Bread and Butters

Nothing says mid-summer in Ohio like the smell of boiling vinegar and the pop of jar lids sealing on the counter after a bubbling water bath. Well maybe not for everyone. It is late July and the cucumbers are coming in by the bucket load. This year my father and I planted a garden in a community garden plot, where I believe we were both sure nothing would grow. We've been faithful waterers and tenders and weeders for the past two months, and wouldn't you know it, our garden is the biggest, bushiest, greenest garden of all the gardens planted there! I have to admit that we're both beaming from ear to ear about this, and in just a couple of weeks my Dad is going to be harvesting his little butt off-tomatoes, green beans, bell peppers, corn and eggplant (of which he will eat none and will surely deliver them to me for the making of delightful baba ghanoush).

I ventured up to our garden on Thursday of last week, after having neglected it for a couple of days due to the chaos that ensues when one gets a new job three hours away from where one lives. I was overwhelmed at the sight of our cucumber plants. They were bushy, bright green with dainty yellow flowers, and growing healthily up the chicken wire cages I built them to keep our cukes out of the dirt. The truly exciting thing about cucumbers (I know you didn't think cucumbers were exciting, but let me tell you how they are...) is that when you first look at the plants and prepare yourself for disappointment because you see no harvestable cukes...look again. Lift up those big, fuzzy leaves and I promise you, even when you least expect it, a big, refreshing shiny cucumber will be waiting for you, camoflauged within the strains of the plant. This is something my father is going to have to learn, because while he brought home one cucumber on Wednesday, I came home the very next day with six pounds of them. Most had blown up like balloons, as he had neglected to harvest them at their prime. Well, so what do you do with six pounds of cucumbers? You make pickles...lots of pickles.


Cucumber bushes.

That is precisely what I spent my Sunday doing. Like my grandparents before me, I stirred a boiling pot of sweet and sour goodness, sweating and my back aching, until the giant brew of cucumbers was ready to be magically transformed into my favorite bread and butter pickles. If you find yourself in a situation where you have a few pounds of cucumbers to knock off, I highly suggest making these. Just wait until you have a cook out and you pop open a jar of these, and say to your guests, "Why yes, I did make these...from scratch." They're instantly going to taste better than any store bought bread and butter pickle you might pick up off the shelf. Enjoy dear readers.



Betsy's Bread and Butter Pickles

6 lbs cucumbers, washed and sliced to 1/8 inch thick
8 cups finely sliced yellow onions
1/4 cup kosher or canning salt (no iodine)
2 heads of garlic, separated into cloves, peeled and smashed
2 cups apple cider vinegar
2 cups distilled white vinegar
4 1/2 cups sugar
2 TBS celery seed
2 TBS mustard seed
1 TBS ground turmeric

4 quart size, wide mouth jars with bands and lids, sterilized and hot

1. In a large bowl, combine cucumber and onion slices. Sprinkle with salt, toss to coat, and cover with 2 inches of crushed ice. Let stand in refrigerator for 4 hours.

2. In a large stock pot, combine vinegars, sugar, celery seed, mustartd seed and turmeric. Bring to a boil and simmer for ten minutes, stirring occasionally.

3. After 4 hours, drain and rinse cucumber and onion slices. Add to the prepared syrup in the stock pot along with smashed garlic cloves. Slowly return to a boil and boil for one minute. Remove from heat.

4. Laddle immediately into hot, sterilized jars. Fit with lids and bands and process for 10 minutes. Let jars sit for at least 6 weeks before serving.

Makes 4 quarts of pickles.


Pickles brewing...

Home Away From Home

On a steamy overcast morning in Southeastern Ohio when it seems the hazy, cloud studded gray skies could open up at any moment, a farm stand is a welcome sight. Thunder was looming in the distance, striking other country roads and soaking the peaks of hills we could see from miles and miles away. A morning storm is not a rarity in a place where hot describes the moonlight hours and sweltering is more appropriate for brunch, and finally unbearable by the time supper is ready. From the ridge top road we found ourselves traveling along we could see many other ridge tops, gentle peaks and sloping valleys all careening their way through the landscape of Washington County, each bending gently leading the trickling rain waters to the Muskingum, and finally the mighty Ohio just up over that highest crest. Green is the color of the season in the Ohio River Valley. The trees are bursting with it in summer’s climactic glory, and the rows and rows of corn are lined with shades of fuzzy yellow and hearty amber. On the other side of the road perhaps you’ll find a soy field, with petite emerald leaves that shine as the wind blows them over and back and back and over. It is a place of beauty, not just in the landscape, but in the people, and experiences you’ll surely enjoy there.

