You Really Can Taste Summer

Preserved fruit and vegetables, especially if home-grown, can taste even sweeter with memories of loved ones and the effort of canning that food for winter.

In Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, young Douglas Spaulding discovered to his joy that drinking his grandfather’s dandelion wine brought back memories of summer so vividly he could taste it. Poetic and romantic, right? I think a lot of that magic had to do with the fact that Douglas helped his grandfather make the wine. Shortly after that summer, his grandfather died, yet Douglas' memories helped him endure brief encounters with his own mortality. He learned that memories could be bottled and enjoyed when the world became dark and cold.

All during my childhood, my Mom canned peaches, pears and cherries in quart bottles. She stored them in a cob-webby niche in a far corner of our basement, which I’m quite sure, harbored some foul ogre under the stairs. I could almost see its glowing eyes in the dark shadows. Of course, it was my job to go down and fetch a bottle of fruit for dessert. Though I explained my fears, Mom insisted this small task was my way of contributing to the household. Get over your fears and earn your keep. I gulped and descended the stairs.

While I didn’t help my Mom do the actual canning, I did travel with her through some of the process. Her hard work and flashes of insight are now contained within the bottles of produce I bottled this last summer.

Mom would pile her bushel baskets in our old Chevy coupe and drive northward to Brigham City or to the small hamlets south of Salt Lake City, to buy fruit. It took hours back in the 1950s to drive along the two-lane highway that meandered past agricultural fields and pastures where horses grazed.

By the late 1970s, subdivisions had claimed those meadows and Interstate 15 buried the two-lane, bypassing many little burgs on its way to Las Vegas. These trips, however, broadened my knowledge of places beyond Redondo Avenue where we lived. I also think it was Mom’s way to teaching me things beyond the confines of public school.

I suspect Mom had a case of wanderlust and these journeys were an acceptable way for her to explore over the horizon. She infected me with that bug. For the rest my life, I would jump in the car and point it down the road, especially when odious tasks awaited my attention. During my college days, I must've driven thousands of miles.

After trading her empty baskets for those filled with peaches and pears picked ripe from the trees, she spent the next few days in a steamy kitchen in late summer, pealing, coring and bottling. I watched from a distance, knowing I’d only be in the way. She didn’t appear to have a whole lot of fun; but when she opened a bottle of fruit I’d brought up from the basement, a tiny bit of summer finished our mid-winter suppers with bright colors and sweetness. Our pleasure was her reward. I so loved those bottled peaches. Now eating a fresh peach from the store is always a disappointment.

My pride in my mother soared when my best friend, Nancy, showed off the extensive food storage cellar her father had built. The shelves were packed with bottles of fruit and tomato sauce. Both of Nancy’s parents were high up in the Mormon Church and I had endured her righteous gloating for years. My family was definitely among the less celestial population.

When I saw the layer of green on top of the tomato sauces, though, I knew that was a bad sign. I didn’t mention it to my friend, but just the tiniest bit of vindication -- okay, maybe not tiniest -- glowed in my heart. My mom’s cooking was the best. And her bottles of fruit never spoiled!

I discovered during my own bottling efforts just how arduous this job is. Last summer, I finally worked up the nerve to make jam and bottle a few quarts of peaches. The expectations for perfection were high. I had avoided this rite of passage for decades, but the time had come to take up my mother’s legacy.

Pealing the peaches reduced me to tears. I tried blanching them in boiling water to loosen the skins, but the water didn’t remain hot, making the process unbearable after the first batch or two. Next time, I’ll do better. Figuring out the logistics are all part of the learning curve. Jamming, or should I say syruping, was far easier. Jeff becomes rhapsodic every time he eats a plate of French toast or waffles with my peach-crabapple syrup. Jeff enjoys the flavor, but I love the memory infused in it.

My neighbor, Kristie, and I were sitting in her backyard swing, gabbing about this and that, when I saw ripe crabapples on her two-year-old trees. After all my canning, I’d become obsessed with preserving food. I often caught myself looking at Manzanita or elder berries around the neighborhood with a surge of greed. The urge overwhelmed me at that moment and I asked her if I could pick her crabapples.

Kristie shrugged, undoubtedly thinking I must be crazed, and found a ladder. Luckily, the trees were pliant enough to bend so I could reach the far-hanging fruit. It only amounted to a few dozen golf-ball-sized apples, but I thought perhaps I could add them to some packets of frozen peaches.

A day later, I presented Kristie with a bottle of peach crabapple jam. Whenever I taste that tangy, sweet flavor, I remember a soft breezy day in late summer. No matter how cold and overcast it is, I think of my friendship with Kristie and picking those crabapples.

Scrapbooks, photos, and mementos can be stored out of sight or even lost as we move about our lives. Food, however, will always evoke feelings instilled in our favorite dishes as if they were among the ingredients. We remember our loved ones and those who have passed, their struggles and successes, all stirred into the mix. When we share this feast with friends, they add to our family sagas. Preserving these experiences is a hedge against mortality. As long as someone remembers us, we never die. By passing down our histories and recipes, how can we fear death ... or even the ogre under the stairs?

Photo of jars in snow taken by Sue Cauhape. Photo of peaches in baskets from the Cache Valley Daily. The others are stock photos.

If you enjoyed this story, feel free to explore other essays, poems, and stories in the Ring Around the Basic Archives.

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