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Time seems to be slipping away from me these days. There are so many things I mean to do and so few that I actually manage. Temporarily at least, we are not in the land of teenage crisis. Stunned by the calm, I hesitate to adjust lest this temporary period of grace evaporates like the morning mist. I have been enjoying the fruits of the earth. Attila is bringing home apples and tomatoes by the basketful. I have managed to freeze some of the tomatoes. I just wash and dry them, place them on a pan, put them in the freezer and transfer them to bags when they are frozen. Frozen whole tomatoes are so easy to use, just pop them into a bowl of hot water while they are still frozen and the skins slip off. There are also a few green peppers from the garden; I am freezing those whole as well. I hope that we will make Chili Sauce in November when Attila is home on the weekends again. Attila and "The Teenager" have been consuming upside down cakes as fast as I can produce them. At the beginning of September, I was using peaches, now I am making them with apples. The recipe is one my grandmother used. Every time I make this cake I think of my Grandmother and her wood stove. She had an electric stove in the corner of the kitchen where it sat unused and collected dust. When we stayed with my Grandmother in the summers, it was always an outing to find and pick wild fruits. We picked whatever was available at the time: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, or blackberries. After bringing the fruits of our labor back to the house we would soak them in spring water to kill the insects, removing them as they floated to the top of the water in the bowl. Then we would build up the fire in the wood stove, prepare and combine the fruit and the batter, and pop the whole thing into the oven. Nothing in the world has ever tasted as good to me as the food my Grandmother prepared on that wood stove. Those days have gone forever, but the pleasure of an upside down cake is still ours for the baking. I have been corresponding with my Aunt today. She has just been to visit the old homestead, apparently it has fallen into disrepair since the death of my Grandfather. How sad, the passing of one's treasured times and places. How lucky, that there have been and are still treasured times and places in my life. One of the things I did manage to accomplish today was to download the photographs from my digital camera to the computer. It is quite amusing to see what the shots actually look like, as opposed to what I thought they would look like. Some are better than I had hoped, however many are off by just a little and sometimes by a lot. This group of photos was taken last Sunday, a week ago today. My friend Auntie Mame and I took a drive out to Pinery Provincial Park with our cameras in tow. The day was sunny and mild; it was beautiful. We spent a happy, quiet day wandering along the five miles of beach and trekking through the Carolinian Forest preserved in the parkland. There were not many people there compared to the summer months. There were a few people fishing in the Ausable River and I did notice that there were people camping. It must have been very cold at night in those tents. |
RECIPES :: Cast Worldly Distractions  Fishing on the Ausable River By the Easy Chair Three Women by Marge Piercy On the Screen The Inheritors In the Kitchen Grannie's Upside Down Cake 3 cups fresh fruit 1/4 cup sugar 2 cups flour 3 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup shortening 1 cup sugar cup sugar 2 whole eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 cup milk Combine fruit and 1/4 cup sugar, place in the bottom of a greased pan. Stir flour, baking powder and salt together. Cream shortening and sugar. Add eggs one a time, add dry ingredients alternately with milk. Pour over fruit. Bake at 350 F for 40 to 60 minutes. |
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