May Daze -- U-Pick Blueberries, Chaw'se, and Memorial Weekend

Early in my involvement with the Master Food Preserver program I attended a continuing education class on local food sourcing. It’s funny how terms like local food sourcing, locally grown, sustainably grown, organic and others start out by being cool and trendy and then at some point become commonplace and accepted. That is, they are not questioned. I remember asking a grocer about ‘local’ fresh corn that was being sold (out of season) and it turned out it was from SoCal, as much as 600+ miles away. Some terms, like organic, are regulated by the USDA. Others, like locally-grown, are not regulated and while these terms have some consumer-appeal, they can mean anything. Anyway, that 30-minute continuing education class back in 2014 made a lasting impression on me. Over the past two years we’ve established sources for most of our produce. The word “source” sounds so impersonal. Actually, I like to think that we have developed relationships with local farmers, like ScottOneto and his honor-system stand on Highway 88 and Chris Strutz and his citrusfarm (and pomegranates) on Highway 16 and Lianne Faine and her blueberry farm in Valley Springs, our latest addition to a long list of local food sources.

Earlier in May, one of my MFP friends told me about a u-pick blueberry farm in her area and she signed me up to receive emails. Near the end of the month I was notified that the berries at Blue Sky Farm in Valley Springs (about 40-50 miles from home) were ripe and to call for an appointment to pick. I did. Verne and I set out on the adventure and with some difficulty managed to find the well-hidden farm on a 5-acre parcel in Valley Springs. We were greeted by about a dozen little mutts that surrounded the car threatening to attack, if necessary. The owner (of the farm as well as the dogs) told us where to park and assured Verne that if he ran over a few of the dogs it was okay, she had more up at the house. That was the beginning of a day to remember. We’re already planning a trip to Lianne’s farm next year…this time we’ll bring others to join in the fun. We picked for 1-1/2 hours all the while chatting with Lianne and getting to know her and her little rescued friends. According to her, she owned as many as 50-60 rescue dogs (some very large breeds) before buying the blueberry farm a few years ago and is currently down to under twenty. Of course, with the additional acreage, she now owns two rescue horses, too.  When we had picked more berries than we needed (almost 11 pounds), paid ($3.50 per pound…quite the deal), and were ready to leave, we said our goodbyes, walked to the car and inside we found two of her dogs sitting on the back seat and one in the cargo area, all with a wistful look as if to say, “Please take us home and be our “forever” family (that’s Lianne’s term)…”  It was heart-wrenching to throw the little rascals out of the car (Verne did the throwing, I only watched). I think he was right, though, when he accused Lianne of training her dogs to do that. It’s quite effective. I haven’t been able to forget little Winston and find myself going back to the picture I took and wondering if he’s found his “forever” mommy yet. Anybody interested?

A few days later, Lauren joined us for the long weekend. I hadn’t planned anything for the Memorial holiday (except to make blueberry jam), but then Lauren is always happy to just stay home and have quality time with “the Parents.” On our way home from picking her up at the airport we noticed a big to-do at Chaw’se Indian Grinding Rock Park (located a few miles from home). Verne knew exactly what was going on as he’d read about it in our local paper, the Ledger Dispatch. It was Chaw’se Weekend, the annual fundraiser for the park sponsored by the Jackson Rancheria, our local Indian casino. We decided to check it out Saturday afternoon. One of the things I love about a small town (I sometimes hate it too), you don’t go out without running into people you know. We no sooner arrived at Chaw’se and we ran into our former neighbors and friends, the Lairds, as they were just leaving. Actually, it was great timing because Lauren hadn’t seen them in years and they have always taken an interest in the girls. It was a perfect reunion. They gave us a heads-up on the free food and we were off to lunch on Indian tacos and fry bread. We walked through the vendor area and then made plans to return the next morning for a hike around the south trail of the park. 

The balance of our weekend was spent at the cabin quilting. Our goal was to make a quilt top in a day. Sounds ambitious, but anything is possible with the A-Team. That’s what we call ourselves. The “A” meaning excellence. It means something quite different when we make that reference at one of our quilting retreats. I cut for four hours the following day and Lauren sewed.  One additional hour on Sunday morning and we had completed the project and it’s now one more in my cupboard of a couple dozen quilt tops that need to be quilted.

That’s it for the month of May. I’m already a few days into June and the El Dorado County Fair and the Basic Sausage Making at Home class are looming over me. Yikes! On a positive note, I’m current on my blogging. J

May Daze -- Sally's Amador Reunion

*Warning* If you find talk of poor health, death, funerals, and eulogies morbid or inappropriate, read no further!

