Among the Possibilities of Pickling, CHOW CHOW brings the most smiles and smacking of lips! This here is Aunt Francis's Chow Chow from the Portage, Wisconsin region, where the Illinois is portaged to the Wisconsin Rivers, in memory…
The main ingredient of Chow Chow is Green Tomatoes and the second is usually Corn…here are her two versions, tried and true:
Chop coarsely to make one gallon of chopped green tomatoes; I gallon of chopped fresh, crisp cabbage; one half gallon of chopped yellow or white onions; one bunch of crisp celery; six seeded sweet green peppers; three mild 'hot' peppers; 3/4 of a cup on non-iodine salt: mix all together with grinding motion…let stand for two hours Drain any fluid…put four cups of white sugar (or date sugar); two and 1/2 cups of good brown sugar; two quarts of good apple cider vinegar; and one cups of pickling spices of choice into the vegetables all mixed in well…simmer in a non-reactive huge pan for one hour. pour into sterile jars…may boiling water process for ten minutes, but not really necessary…makes. well, a Lot of Chow Chow! may add about six ears of cut fresh sweet corn to this one, for added color and texture….
Now, here's the Corn Chow Chow:
Cut corn clean from one dozen ears of sweet corn, and drain off the 'milk'. Mix with two well-chopped onions; two sweet green peppers, chopped; one sweet red pepper, chopped; one cup very crisp cabbage chopped; two tablespoons non-iodine salt; 1/2 teaspoon ground pepper; ones and 1/2 tablespoons dry yellow mustard; one cup date or cane sugar; and two cups of white vinegar: cook slowly simmering, for an hour. stir often…makes five or six half-pint jars…may process, up to ten minutes…
here's Chow Chow Poetry:
when we of the middle west
hear the words Chow Chow:
up comes Aunt Francis - and she's singin'
over her big linoleum kitchen table!
She's laughin': "kill em with kindness, Katey!"
She's rockin' someones baby somewheres about -
and she's slow cookin' that ol' hen who lays no more…
we'll eat so fine we know, cuz Francis asked just now:
"Stayin' for supper? we'll have snap peas along with
this here ol' bird… and we'll have fresh Chow Chow…
cuz I worked with her today - all green tomato fine…
an' the sun comin' in soft as can be, this very mornin'….
6/1/15
1/3/15
THERE IS NO HUNGER
There is no hunger as the hunger of a drone. I am a drone and my skepp is my home when the worker women allow me to feed…
it is cold here and it is cold so many days and nights that I wonder at this and pray a prayer to the makers and the movers of honey - and, o naturally - of the pollens that keep us warmer than outside.
We are so many. Too many, I heard in the buzz of the warm waxes and heaves and cacoons of our young-not-yet-out….
It's the workers they'll be needing. I know this deep in my abdomen. Her Queen-ness is not yet finished her wonderful youth of eggs and all her workers are delighted with her health and brood health. No drones needed to leave the hive with new young queens or with the old. Decisions are far away in some spring that will come. Winds are blowing Spring over the crusts of snow. Sooner than that, I will be gone. For, I am not needed….ancient ways are compelled from the very ice.
In his office, the young Bo is watching the ice etch the windows. Hive windows and that glass door of some opportunity he should not miss. He is handsome in this land where women are more handsome than their menfolk, but he is older and his ideas and work are older. His boss has red long hair and comes from old Icelandic Stock. She would eat her young - if she had young. Instead, she has drones like him cluttering up her glass hive. It's filled with gold sun and gold of finance and her workers are well aware that she's engendering all that life. He isn't needed much anymore, and is beginning to feel neglected - worse - invisible. a drone, whose time is done.
Bo runs his hands through his thinning brown hair… The 'buzz' is layoffs. He'll be first to go. He shudders in no cold at all, seen behind the glass octagons of this hive. It's warm inside. Outside, the cold is collecting filagree of etchings of lost hope. He will walk the snows barefoot, through those glass prisms of doorways to no where at all…
There is no hunger, his beekeeping Dad once told him…as the hunger of a drone.
There is no hunger as the hunger of a drone. I am a drone and my skepp is my home when the worker women allow me to feed…
it is cold here and it is cold so many days and nights that I wonder at this and pray a prayer to the makers and the movers of honey - and, o naturally - of the pollens that keep us warmer than outside.
We are so many. Too many, I heard in the buzz of the warm waxes and heaves and cacoons of our young-not-yet-out….
It's the workers they'll be needing. I know this deep in my abdomen. Her Queen-ness is not yet finished her wonderful youth of eggs and all her workers are delighted with her health and brood health. No drones needed to leave the hive with new young queens or with the old. Decisions are far away in some spring that will come. Winds are blowing Spring over the crusts of snow. Sooner than that, I will be gone. For, I am not needed….ancient ways are compelled from the very ice.
In his office, the young Bo is watching the ice etch the windows. Hive windows and that glass door of some opportunity he should not miss. He is handsome in this land where women are more handsome than their menfolk, but he is older and his ideas and work are older. His boss has red long hair and comes from old Icelandic Stock. She would eat her young - if she had young. Instead, she has drones like him cluttering up her glass hive. It's filled with gold sun and gold of finance and her workers are well aware that she's engendering all that life. He isn't needed much anymore, and is beginning to feel neglected - worse - invisible. a drone, whose time is done.
Bo runs his hands through his thinning brown hair… The 'buzz' is layoffs. He'll be first to go. He shudders in no cold at all, seen behind the glass octagons of this hive. It's warm inside. Outside, the cold is collecting filagree of etchings of lost hope. He will walk the snows barefoot, through those glass prisms of doorways to no where at all…
There is no hunger, his beekeeping Dad once told him…as the hunger of a drone.
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