27 June 2023
OK, I know you must think I’m obsessed with poop but at this stage of my life it pays to be obsessed. Last night I had a major episode of diarrhea and woke up a little sleep deprived and with low energy. I didn’t do my morning walk this morning. I’m still taking Imodium and Lomotil and at least the number of episodes has decreased.
My friend John had a rare day off and wanted to know if I wanted to go to lunch. I was waiting on the construction crew and finally I just texted the contractor I was going to lunch and if they needed inside the house, he would have to use the key I left him.
We ended up at the Garden Restaurant at Oakland Park, the second time I’ve eaten there. Again, it’s a step back in time and after one of four customers left after we sat down, John and I were the youngest people in the restaurant. Everyone seems to come in on walkers or canes.
I ordered the brisket over noodles and John ordered a Denver omelette. He devoured his and I ate two of the four strips of brisket and had enough leftovers for two more meals. Slowly, slowly my appetite is coming back.
After paying (the cashier under charged us and John went to make amends) John wanted to head to a fresh market. It is located at the line between Pompano Beach and Fort Lauderdale and is called By Their Fruits, a reference to Mattthew 7:16 in regards to false prophets. There are Christian symbols on the wall and and hymns playing in the background but their fruit is fresh and well priced. John has shopped it personally and for other people for years and he really never paid attention to the religious aspect until someone pointed it out.
For some reason they were selling Israeli grapefruit (I bought three) and South Carolina peaches (which you could sample). Most peaches these days have a mealy texture to them and have virtually no taste. These were not mealy and tasted like peaches I remember as a kid.
Georgia is known as the peach state but South Carolina outproduces them. Apparently climate change is catching up with the Georgia crop. I mentioned hearing about South Carolina outproducing Georgia to the lady at the register and she also knew of the climate change affecting the peach crop nationwide.
Most peaches I was exposed to as a kid were “cling” peaches and indeed, when relatives canned them, you always had to eat around the seed (botanically a drupe). I remember my first “clear seed” peach and was amazed that you could get all the “meat” from around the seed and not waste any. Then there was the argument as to which had the better taste: clear seed or cling seed. I think cling seed tasted better but clear seeds were much easier to eat. It’s kinda like seedless watermelons. They are easier to eat but watermelons with seed taste better to me. That pretty much goes with any fruit with me: oranges, grapefruit, grapes, etc.
In the summer, Mom and Dad would load me and some neighbor kids up in the car and we’d either travel to south Mississippi or southwest Alabama and go peach picking. It was a fun and games until the sun got high in the sky and the heat became pretty unbearable and you realized the peach fuzz from picking peaches was getting all over your body. I’m not sure what is worse: fiberglass or peach fuzz. As kids, we ate as many as we picked and we all ended up a sticky mess but I have to admit it was worth it when Mom made peach cobbler for days. Overripe peaches were used in home made ice cream (with the hand crank and ice bucket).
My Aunt Sue used to make “pickled” peaches. I still love them. I think it was the cloves she put in hers that made hers so good. I remember sitting at her house peeling peaches as fast as I could as she canned them. What I can’t remember is if she had to use a pressure cooker on pickled peaches. You always need to use a pressure cooker when canning certain fruits and vegetables that are acidic, otherwise, you can simply sterilize the jars and lids and then seal. Regardless, it was always the summer when she canned and just about any time you stopped by her house, she would be standing over a hot stove canning some vegetable or fruit.
It was from her I learned what constituted a proper “seal” of the canning jar and how dangerous it is to eat from a canned jar that the lid had popped up. When canning, when you seal the jar, the jar lid is pulled down by a vacuum into a depression. If something went wrong with the process, bacteria would grow in the container and produce a gas that would cause the jar lid to pop upward. You learned to throw that away with eating unless you were a fan of botulism.
Years ago the federal government used to provide pamphlets on how to safely can and would provide a list of those food products that required a pressure cooker (15 pounds of pressure for 15 minutes) and those that simply required sterilized jars and lids. I wonder if anyone still cans today? It’s probably a lost art but one that would come in handy.
By the way, I’ve on occasion been in a supermarket and reached for a can with the top of the can puffed out. I’ve always taken it to an employee in the store and told them it was a bad can and needed to be discarded. I’ve gotten some strange looks from store employees over the years – I suspect they thought I was a nut case – but to their credit, they discarded the can and didn’t re-shelve it.
Although the contractor said they would come today and finish the stucco job, no one has show up and it’s 4:30 pm as I write this. Maybe tomorrow!
Stay tuned!