A Moser favorite movie from the late 90’s is Waking Ned Devine. It’s a comedy about a small Irish community coming together to claim and share the lottery winnings of a friend and neighbor who died from the shock of his good fortune. An assumed identity results in Michael O’Sullivan attending his own funeral and basking in the glowing eulogy given by his best friend, Jackie O’Shea. Earlier this year Sally told me she was planning her funeral and memorial service (including the menu). Having known Sally for the past twenty years, I wasn’t sure if she was just trying to spare her three children this unwanted task or, more likely, just making sure it was done right and to her satisfaction. Sally loves to cook and entertain and since she moved to Santa Barbara over a decade ago has been heavily involved with her local temple and become the go-to person for all large events involving food. It was during this conversation that a particular line from the movie Waking Ned Devine (“What a wonderful thing it would be to visit your own funeral.”) came up and I rather think that this may have prompted her recent visit to see her old friends in Amador County and host a Pizza Party at her favorite pizza parlor in Pine Grove.

Verne and I first met Sally Simms when we were invited to join (actually, audition) for a local dinner group comprised of four or five couples in the area, including Sally and her friend Neil McElroy. While we were on our best behavior that first night, she had already been warned about Verne (if you know the man, you know why a “warning” was in order) and she took him by the arm as we walked towards her dining room and said, “You are seated next to me where I can keep an eye on you.” From that moment they’ve had a special relationship. Our dinner group, eventually becoming known as the Grub Club, was the impetus for Verne and I spending every Saturday for six months at Home Chef in Sacramento attending their culinary program, subscribing to a half dozen cooking magazines, and accumulating an extensive library of cookbooks. Now that I think about it, even the name of this blog was indirectly influenced by those early attempts at entertaining the Grub Club and Sally Simms. My close friendship with Sally was a slow bloom that began with our monthly (later on bi-monthly and eventually quarterly) Grub Club dinners, my weekly visits to drop off eggs at her home in Sutter Creek (she became my “egg broker”), and later our mutual interest in quilting and creation of Stix Chix (a quilting group of family and friends). From the beginning it has been an easy relationship, with no expectations and no demands on each other’s time. We sometimes talk every few days. Other times, we’re busy and a week or two may go by between calls. When we do connect, it’s always as if no time has passed and we just pick up where we left off. We are interested in each other and find each other interesting. We are both bossy, but somehow have managed over the years to take turns being “the boss”.  If we get a bit peeved with each other (which is rare, but then no relationship is without its challenges), we just manage to laugh and move on. After all, we are best friends.

Back to Sally’s visit in May. As Verne often says, Sally has every ailment known to man. That’s no exaggeration. She lives with constant pain, spends part of every week at doctors’ appointments, takes pills throughout the day that a normal person would require a spreadsheet to manage. Does she sit at home and ask God why? Never. Does she whine, withdraw, and feel sorry for herself? Never. She lives. Sally told me once that her days are not spent waiting to die; instead, she chooses to live each day and do those things that bring her joy. She quilts, even when she has to rely on friends to do her cutting and ironing. As long as she can guide a piece of fabric through her sewing machine, she will quilt. She cooks, even when she has to rely on friends to cut the food because the pain in her hands is so severe that she can’t hold a knife. She plays bridge and mahjong and trivial pursuit. There’s certainly nothing wrong with her mind. She comforts and is comforted by her dog, Elliot, although she can no longer walk him and must rely on greedy little kids down the street to exercise him each afternoon (I say greedy, because the little brats wanted $5 a day to walk him to the end of the block and back!) She always has time for her best friend when she calls and is always more interested in what that best friend (me) has to say than to complain about her own circumstances. Have I told you that Sally laughs a lot? I love her laugh. I sometimes call to just hear her laugh. Sally is a remarkable person and one that I truly admire. She is intelligent and kind and loving and she is my best friend forever.

As for Sally’s visit, which was going to happen with or without her doctors’ approval, it was successful in that she didn’t die on our watch. (I told you earlier not to continue reading if you’re touchy about this kind of talk.) All of Sally’s doctors advised her against making the 400 mile trip. None of us thought it was a good idea. But, she was coming, come hell or high water (what does that saying mean? My mom used to always say it…). Her friend (actually, Sandy is more of a daughter than most daughters are to their mothers) drove her, stopping several times both coming and going, and tended to her needs. They arrived on a Thursday evening around 7 p.m. and by 9 p.m. Sally was in emergency (the first of two trips to our local hospital). They patched her up, gave her some antibiotics and sent her home. The next day we quilted. Yes, Sally has her priorities. We spent that evening partying at Pine Grove Pizza with about 20 of her friends and family in the area. I’ve included a few of the pictures below. It was back to the emergency ward after the party as the infection in her leg had spread. With a few hours of sleep, she was ready to spend another day in the cabin quilting. Amazing (or crazy?)! 

