For anybody out there that comes here and wonders what happened to the Places I Am, now you know that I moved to the Substack platform. You can find most of the stories posted here along with any new writing and images there at the following link: https://placesiam.substack.com/ .
So long old friends and welcome back if you click above!
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| Bowl Of Pig Slop |
This was the recent response I found in the
comments to a video from a chef, to someone who asked him why he left the skins
out of his Maple Crabapple Butter recipe.
To clarify, the chef was actually referring to apple butter and not
sauce. However, having just eaten a bowl
of my own chunky apple sauce with the chewy skin left in (which I thought was
delicious by the way), I was a bit taken back by his response.
For this amateur bum of a cook who doesn’t have to impress
anyone’s finer tastes, and takes being called lazy a compliment – spending valuable leisure time making fancy apple butter without skins is not something you will
find me doing any time soon. I like some
skin in my sauce or chunky apple/pear concoction as I like to call my most
recent canning batch. The validity of my
reasons for the fondness for skins may be questionable, but they include: increased
fiber and nutritional content; utilizing a perfectly good food (fruit skin)
instead of throwing it out; reduced time in preparing the fruit concoction for canning;
avoiding having to buy another piece of equipment to take the perfectly fine skins
out; exercising my jaw by using my teeth that I still have to chew; and
avoid having to slurp my food!
When I shared a condensed version of this reasoning with the
chef, his response to my response was - “Hey you want to leave skins in your
apple sauce at your house, go for it. Just don’t come to my house with a bowl
of that pig slop!”
So, I took his suggestion to heart and brewed up another batch
of the chunky skin-full concoction and this time combined unskinned chopped up pears
to the unpeeled apple pot as well. This was followed by adding some water, and maple
syrup and cinnamon to taste. The pot was
heated on low, the contents stirred regularly, then sort of mashed, and the
contents ladled into canning jars and then put into the canner for 20 minutes. My initial
taste tests of this experimental food for the un-culinarily trained leaves me
to believe I shall enjoy eating and chewing the new batch of food as well. But as for feeding it to the pigs (or the
chef for that matter), rest assured there will be no leftovers for that nonsense.
Some photos of the chewy chunky slop preparation and canning
I did are posted below for those foolish enough to want to try to chew fruit
skin while they eat the rest of the fruit as well. I think the process is pretty self-explanatory,
but feel free to ask questions in the comments and I will try and respond promptly
and appropriately.
I am quite sure that if my “Pig Slop” were put to the taste
test against the chef’s much more refined “Maple Crab Apple Butter”, my product
would indeed end up in the hog trough. But
since I have no plans on getting into a cooking competition with chefs anytime
soon, I will keep on making and eating what I consider to be a very fine food
for bums like me.
You can read the chef’s recipe and watch his video
here. Note that I did have the pleasure of
sampling the chefs fine cooking at an event recently and there is no doubt he
is a master at his trade. I also bought
a copy of his book - THE FORAGER CHEFS BOOK OF FLORA , and found some good ideas and potentially tasteful recipes I might try out as
well. But when it comes to chew, or not
to chew – fruit skins, I think I will choose to follow my own recipe, for
whatever that is worth.
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| Find some finely skinned fruit. |
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| Cut into small pieces. |
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| Put in a pot. Add water, maple syrup, cinnamon. |
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| Cook on low and mash until you get sick of smashing. |
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| Ladle into canning jars. |
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| Put jars in canner and bring to a boil. |
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| After 20 minutes of boiling take jars out of canner and admire the jars. |
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| For those not afraid of chewing, eat the contents. For others foolish enough to follow chef's advice, feed perfectly fine food to pigs, who I believe would greatly appreciate it. |
"People of the modern world suffer a great sadness, a 'species loneliness' - estrangement from the rest of Creation. We have built this isolation with our fear, with our arrogance, and with our homes brightly lit against the night". Robin Wall Kimmerer - BRAIDING SWEETGRASS
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| Elder Flowers |
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| St. John's Wort |
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| Day Lilly Blossoms |
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| Collection laid out on screens in dehumidified basement to dry for several days. Note to future self, go back to 140th street and check for plums and apples along east shoulder in fall, and asparagus at intersection clam falls drive in May. Be thankful, as well! |
A TALK BASED ON THIS WAS GIVEN ON MAY 29, 2023 TITLED
“SOMEPLACE IS GOOD ENOUGH” by Tom Jablonski
Hello and Welcome to Frederic, all you readers (or readers
to be) of Eddie Emerson’s latest book Liberty Moon. Eddie asked me if I would give a 4 minute and
22 second talk, on the subject - “Someplace
Is Good Enough” . I hope this talk I am
going to give is “good enough” and not too long, and not too short. And since Eddie couldn’t get me a teleprompter,
I hope you don’t mind if I read my talk, so I stay on topic, and mostly on time. I did add a few minutes to my talk, but hopefully
taking that liberty won’t distract you from the celebration of Liberty, the
book.
For those who don’t know me, my name is Tom and I am a recovering former government bureaucrat. I now have the luxury of calling myself - a discovering Bum on a Pension, despite my addictions of past, present, or future. I moved to Frederic 5 years ago, after a fairly extensive search of Northern Wisconsin for someplace good enough to retire to. My goal was to try to grow as much food as I could, so that I would not have to go back to work, to earn money, to pay for food.
On my trips
wandering around the streets of Frederic in between turning my yard into food,
I had the good fortune to cross paths with Eddie now and then. At our first meeting, we realized our paths
had crossed in a previous life, back when we both lived in the “Driftless Area”
of South Western Wisconsin. Eddie was
the City Administrator for the Village of Hillsboro, and I was the WI DNR Area
Water and Wastewater Engineer for Vernon County. Back then we had met once or twice to talk
about Hillsboro’s sewer and water utilities, which were always intriguing topics
for me back in those days.
