the homemade kind.

Too be honest, my knowledge of jam is fairly limited, outside of my appreciation of it. Up until this past week the last time I made jam was with my mother at a time when I was barely old enough to see over the counter. Sure there have been episodes of stewing fruit for ice cream sundaes and the like, and making silly berry infusions, but classic jam preserves are mostly a thing of my past. Instead of making it, my jam (and most other preserves for that matter) have come trickling in from the rest of my family on an annual basis.

Looking around, however, I don't think that I am alone in my limited knowledge of jam. The art of preserving fruits and vegetables seems to have been largely given up by this generation of urban folk. We are no longer the ants busily preparing for winter, but the grasshoppers enjoying the spontaneity of play. I am not sure what, if anything, this says about the today's fast-paced lifestyle, but I do think-having recently done it with very little research-- that making jam is easy. It is also delicious. So if you like it, give making it a try. Here is a short time lapse of our efforts.

Yet Another Bacon Explosion

Ok, so the "bacon explosion" has become a culinary cliche.  Internet fame has driven the trend, and the number of youtube how-to videos is astonishing.  That does not mean, however, that every home cook and bacon enthusiast shouldn't give it a try.We made this one with some of the homemade bacon that I smoked (see below) last week.  Bacontastic?  

      

Asparagus Forest

I am not sure that I ever wondered what happened to the asparagus stocks that went unpicked after spring harvest. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that they turned into a freakishly miniature forest. We ran into this small grove while staying with some friends who are spending the summer working on an Organic farm in Grindrod.

On Smoking Foods and Cultural Integration

Going back to my hometown usually means days spent cooking, eating and drinking, activities that in my family seem to necessitate one another.  You simply cannot have one without the other—at least in Lumby.  And so, for the past week, I have spent my time cooking, smoking, curing, bar-b-qing, baking, drinking, and of course eating.  It was, at the risk of romanticizing our excess, a weeklong celebration of the prosaic—an indulgence of the sensory—and having partaken in such activities, I can now return to my life in Vancouver to write about it.

 

Smoking seems like the obvious place to begin, as it was much the focus of this particular trip.  Mark, my brother-in-law, and I had decided in advance of the trip that we wanted to try our hand at smoking.  It had come up in recent discussions and seemed like an interesting pursuit.  With plenty of readily available hardwoods, and a higher per capita ownership of backyard smokers than subscribers to cable Internet, Lumby was a much better choice to indulge our activities than East Vancouver. 

 

Before leaving I did what I imagine any urban dweller would do to prepare: I googled smoking methods and went to the library.  I read as much as I could on the topic, and even began sketching out plans and calling my family to make sure that certain equipment would be available upon our arrival.  In short, I planned my trip, and Mark's, around smoking experiments.  While these activities provided a useful foundation of knowledge, I knew that once we arrived they would probably get dumped in favour of local knowledge on the subject.  Indeed, when the day of smoking arrived the books didn’t even make it out of my bag.  Instead, Mark, Travis (my other brother-in-law), my sister Becky, and a random flotsam of local aficionados, set to work guiding our rickety smoke house towards a tasty dinner with a rather casual demeanor.  While this method lacked the scientific rigour prized by the books I had taken out from the library, it embodied all the things that cooking is really about: family, community (however spontaneous or ephemeral), and adventure.  

In the end Mark and I are a long way from becoming expert smokers, but we found a way to participate in a culture that despite having grown up within, has become increasingly distant and elusive to me over the years, with the added bonus of course of making a tasty dinner along the way.

 

Follow up:

Here is a bibliography of some of the more helpful books that I discovered.  Despite whatever slant I may have taken in the above confessions they proved a useful resource for a novice smoker and I would definitely recommend them as a starting point.  They are also all available at the Vancouver Public Library.

Andersn, Warren R. (2006).  Mastering the Art of Smoking Food.  Short Hills, NJ: Burford Books.

Dubbs, Chris and Dave Heberle (2008).  Smokin Food: A beginner’s guide.  New York: Skyhorse.

Ruhlman, Michael and Brian Polcyn (2005).  Charcuterie: The craft of salting, smoking, and curing. New York: Norton and Company.