Here is the full quote from Waking Ned Divine that we should all remember. It goes like this, “The words that are spoken at a funeral are spoken too late for the man who is dead. What a wonderful thing it would be to visit your own funeral. To sit at the front and hear what was said, maybe say a few things yourself. Michael and I grew old together. But at times, when we laughed, we grew young. If he was here now, if he could hear what I say, I'd congratulate him on being a great man, and thank him for being a friend.”

Thank you for being my friend, Sally. I love you.

May Daze – Jam, Sausage, and County Fairs

May was a busy month. After a five-month blogging hiatus with May 1st being my first blog post in 2016, I fully intended to get back to my three-per-month average over the past few years. It didn’t happen. This time it was not for lack of subject matter, but lack of time. When we weren’t busy socializing this past month, my time was spent working on MFP projects. That is, the Master Food Preserver program. The non-profit county organization that teaches locals safe food preservation methods.  The focus of my life for the past few years. You remember. Since we’re on the subject and since May was dominated by all things MFP, I’ll bring you current on the subject.

Each October our MFP group meets to decide what should be taught the following year. We usually take off the month of December leaving us with eleven classes from January through November, an additional combination class with the Master Gardeners in the fall, and half a dozen evening classes over the summer, called the Basics. The big ones, though, are the eleven 2-3 hour Saturday classes that often include lectures, wet demos (that’s what we call live demonstrations of food prep and preservation from beginning to end), and samples of our products. I’ve signed up to teach three of these classes this year. The first one, my old favorite, Jams and Jellies, was held in May. Even though I’ve had plenty of experience teaching this subject both to the public and as continuing education for members of the program, I always get myself worked up into a frenzy the week or so before a class.  The May class was no exception. As usual, it went very well and all of my fretting was for naught. Still, it’s what I do. I’m much like Tom Hanks’ girlfriend, Patricia, in You’ve Got Mail, when he said, “Patricia makes coffee nervous.” I know several of my fellow master food preservers who would agree with that.

Throughout the month I had two additional MFP distractions: first, the June class on sausage making, a subject matter completely new to our Amador/Calaveras County group, and second, a continuing education presentation I agreed to make on county fairs. These turned into to far larger challenges than expected. The person who volunteered last October to be the “lead” instructor and the only member of our 25+ group of volunteers who had ever made and preserved sausage, completely flaked out. As far as I know, he’s fallen off the face of the earth.  That left me on the hook for the class. Well, I ordered a couple of books on the subject and soon realized there was no possible way to adequately cover the subject in one 3-hour class and, thus, renamed it, “The Basics of Sausage-Making at Home, Fresh and Cooked Sausages,” emphasis on the word “basics”, and I omitted all reference to cured, smoked, and fermented sausages. This I could manage. I recruited the one MFP who seemed passionate about learning to make sausage, rallied a group of ten volunteers for a sausage workshop at his home, and we were off and running. As typical, of the original ten, half of us have done all of the work, making various sausages and meeting to taste test our results. My silent partner at home (I refer to Verne this way because he has refused to go through the MFP training so has no official status, therefore, no public credit!) has been a huge help and as always enthusiastically supported my folly. After a few tries, we have perfected a breakfast sausage, a spicy Italian sausage, and a Mexican Chorizo. Along with my compatriots, we have experimented using a manual grinder and three electric grinders varying in sizes and cost; worked with different casings and stuffed a hundred feet of links; boiled, sautéed, and grilled sausages. It’s been an incredible experience and when I finally meet up with my flakey fellow MFP, I will thank him. Our follow-up class next year will cover smoking, curing, and fermenting sausages. Exciting! That requires equipment well beyond our KitchenAid with it’s meat grinder/stuffer attachments, and casings. Verne may just draw the line with this second class. We’ll see, I do have several months to work on him.

It takes a lot of people to make sausage!

