The Mad Canner

It was my last real weekend before school started. Classes don't actually begin until September 8, but this week is orientation, and I actually have to be on campus 4 of the next 5 days, so this week sort of counts as school rather than vacation. And while some students might use their last real weekend before classes begin to organize their files or brush up on their calculus or drink a case of whiskey, I opted to spend my last homework-free weekend up to my armpits in produce.
Saturday I spent the whole day in the garden, restaking tomatoes for the umpteenth time because they are so heavy with fruit that they keep tipping over and smashing my basil, ripping out the bush beans that ripened weeks ago while we were on our honeymoon, and planting some last-chance onion sets that might not grow before frost kills them but probably wouldn't be any good by next spring anyways. And, obviously, harvesting. We got something like 50 pounds of tomatoes (50 POUNDS!), 15 pounds of cucumbers, and at least a bushel of beans. The bushel of beans is a guess. A bushel to me is a really vague measurement that is more than my biggest mixing bowl can hold.
All this produce meant it was also a big weekend for Home Food Preservation. I feel like a renegade imposter housewife, being neither a mother nor a Mormon nor a farmer's wife and still getting excited about the produce and all the ways to save it for winter. But I cannot possibly eat more tomatoes than I am right now, and I'm running out of dishes that involve both tomatoes and beans, and I just can't bring myself to throw away perfectly good produce, especially since I haven't gotten around to starting a compost bin. Rob and I have been learning about canning, and it turns out that without a pressure canner, we can only can acidic things (pickles and salsa). This would be a problem, but a) we seem to have plenty to do canning salsa and pickles, and b) we bought a big freezer to keep non-acidic things (beans and spaghetti sauce).
So. Sunday morning we got up and I went to the farmers' market while Rob washed mason jars. The farmers' market here is truly amazing this time of year. The market here is one of my absolute favorite places to be. The produce is all so beautiful that I have a really hard time remembering that there are only two people to feed in this house, that we have a budget, that there is really no good reason to buy 30 ears of corn and a bushel of eggplants. Apples are coming in already, which makes it even better/more dangerous. Really, I can't exagerrate how lovely it is.
We used the market to fill in the gaps in our garden. Peppers and onions (we had those, we just ate them all already) and cilantro. Then we made salsa. And it's a little weird to compress the day into that single sentence, because it was the whole day. 19 pints with two different recipes. We also froze beans, and just for good measure and because we had the water boiling anyways, we made another 7 quarts of pickles. And then it was 8:30 at night and we were exhausted and covered with tomato seeds and we had vinegar burns in our lungs and Rob couldn't get the jalapeno oils out from under his thumbnails, but damn if this whole garden/canning thing hasn't been the most rewarding thing I've done lately. And then I went to scrub the salsa out from under my fingernails and I glanced in the mirror and that renegade housewife? I guess everything has a price, even all those beautiful jars of salsa, because I really looked like her. At 43. After she got into the cooking brandy.

Wedding photos

Murphy's law

It was a dry summer. Very dry. So dry, in fact, that keeping the garden alive resulted in the highest water bill I've ever had in this state. And we looked at the bright side, thinking "Well, this is great weather for an exterior remodel!" Which was obviously a stupid thing to say because we jinxed it, and now that we've begun that project, now that we have holes in our roof, the weather has changed and we are getting all the rain we needed in June and July this week. In the convenient, user-friendly form of tornadoes. They did skip over St. Paul between hitting a suburb and Minneapolis, but good lord. Tornadoes? Really?
In other news, I can't get flickr to work, so now I'm going to experiment with picasa web albums. Good idea? Bad idea? Let me know.