This particular morning we managed to outrun the beating rain and rumbling thunder to the shelter of an old wooden farm stand perched on a ridge top amid the hilly terrain of peach trees, blueberry bushes, and centuries old apple orchards. In Layman, Ohio, hospitality is ever present. Our car grumbled over the rocky driveway and up in front of Wagner’s Fruit Farm, where on a wooden bench, a tiny white and gray cat lay flipping its tail about at the sight of visitors. It got up and nuzzled our ankles, desperate for a chin scratch, and greeted us with a few tiny meows. As the storms approached, we pushed open the creaky door, swollen with the humidity, to a cool storage room chock full of basket after basket of rotund early peaches. Inside, loading a palette with the fruit farm’s signature rectangular wooden baskets was a familiar face I was so happy to see. I met him several years ago when I was a student at Ohio University and made regular trips to the farmer’s market, where he and the other farm workers could never keep their tables full of fruit as people quickly snatched up what is surely the best produce in Washington County. He was glad to see me too, and soon we were swapping brief stories to catch each other up on the months of time between our fleeting market meetings.

Only seconds after we began debating which peaches we should buy to bring home for the rest of the family did my friend hurry back in the store room and reappear with an old worn pocket knife, which he assured us only ever cut peaches. He walked over to the bushels of peaches that had been picked that morning, reached his hand in, and eventually came out with what he believed to be the best specimen to share with us. First a white peach that was free stone and hefty, bright fuchsia near the skin and pale antique white near the stone was held out in the palm of his hand and sliced so that a delightful chunk of fuzzy peach skin landed in my fingertips. The juice was beading up and running off the knife onto the old patterned vinyl table cloth that surely made other similar spilling of fruit juice more manageable. The peach exploded with juice when I sunk my teeth into it, and tasted like what I always imagine the perfectly manicured piles of peach slices on the cover of Martha Stewart Living ought to taste like, only better because I was really eating them and the consumer-driven world of Martha Stewart’s minions who will only ever longingly adore those photos can eat their hearts out. There is nothing in the world like the sensory experience of going to a farm stand.

We left with almost thirty dollars worth of fruit, white peaches, early red havens, donut peaches and some cherry plums which I could eat like candy. I wish everyone could have an experience like this one, or perhaps more appropriately, I wish everyone could appreciate an experience like this one. The pride that exudes from people who put their hearts, souls, hands, backs, and brows into planting and reaping food for us cannot be measured. Before I carried the last load of the Wagner’s mid-summer offerings to the car, I told my friend that if things went well for me that day, I’d be seeing him more often. He told me to come anytime, and that I ought to pick some blackberries because they’re exceptionally good this year. Well, as it turns out, I’ll be going back for another round of his incredible peaches sooner than later. My trip to Southeast Ohio was fruitful, if you will, in more ways than one. About a month ago I applied for three positions with Americorps, a domestic version of the Peace Corps. One position was in Zanesville, one in Marietta and one was in McConnelsville. After what I thought was a fantastic interview, I was offered and accepted the position in McConnelsville. I’m going to be helping people apply to college, and anyone who knows me knows how I feel about access to knowledge. I can’t wait to start, and I won’t have to because my first day is August 2nd. I’m going back to Southeast Ohio, to the hills, the people, the food and the music. I love it there, and I know if you took the time to visit and explore it, you would too. Don’t look for touristy hot spots, there aren’t any. Look for Ohio’s rich history, its charming back roads, its bustling farm stands, and its multitude of sensory, spiritual experiences. Just make sure that when you go, you stop at Wagner’s Fruit Farm at 2505 Brownrigg Rd, Waterford, OH 45786, just West of Marietta, I hear the blackberries are great this year.

