A late night massacre in pictures

When I was a kid I enjoyed eating raw beets right out of the garden with the dirt still clinging to the roots in rude little clods. I'm not sure what the magic of a mouthful of dirt was, but it must have been delightful because it's one of the few memories I have of being six years old. You know what one of the other most vivid ones is? Me eating a raw onion like an apple in front of a horrified baby sitter. Later, when I was older, not at all a precious pretty young thing (probably due to all the hairy ball building raw onion eating I did when I was wee) and desperately wishing to wear make up, I was seduced by the vivid potential of beet juice to make a plain mouth good enough for a Barbara Cartland novel.

Oh, did you not know? Before I buried my nose in the depressing classics as a teen and got all serious, I would spend my entire summers reading Barbara Cartland and Harlequin novels while sitting on the wrap around porch drinking lemonade and eating fresh picked cherry tomatoes. My lonely twelve year old heart absolutely flipped for bodice rippers.

But this was only after having exhausted my library of all the Nancy Drew books, the Madeline L'Engles, the C.S. Lewis, and all other respectable junior literature I could find. That's when I discovered the queer little used book store next door to the Greyhound bus station where about fifty percent of the books were romance novels.

I have loved beets forever. I couldn't resist pickling another large batch of them because I still have dill heads left to use. Sometimes these projects just lag though, and other things get in the way. I forgot that Philip and I were meeting friends for dinner. So when I came home I got to work. It was 9:30pm. The canning pot was put on. I got out my brand new mandolin and started crinkle cutting beets. With my bare hands. I am one tough lady.

You may have noticed that I determined not to spend money on a pickling crock, so how did I end up with this shiny guillotine kitchen tool? Better not to ask. Obviously I need to be on my most alert guard against these atrocities against frugality.

Canning is hard work. It's steamy, and therefor sweaty. I don't recommend watching bad episodes of "Law and Order" while doing it. While using my bare hands to slide the beets down the brand new blades I kept having to remind myself that I wasn't actually bleeding. My kitchen started looking like a B movie massacre.

Except for one time I got so mad at my roommate James that I hurled this pottery thingy-ma-jig that I had made in Junior High and the hideous thing didn't break! I was so pissed that my aim was so bad it missed James and then made a huge dent in the wall between our rooms and fell to the floor in absolute pristine condition. I felt weirdly obligated to keep the thing forever after that. I still have it and am kind of scared of it.

Beets are messy. Does that make them sensual? So it was really late when I took this picture.

This is not the time to settle down to the episodes of Law and Order that aren't stupid. This means more beer. It means not waking up early. It means falling asleep in my arm chair. It means my teeth should already be brushed. And my legs should be shaved. However, I cannot go to sleep right after doing a project, or right after getting home. I absolutely have to have a wind down time. Back when I smoked, this meant reading for a little while on my side steps, smoking a few cigarettes no matter how arctic the air, while the rest of my hemisphere stopped making psychic noise.

Inevitably the clock keeps moving forward. It feels good to do canning projects. It always makes you feel that you've accomplished something really wholesome and basic. Perhaps if you aren't 9/10ths chipmunk stock, as I am, you don't understand the relief that accompanies all food stockpiling activities for me. I have always looked as though I'm storing nuts in my cheeks. Yeah, people have actually made comments like this to me. I forgive the bastards, because I'm so zen that way, but there was a time when I didn't realize how close to the mark they were hitting.

I didn't discover how handy large cheeks are for storing nuts until moving into my old neighborhood in Santa Rosa and finding perfectly good walnuts all over the ground in the fall. I started collecting them in my bag on my way to the J.C., or on my way back, as a kind of funny thing. Ha! I have nuts on my street! They're everywhere! Going to waste. Why is no one picking up all these perfectly good nuts that I don't even care for all that much? I must pick a few more up. Just for fun.

You know how that goes. Before I knew it I had filled two bushels with walnuts and had to develop a taste for them. I never hated them, I just didn't seek them out, so it wasn't that hard. Over the next four years I ate walnuts fresh from my neighborhood trees all year long. It gave me such a great sense of well being knowing that I could collect a year's supply of nuts right around my house.

You can't stay up late watching people get murdered and drinking beer without eating something too. This was consumed after the above proof of time picture was taken. This was my post-midnight snack. Only there may have been a second plateful right afterwards... I'm not confirming or denying it. Fontina cheese slices with salted Black Krim tomatoes from the garden*, aaaaah.

I'm tired today and it's time I crawled into bed and watched my very first episode of Alias to see just how stupid it is. I'll probably love it just because I think Jennifer Garner is so annoying. I can't wait to go to the video store tomorrow where there are two new seasons of ER just come in. Good night everyone.