As Promised

The stuff I promised to post about have become the central themes in my life sooner than expected, so 1) I'm going to cram it all into this post, and 2) the wedding pictures (yes, I have some) will have to wait just a little longer. If I can remember my flickr info, I might just put up an album there.
Anyways.
Since the wedding, the world seems to have expanded. Not that I wasn't leaving the house - it was just that when I wasn't home, I was running wedding-related errands or going to my wedding or something ridiculous and bridal like that. It has come to my attention in the last several days that some people leave their houses just for fun, so Rob and I gave that a try over the weekend when Matt offered us a behind-the-scenes tour of the zoo. Now I think I'll only visit zoos where I know someone who can give us a tour. We got to visit the windy, subterranean tunnels where he spends most of his time, meet some animals (including his friends, the smallest deer in the world), see a bird show, and even feed this giraffe. A friend of Matt's was in charge of that part, and he kept telling us that pictures usually didn't turn out because the animals eat so quickly. But look! You can see the tongue wrapped around the cracker (it's the black thing). So there, charming Australian zookeeper!
In other news, the garden is out of control. Do you live near me and need some cucumbers? Despite the fact that I love cucumbers and have a million different ways to use them, I am a little overwhelmed. Last night I even made pickles! 14 quarts! It went well. At least, all the jars sealed like they were supposed to, I didn't scald myself with boiling pickle brine, and I don't think I even pickled any dog hair. Hopefully they taste ok, but I taste as I go when I cook and bake, so this is new territory for me. The hardest thing about this is not knowing if the effort will pay off. But they look so pretty there, I'll probably be satisfied no matter what (unless we have a botulism problem). Check back in 6-8 weeks to see how they were good/if we're dead. I have tomatoes (we want to make salsa, and maybe even just plain old canned tomatoes) and green beans (does anyone know a good recipe for those?) that I'm hoping to be able to can too.
I did have the good sense to try canning AFTER I put in some time sweet-talking my way into my new name. At least, I like to think it went better than it would have if I had gone to the DMV smelling like vinegar with cucumber seeds in my hair. That said, it did go about as well as can be expected - I have a new bank account and a new license, at least. I expected trouble, because the Nebraska wedding license and certificate does not have a place to put a new name. This is intellectually interesting to me: does this indicate that Nebraska doesn't assume a wife will change her name, or that all wives will? I think about an article I read not too long ago about a man who took his wife's name in California, and he had quite a time because there was only a spot for the bride's new name on the certificate. On a larger scale, name changes, the idea of family, patrilineal societies, etc. Hi, my name is Lindsay, and I do cultural studies.
On an immediate, personal scale, though, this is not interesting but a potentially enormous headache, since several government agencies will not issue papers showing my new name without first seeing proof that some other government agency has done that already. But luckily, the DMV is run by people with some disdain for every state other than Minnesota, so they were happy to scoff at Nebraska and issue me a new license with a new name of my choosing. Seriously, they didn't even look at what I put down. I could have gotten a license for Lindsay Humperdink Botsworth, III, and I might have if humperdink.botsworth.III@gmail.com weren't already taken.
To add to the DMV triumph and my (probable) success at pickling, work started early (7am!) this morning on our exterior remodel. Here you can see the huge, awful antenna coming down. They're starting with the roof, hoping to get it done before a storm rolls in on Thursday. I'm hoping right along with them. It feels great to see something actually happening after the months and months of planning and waiting. The downside, of course, is that it makes me want to get back to work on the interior. And when I write "get back to work on the interior" I mean "take a sledgehammer to the nearest crumbling wall," not "patiently consider the most cost-effective and efficient options and work methodically to complete one sane project at a time." Certainly not "carefully evaluate my own skills and time constraints, then hire a professional for things I cannot possibly teach myself to do in the two hours I have before my meeting at school." If that sounds like I'm running around the house like a maniac, smashing bathroom fixtures and tearing live wires out of the walls, take a deep breath. That kind of crazy will probably wait until at least October. Maybe even October 2010, if I want my marriage to outlast my pickles.

We are still married.

Let's just be clear about this from the start: I am not sorry that nothing has been posted since June. In fact, many of you might not read this until September or January or some time in the distant future when you are scraping the bottom of your bookmarked pages for something to put between you and some horrible project, right after you check out catsincups.com and just before you decide now is the perfect time for the internet to teach you how to crochet fine lace.

Some things have happened since I last posted.

I got married! You might have been there. It was a really amazing weekend. The planning was kind of hard, even though we stuck to our original plan of a small, simple celebration. I haven't seen any pictures from that weekend yet, so I can't post any here, and I think I'll wait until I have some to share to write about that part of things. If you took pictures, please PLEASE send them to us. Digitally, if at all possible. Thanks!