Stati Uniti

On June 29, 1920, the course of my family’s history changed forever. On what I imagine to be a sun baked, sweltering port dropped right in the middle of the hazy blue Mediterranean in Genoa, Italy, my Great-grandfather and Great-uncle boarded a steamship headed for New York City, U.S.A. I can only imagine their thoughts, their anticipation as the ship pulled away from a country that was quickly changing from a place they called home to a place they found hard to recognize. They had seen the first “world war,” and at that time never knew they were sailing far away from what would be another one nineteen years later. They spent sixteen days on that ship, sailing across miles and miles of open water, expecting the ends of the Earth to appear on the horizon, upon which the bow of the Giuseppe Verdi would teeter and then fall into the black endless night sky. There had to moments they thought they’d never make it. There had to be times they’d questioned their decision to leave a place our family had known for centuries to come to a place only seen drawn out in books. U.S.A.. It was a place whose very existence had to have seemed surreal in a time when a peasant crossing an ocean was a new phenomenon. They made it. As I scrolled down the pages of the manifest of the ship, scanned onto a computer and available at my fingertips, I saw paper and ink proof that on July 14, 1920 my Great-grandfather and my Great-uncle had seen the blazing beacon of the lady on the sea, and had passed through Ellis Island with flying colors…red, white and blue.

Two years later my grandfather, seventeen at the time, would join them in what we’ve come to know as the land of promise. My grandfather did not want to become a blackshirt. He did not want to fight for Benito Mussolini or anyone else for that matter and in 1922, the same year the fascists overthrew the Italian Prime Minister and placed il Duce on the throne, my grandfather hitched a two week voyage and never looked back. He had dodged a thousand bullets, so to speak, and luckily joined his father and brother working as a laborer in a factory in a place he’d never been called Willoughby, Ohio. In 1929 he met and married my grandmother, who wanted to go to college to become a teacher but in 1929 educating a woman was worthless, and her only worth lied in landing her a husband to bear the burden of feeding, clothing, and sheltering her. I have always hoped that my grandmother felt some sort of overdue satisfaction after all six of the children she and my grandfather raised graduated from college. That is a testament to what this country did for my grandfather. Had he never left Italy, not one of his children and most certainly not one of his four daughters would have seen the inside of a brick laden college lecture hall. Not one of them would have earned a master’s degree, and most certainly his youngest son wouldn’t have been able to earn a Ph.D. Those would’ve been the dreams he wished upon falling, tumbling, crumbling stars stricken by war and poverty. To him, this was absolutely the land of promise and his patriotism was endless. The irony of this story of the American Dream is that at the heart of fascism lived nationalism, national unity, and national pride. Why then, if you page through the archived manifests of ships arriving from places like Genoa, Rome, or Naples in the early 1920s, do you see thousands of Italians pouring out of Italy and flooding Ellis Island like the blight of a plague? And isn’t it funny how my grandfather’s patriotism and loyalty to the United States of America were fierce and unwavering, his national pride booming, and all it took was having the freedom to feel that way?

On Friday, July 2nd, my grandfather would’ve been 105 years old. He loved the red, white and blue, but also made sure we never lost our identity, our roots in the red, white and green. This year for the Fourth of July, my mother and I threw a small dinner party for a couple of friends. When we do Italian, we do Italian. We are Italian, and somewhere inside of us there are living, breathing cells that remember the rolling foothills of the Veneto province, or the mountains of Molise where our ancestors reaped and sowed their lives. That never comes out more than when we make Italian food. This year, in honor of my grandfather’s birthday, and the commemoration of a journey made 81 years ago, I decided that here in this place where I am free to celebrate Independence Day any way I want, I would share this culinary celebration of my heritage. Only in the Stati Uniti, could anyone celebrate a day of national pride with the flavors, memories and culture they left behind to pursue happiness here. That is the quintessential America for which I thank God I have the privilege of calling home. Happy Fourth everyone.


For Starters...


Toothpicks dressed with roasted red peppers, pearl mozzerella, and basil, then wrapped in a slice of proscuitto and dipped in homemade pesto. A seriously easy appetizer that looks and tastes gourmet.

For our dinner my mother made a pot of Bolognese Sauce, which she and I have perfected over the past couple of years, collaborating on how much wine to add or how many crushed tomatoes to add. We've finally got it to just about perfection and to serve it over, I made homemade linguine.


To top off our Fourth of July celebration, we decided to end with something more American, something we all love. Tart cherries are just starting to come in here in Cleveland and I highly recommend taking advantage of them while they're here. They have a very short season, and if you've never eaten a cherry pie made with fresh tart cherries, you're missing out. It's a little bit of work, stemming and pitting them, but in the end the biting tartness and plump pop of the cherries are worth it and it's the perfect July pie.


Have a safe, fun, memorable and proud holiday everyone!