Fast-forwarding back to Frederic of recent past, I found Eddie and I had some other common interests beside sewage, and Eddie shared a copy of his pre-Liberty Moon writing with me, which included his book of poems – THE HERMIT AT FOUR COURNERS, and the prequal to LIBERTY MOON – WOUNDED WING. Eddie’s early writing perked my interest in his work as a writer, and I looked forward to getting a copy of Liberty Moon. And so, I was quite excited to delve into his latest book, which he handed to me while I was in the middle of shoveling the latest batch of what seemed like another foot of wet heavy snow from my driveway.
The receipt of the new
book was preceded by an explosion that occurred before Eddie showed up with the
book. That big bang happened when the wet snow caused the electrical
transformer a half a block away to explode, causing the power pole behind my
garage to burst into flames, and knock out my neighbor’s power for the
day. So, I paid special attention to Eddies
gift of Liberty on that snow-full, explosive day in March.
Regarding paying attention, I wonder how many folks noticed the Bronze Plaque on the Large Stone next to the bear carvings next to the sidewalk to our South when you walked up to the Pavilion here this morning? I noticed the plaque the first time I came to Frederic as I walked around town to try and get a sense of what the community was like, before deciding if I should put an offer on the house, I now live in. The plaque begins with the heading “Frederic – The Village Named After A Boy”. It then goes on to explain how in the later part of the 19th Century, the boy Frederic’s Father William Starr, had purchased 12,000 acres of the surrounding land from the Cushing Land Agency. Cushing had bought 30,000 acres of the Land from the US Government in 1846 for the bargain price of a buck and a quarter per acre.
The plaque remains mute on how much of the
proceeds from the sale went to the survivors of the original owners of the
land, the remaining Indian Tribes who had been forced on to nearby Reservations. It is interesting to note the author of the
Plaque, local historian Leona Cummings passed away 2 days before I got my copy
of Liberty Moon from Eddie.
Back to Starr, his plan for the land was to cut down the
trees, so he could have them turned into logs, and then cut the logs into
lumber, which he could then sell, and increase his fortune. But for that plan to come to fruition, he
first needed to get the Soo Line Railroad to come to the area, and he needed to
build a sawmill, and he needed to get workers to come to the work here as
well. As Leona Cummings told it, those
things were “the nucleus of the birth of the Village of Frederic”.
As a result of Starr’s motivations and labors, the railroad
came to town, the Village was platted; the sawmill was built, and a host of other
businesses and services set up shop, and created many “good jobs” for the
immigrant population moving to the area, - who were trying to start new lives,
in the land of the free, and home of the brave.
All of this progress was of course made possible by the latest and
greatest technology of the day - like the steam engine, electricity, and new
infrastructure like the railroads and electrical wiring. Of course, you couldn’t have development like
this created out of nothing, but needed the capitol and genius of the likes of
Frederic the boy’s wealthy dad William, who would profit quite handsomely from his
investments, and then move to Maryland as I understand it.
Leona Cummings concluded her one-page brass cast story of
the Village with a shout out to Numerous Local Organizations who “worked hand
in hand to preserve our past while building a brighter future for our community”
and reminded the passing reader that “The past should always remain a part of
our future”. Leona obviously didn’t have
the luxury of having 4 minutes and 22 seconds worth of text space for her bronzed
version of the story, which likely explains why she left out some of the darker
consequences that occurred before and after the creation of Frederic, the
Village Named After A Boy.
One of the things I
like about Eddies 265-page update to the Frederic creation story, is that he
has the luxury of being able to highlight a much more detailed version of the
story of the near-term future of our Village, from a much larger range of
perspectives. Most of the characters who
tell Eddies story, are the just plain common folks who unlike William Starr and
his boy Frederic, actually live in the community. These are the small business owners, the
small farmers, the librarians, the waitresses, the retirees, the people who
come to town for the “good” jobs, the people who serve the Lakers, and of
course the occasional teenage runaways, who get mixed up in drugs, and
unscrupulous older men with jobs as bass players in rock bands, as ways to find
better lives, and perhaps escape their demons.
From the perspective of these fictional, and not so
fictional characters we learn that future Frederic, or Someplace, is really not
that different from the Frederic of the past.
We find wealthy elites living elsewhere, who pool their resources, form
Limited Liability Corporations, and find new ways to extract resources out of
Northern Wisconsin. They market their
new technologies and gadgets as tools to finally bring us the good life we have
been waiting for. The latest marvels of
electric cars, clean and green solar farms, cell phone towers, and other
assorted gadgets are sold with the same old ideas of bringing so called “good
jobs” to town, and of course come with the hidden cost of land bought up by highest
bidders. Resources (both human and
natural) will be consumed to turn the corporate tycoon’s capital investments
into increased stock values. And the
residents who remain struggle to make a living in a land where the surrounding ecosystems
are converted to capitol with little regard for the future consequences.
And now to get back on track and time, I better end my tale
of “Someplace Is Good Enough - for me” with a thank you to Eddie for his wakeup
call and conclude with one of the poems from his earlier book of poetry THE
HERMIT AT FOUR COURNERS, which was inspired by another guy who spend some time
passing through the Driftless areas of SW Wisconsin.
The poem is called -
This Is What Black Hawk Said.
Once upon a time
before the White Man came
to build his roads,
and bridges
and cut down trees
People got on along the way
that seemed – natural …
Touching Earth,
Knowing Sky.
People who long for big houses
always work,
and rarely find time
for Spirit.
One begins to lose
faith and trust
the
minute they taste the fat
of money.
This reminder of Eddies, that comes from the past, might just be a hint about what we really need to do to find that brighter and perhaps more sustainable future – that is better than just good enough.