Rob and I left Nebraska as quickly as possible after the festivities, dropped the dogs off at home, switched our fancy stuff for our woodsy stuff, and went on a honeymoon. We drove up to Ely, where we checked in with our outfitter and ate one of the top ten steaks I've ever had, then went to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area for a week. I love the BWCA, and it was wonderful to be able to share it. Of course, I've never been there this time of year before - some things were different, like the bugs and the temperatures and the number of visitors. I've also never had an outfitter pack us so much food before. Better not to starve, but good lord, desserts with every lunch and dinner is a lot of powdered pudding to haul around.

Chivalry persists: Rob tried to do most of the hauling, and also most of the eating. The infamous Jorgensen Circle of Death started on a camping trip, but it's hard to make a circle with only two people, one of whom is threatening to puke if she has to eat another bite. (Is packing out vomit a part of Leave No Trace?) The weather was so good that the hot food sometimes didn't even seem necessary, and I only put my thermal socks on once.

We also got lucky with campsites. Even though we spent about half of our time there in relatively busy lakes (entry and exit point areas), we didn't have any trouble finding open sites. Most of them were great, with views and flat spots for the tent and easy access to the water. Some of them were left kind of dirty by previous campers, which was disappointing, and at one of them (on Lake Agnes, I think) people had obviously been feeding the animals.

This especially bothered Rob, who was nearly attacked by a vicious chipmunk as he was cleaning up lunch. Following some verbal arguments, Rob managed to chase the little monster under our canoe (see above), but it turned out that there were several more of them nearby. Rob didn't get to relax much that day.

Here, you can see one of them making a bold move toward my magazine. While Rob chased them around, yelled, called them names, and insulted their mothers, I opted for the more passive agressive approach.
We did see quite a bit of other wildlife. The first or second day, we spotted a moose with her calf in one of the weedy rivers we had to get through. There were also lots of loons, ducks, a few bluejays, a couple of herons, some eagles, three turtles, a swimming deer, two wild swans, and more beavers than you could shake a stick at (sorry).
Just after I took this picture, a beaver swam by in the fog. It was spooky, partly because everything was so still and quiet, including the beaver, partly because of the howling wolf pack we had heard in the night, and because this was a huge animal that we didn't see until it was right there in front of us. Possibly a stealth attack beaver. I saw it a couple more times that morning, once treading water (I swear) thirty feet from shore while it watched me pumping water.
Beavers were a problem for us the whole time we were out. I don't know if it's the time of year or the route we took or what, but we had what felt like 45 surprise portages thanks to their stupid dams. These portages were a special pain in the second half of the trip because Rob's shoes started to give him blisters so we were trying to keep his feet dry by having me hop out into the mud. The mud in the BWCA is uniquely stinky, and works like quicksand, so that was always unpleasant, especially at the portage we had right before the picture above, which was half flooded and full of enormous spiders.

I can forgive the spiders, though, and even the beavers, because once we got that last terrible portage out of the way (we were still headed north at that point), we landed at one gorgeous campsite after another. This one (above) is on Thumb Lake. It's the only site on the entire lake, so we had lots of space to ourselves, and the cliffs across from it make everything echo, which made it seem even more isolated.

I find that kind of isolation sort of cozy, don't you?

By the end of our week in the woods, we were both ready for a shower and some fresh food. But we were still married. I swear this was not the reason we chose camping for the honeymoon, BUT if you can still be in love after some of those hard portages, after eating freeze dried eggs with a smile even though there are pine needles in them and it's dawn and you were up all night thinking about whether the Discovery channel will do a show about you after some boy scouts discover your remains in three weeks (When Beavers Attack!), when you smell like we smelled by the end of the week, everything else is probably going to be a piece of cake. Right?
Rob bragged a little about how tough and strong he had gotten while we were camping, and I have to agree that a little stubble and a film of deet over your entire body will increase your lifting power exponentially.

We got a ride back to Ely, and didn't even stop for showers before we headed to our resort. We stayed at a place near the Split Rock Lighthouse on Lake Superior, and it was better than either of us had imagined. There was hot running water and soap, for one thing, and a bottle of champagne with check in. The view from the room rivaled even our most gorgeous campsites, not that you can really tell from the picture.