The second (actually, third) MFP distraction was the county fair project. Since I started making jams a few years ago, I’ve always proudly referred to my creations as, “Blue Ribbon Jam”. Last year Jana pointed out in her blog that while I call them that, I have never entered my jam in the Amador County Fair, or any other county fair for that matter, and have never won a ribbon of any color. This was true. Not any more, though. I started preparing for the county fair presentation by calling our local fair office in Plymouth and talking to the people in charge of the fair each year. They provided me with the 2015 fair guide and I realized they needed help. There were a number of out-and-out mistakes in the canned foods section. Without boring you with the details of a week’s worth of work, one thing led to another and by the date of my presentation I had become involved with three local counties reviewing their guidelines and making the necessary changes to create a set of consistent requirements. After immersing myself in fair guidelines, interviewing three different judges with a total of 80+ years of experience, studying the USDA standards of excellence for home preserved foods, I realized that the only missing piece was first-hand experience. With just a few days remaining for the Calaveras Fair I entered my first competition. And, because Verne has become quite the canning expert, he also entered his famous barbeque sauce. Actually, his fame is limited to our immediate family, so it’s unlikely you’ve ever heard of High Sierra BBQ sauce. He also entered a salsa we made last fall with Aaron, when he and the other Burkhards visited.

Even though by the time we decided to compete I was very familiar with the entry process, it took several calls and a lot of last-minute anxiety as the filing deadline neared. The next step a week later was to deliver our products to the fairgrounds in Angels Camp. I was busy, so Verne took off on his own to make the 80-mile round trip to deliver the goods. He was gone for hours. The fair grounds are huge and during “fair week” mostly run by volunteers. No one seemed to know where to take our canned goods and once he finally found the right building my entries were on the computer but his had somehow failed to get that far. Eventually, he found one of the few paid employees who took our entries and assured him she would add him to the list. Hmm… Last year we attended the judging of canned goods in Plymouth and found it to be a great experience. This year the judging day in Angels Camp conflicted with one of our two social events in May and we weren’t able to attend and had to wait until the Monday following the fair to pick up our entries (and, hopefully, our ribbons). Verne assured me he’d read the guidelines and we could pick them up at 10 a.m. on Monday. Wrong! We arrived a little after 10 to a locked building, although we could see people inside moving around. They ignored my pounding on the door until they decided I was not going away. “Noon was the pick-up time,” I was told by a surly volunteer. I explained the great distance we’d driven, begged and pleaded, and they finally searched and found three jars of our products (we’d delivered two for each entry, eight in total). At that point I was mad at Verne for having gotten us there early, mad at the volunteers for not having a better attitude, and mad that the three jars they’d given me showed no standing in the competition – that is, no ribbons. After walking to the car and taking a closer look I realized I was holding Verne’s BBQ sauce and salsa, no jams. I went back and pounded on the door again. The same people (no less surly) answered and agreed to take another look for my entries. This time they returned with four jars, two that included the winning ribbons (one blue for first place in Preserves and a red ribbon for second place in Marmalades)!!! I’d done it! I could now (honestly) make reference to my award winning, blue ribbon jam. The excitement lasted only a moment. Verne had no ribbons. Sad.

Calaveras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee

(Strawberry Preserves 1st place; Peach Marmalade 2nd place

The story continues. A week later we received a $1 check in the mail made payable to Verne Moser. Again, being new to the process this $1 check held no significance except that we figured they’d sent Verne my premium (that’s what the money associated with a ribbon is called). Knowing now that premium awards are $3, $2, and $1 for blue, red, and white ribbons, we could have deduced from the check that he’d placed. But, we didn’t make the connection at that point and I asked him to call and see if the check was actually for me. I wanted my winnings. He was off the phone in less than a minute and had no confirmation as to why he’d received the $1. Some jobs are better done by The Big Boss (as I am known). I called back.  By now we have the Calaveras County Fairgrounds on speed dial and my name and voice is well known to the entire staff. What I found out was that my premium of $5 (I refer to it as five-large) has yet to be sent. The $1 premium (one-small) was actually for one of Verne’s entries. I wasn’t told which one, the BBQ sauce or the salsa – we had to use our deductive skills to finally figure that out.My honey was a winner! If we’d arrived at the fairgrounds at noon, when we were supposed to, he would also have a beautiful white ribbon to hang on his third-place salsa.

We are now old hands at fairs and will be entering the El Dorado County Fair next week and the Amador County Fair in July.

*UPDATE* Before I posted this we discovered that we’d missed the entry deadline for El Dorado. A few calls and a lot of whining and they agreed to take our forms (and money, including a late fee) if they were delivered today before noon. Off to a bad start. I’ll be adding the El Dorado Fairgrounds to our speed dial.

Am I being too wordy? I think this is a good place to stop. I’ll share more about our May Daze in the following two posts -- Sally's Amador Reunion and U-Pick Blueberries, Chaw'se, and Memorial Weekend.