The experts tell us that a normal impact of aging is a change in taste, often resulting in desiring for or tolerating more spice. When I was in high school my grandparents started looking to spice up their lives, their food at least, and my grandmother decided to make chilli sauce a couple of summers.
Chilli sauce has lots of tomatoes, onions, and peppers in it. She used mostly bell peppers so not to much spice, but there were a few hot peppers included. Those were the summers when I was helping her care for my grandfather who had dementia, so I was around a lot, and I was recruited to help making the chilli sauce. We started by prepping the veggies, washing, trimming, and cutting them into chunks. Then the whole lot went through a grinder set up for a coarse grind. The grinder was a classic cast metal contraption that clamped to the counter top. I turned the wood handle for an hour, feeding through the chopped veggies, spewing out into plastic dish tubs. She must have made two or three gallons. She cooked it down on the stove top, we packed it in pint jars and she ran it through a pressure canner. She would can 50-100 quarts of green beans every summer, and 50 or so pints of applesauce.
I keep commercial chilli sauce on hand. The other night I was making a classic Cleveland Salad, Iceberg lettuce, tomato, a little onion, and thousand island dressing. Except, I didn't have thousand island dressing on hand. No problem, a couple of heaping spoons full of mayonaise, a spoon of sweet pickle relish, and a generous couple of spoons of chili sauce, stir it up, adjust to taste, and there you have it.
Once in a while, I get the nesting urge, to follow in my grandmother's footsteps and start canning. A long nap often helps ease those urges.
I have made Thousand Island by the same recipe...it's excellent in a pinch.
ReplyDeleteMost foods are not some mystery ingredient, I sometimes thinking about writing a book on simple sauce making, with the title get sauced.
DeleteId buy it!!!! Love that title too. Cheeky
DeleteLol at your last sentence. I don't know how women achieved so much at home back in those days.
ReplyDeleteI must say though, while I am a devoted reader of your wise, interesting and amusing words along with your photos, the advertising has become so intrusive, it really is spoiling my experience. I've had to kill two advertising screens to read this, and now at the bottom of this page is an ad taking up 20% of the screen for a furniture store trying to sell chairs.
It helped that after World War II my grandmother never worked outside of the home.
DeleteI read my blogs on Firefox on both iMac and iOS, with the pop-up blocker on, and don't get any ads. Though I don't want to deprive my beloved Poopsie from his vast ad revenue (😆) you could try different browsers or settings to see if that helps.
DeleteI have never canned or put up preserves or any such thing.
ReplyDeleteI can make good sauces and pestos and tapenades in jars as gifts, but that whole canning thing seems like so much work.
I'd nap, too!
I've done a little, it can be fun, but it makes my back ache standing that long
DeleteSG grew up with canning (and his family relied on it to get them through the winters). When we moved to “the country” in Connecticut, he suggested we give it a try. I love it -- if you can believe that. We entered our goods at the annual agricultural fair and always won blue ribbons and best-in-show. We both sometimes miss doing it, but then the thought of all the work and mess (and required storage space) stops us.
ReplyDeleteI have a boiling water bath canner, if you want it I can bring it to NYC.
DeleteSounds great. I’ll just slip it in my carry-on!
DeleteIt's important to get in touch with your inner farm wife...
DeleteWhen I was small, my Mom used to can veggies, pickles, jellies, etc. It's a LOT of work. She had one of those metal grinders too.
ReplyDeleteI have a stainless steel one that runs on the KitchenAid mixer
DeleteBoth my mother and my grandmother canned vegetables. We had the best tomatoes and green beans.
ReplyDeleteTomatoes that tasted like tomatoes
DeleteI have never canned anything in my life, but my mom used to do so. From what you describe, it sounds like a lot of work! I never paid attention to what my mom did as I was a little kid with other interests.
ReplyDeleteThe amount of time I spent in the kitchen, should have given someone a clue
DeleteWhen in doubt get horizontal
ReplyDeleteLove me some spicy umami-laden foods!
Trader Joes Peri Peri sauce, oh my!
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