All things considered, it's really a wonder we ever left the room.

But at some point, everyone needs lunch, so we got some broasted chicken at a diner in the next town over and had a picnick at the local marina. Obviously the picture doesn't do it justice at all, but it was stunning.
So there you are. Now we're back and semi-regular posting will resume (with wedding pics as soon as I get some). Coming soon: The Exterior Remodel, Our First Harvest, Lindsay Learns To Can, and Struggles with Bureaucracy.

Aging = Hard

My god, that was a long trip. I was only gone for about three weeks, and yes, I have lived abroad for up to a year at a time before, but my god. That was a long trip! I blame this reaction to the trip on my advanced age; I am not in my early twenties anymore, and some things just aren't the same. Like air travel. The value of the euro against the dollar. My ability to go two days on an hour of sleep and still want to go out dancing. And the way strangers relate to one another in public places. Ok, maybe just my tolerance of the way strangers relate to one another. Now get off my lawn, you damn kids!

I was also reminded that I'm old by the fact that my travel style has changed completely. Not just in terms of how much my body can take in order to get from Point A to Point B, but in terms of how I am in transit and what I do once I get where I'm going. I shushed a middle-aged man in the night train from Munich to Berlin because he was too loud (what is it with men and the inability to whisper? I don't know a single woman with this problem...). I paid three euro for a bottle of water on that same train because I was thirsty and my water bottle was empty; not once did it occur to me to double-check about whether the bathroom water was drinkable.

I'd be a little more ashamed of how aging has impacted my attitude toward travel, except several of the people I visited have also aged disproportionately to the time that has passed since I saw them last. It's been just over two years since I moved away from Berlin, and now Sandra's idea of a night out is going to the sauna. Patrick and Inga are expecting their second child. Their first, Mathilda, is walking and talking and seems to be a little person. Leo, who had the hilarious/excruciating job of assistant to marginally famous/scandalous director Christoph Schlingensief, now studies economics at some fancy schmancy EU feeder school. He wears suits.

One of my favorite parts of travel used to be discovering new, amazing things. Granted, this was mostly food-related: I will never forget that weird restaurant in Paris where Mom made me try snails and then made up for it by ordering creme brulee for dessert, or the place I stumbled across in Rome where I had the best seafood linguine of my life, or the carmelized apricots with ice cream and pistachios that Rob and I had at this funny little back-alley restaurant in Turkey. Of course, there were also museums I discovered and loved, and train stations and opera houses and flea markets and parks, but they aren't nearly as memorable as those caramelized apricots. The difference is that now, I'm more interested in going back to that food than in finding new things to try. I went far, far out of my way to eat currywurst at Curry 36. I missed my bus to buy a pretzel at Ditsch, even though I wasn't really hungry. I dragged Sandra to my favorite doener stall in town on our way home from the sauna, and when I learned that they were out of meat, I nearly cried, but I did not just run to the stall across the street. Or the one in the train station on our way home. I actually would have left Berlin doenerless, except Sandra forced me to stop at a place just before her apartment, where I ate what has to be the best doener the world has ever known, which I would have missed. Because I'm old. You could call it cynicism, or risk-aversion, or habit, but you know it's really just that I'm more in touch with my inner octogenarian than I used to be.

It was a good trip, but it was surprisingly hard on me. This makes me worry a little - how bad will this be in 20 more years? Am I just punishing myself by choosing a career that will inevitably involve a lot of international travel? These questions were not helped by brunch with a friend who is quitting the program, or the rumor that our department is going to be restructured along with other European languages, or the fact that teaching made my German worse. On the other hand, I can't imagine not going to Germany on a regular basis, and I got some great books this trip, and I'm being paid to read them. And I have a new favorite doener place I need to get back to!

DONE

Grades are in (I had to fail a student) and term papers are done (the worst work I've done in grad school so far). Approximately 90 weeks down, 222 to go. Please excuse me now while I go curl up with this bottle of cheap champagne and try to forget what a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad semester it's been.