8 ~ Day 99
Today marks the 99th day since I last went grocery shopping (in Rapperswil, Switzerland, on December 23, 2019). It’s remarkable how much food I continue to find, mainly just looking among – and getting a bit creative with - my cupboard and freezer. A loaves and fishes experience.
In my second post of this blog, on February 29, I included an inventory of the food I had on hand, my starting point for this endeavor. If you’re interested to see where the larder stands now, a summary as of today is here.
Full disclosure: At Farm & Fleet last week, I bought some more popping corn and bit of chocolate (some Reese’s peanut butter cups). While these may be essential to a good life, I don’t count them as grocery shopping. Nor the pint of Culver’s chocolate frozen custard I collected from their drive-thru on the way home.
Besides popcorn and chocolate, I’ve been able to add a few substantial things to my larder since the initial inventory. Last week, I made contact with a small-scale dairy nearby, mainly toward a solution for fat (especially for cooking and baking). In fact, it’s close enough that I was able to get some exercise and take a long walk to their farm. I bought a couple pints of cream and some incredible yogurt, produced from their small herd of organically raised cows.
Back home, I extended my cardio workout by turning some of the cream into butter (was down to just one stick of butter). The alchemy of butter is wondrously simple. I poured some of the cream into another jar, to gain sufficient headspace for agitation, and started shaking. The cream and the mason jar had a satisfying heaviness in my hands. Does any liquid have a more sensual texture than fresh cream?? I could feel and hear as it transitioned, first going silent as it turned to ‘whipped’ cream. With the faith of continued shaking, sound and movement returned, and with a magical flip a glob of butter of a sublime, soft yellow precipitated out, sloshing in a bit of now fat-free milk. Done. Almost as quick as a pass through the grocery aisle and checkout counter, and something to try with your kids on these slow days.
Another simple and delicious alchemy is that of maple sap to syrup. The sugaring season here ended a few days ago, dry buckets, as the nights warmed to above freezing, ending the upward flow of maple sap. For the season, my modest tally is 54 gallons (204 liters) of sap collected, which yielded 1.8 gallons (6.8 liters) of maple syrup – a 30:1 ratio precisely. As the season progresses (mine started on February 22), the resulting syrup deepens in color. The photo at the top shows three jars of syrup made at different phases this season, earliest to latest from left to right.
I very much enjoy the meditation of watching sap on the boil - in my case, in a large pot on a propane burner on my screened porch. One of the small delights of life here is putting my face over the top of the pot, for the caress and smell of the sweet steam. Imagine a maple-scented sauna.
Sugaring is also a gentle reminder of life. The process of making maple syrup (“sugaring”) is a slow yet basic one of simply getting rid of what is no longer useful. The arc of our human journeys can be much the same. Life begins with phases of growth and expansion – much like the sap flowing up the tree. Later, settling into a grounded, serene life often requires a lot of release and letting go. This usually doesn’t happen inevitably; it requires the ‘heat’ of passage through difficulty, or therapy or a spiritual quest. By application of this heat, we mainly rid ourselves of what is no longer useful, to find more of our essentially good, rich selves. Our uniquely hued syrup.
This spring I also tapped a couple of white birch trees. Birch sap, too, can be boiled for syrup, but the necessary ratio is closer to 100:1. In springtime in northern Russia birch sap has long been collected and drunk as-is, to help replace vitamins and minerals lost during the long winter. And this is how I use it – keeping a jar of the clear, pleasant ‘birch water’ in the refrigerator.
The seasons of maple and birch sap seem to be different – with the arrival of some warmer days and nights, the flow of birch sap really only started yesterday, just as the maple flow ended. Still time to try it with your kids if you’re in this latitude, with access to a couple of birch trees (for the tree’s well-being, aim for ones at least 8 inches in diameter; and for the well-being of you both, pause to thank it). For those who live in this area, you can find simple home tapping equipment at the Farm & Fleet stores (which are still open). I’m sure we could all use some extra nourishment at this time – and tapping trees provides it for both body and soul.
What I’m reading now and can recommend:
Bones of the Master, by George Crane (2000)
This one came to me through my brother Tom, and to him from his former wife, Ginni. Here’s the jacket blurb by Peter Mathiessen: “A fascinating, beautifully written account of a great (and delightful) Ch’an [Buddhist] master’s return pilgrimage to remote Inner Mongolia after forty years of exile.” The book is a delight, alternating between finely observed details of life in hardscrabble frontier Mongolia, and the biggest issues of life. It is also an inspirational story of resilience, and even triumph, in extremely challenging times.