The summer is on the wane and we’re heading toward another school year and all of the responsibilities that come with it.  I still dread September, even though I’ve been out of school for so long that in my day we used to have to do things like memorize times tables.   This was when cigarettes got more respect than calculators, as we all stood huddling outside of the front doors to the school in the middle of winter, memorizing and smoking.  Things have changed.  My son’s Grade 4 teachers had a way of explaining that it didn’t matter if he struggled with Math because in Grade 5, “he’ll get to use a calculator!”  Great. Oh, and you can’t smoke on school property any more.

My childhood summer days were endless.  I didn’t grow up in the big city and so it was a time and place where the screen door slammed against our heels first thing in the morning and we wouldn’t return to the house until dinner after we heard our mother’s calls from the porch. Then we would be back out again until the sun started to go down.  We made our own fun and the days lasted forever because of it.  Now summer is defined by camps – rock star camp, soccer camp, dragon boat camp, this camp, that camp.  Last week it was aquatic camp, this week photography camp and next week movie camp. Then school starts all over again.  No time for lazy days any more.

With September looming we’re reminded also that it’s time for tomatoes and pickling.  We canned for the first time two years ago and made enough tomato sauce to last us for more than a year; the problem was we ran out too far into the season to get fresh tomatoes to start all over again (and we all know how barky, pale and tasteless winter tomatoes are).  We’ve been without our own sauce for about 8 months and it hasn’t been good.  Our options have been to make fresh tomato sauce from cardboard tomatoes on the spot – and who has the time? – or buy the dreaded canned tomatoes.  We feel like Odysseus bound for Ithaca, when he tied himself to the mast of his ship to avoid the call of the Sirens lest his vessel be dashed on the rocks!  We clutch our shopping carts with white-knuckled hands and stare straight ahead as we tread silently down the canned food aisle, beseeched by preservative-filled red stuff from chemical-laden containers.  And so we’ll can once again.

(In addition, we’ve already initiated ourselves in the world of pickling:   We bought some pickling cukes from the good folks out in the country, some green beans and a batch of small beets.  They came out tasty – and very pretty too, thank’s to T’s terrific camera work.)

Another reason to consider making your own is because ConAgra, owner of Hunt’s brand, is one of the mondo food corporations currently named in a class-action suit against false labelling in the U.S. (along with Heinz, Pepsico and General Mills).  Or should I say allegedly, since far be it for me to suggest that a giant, faceless corporation might be doing something not on the up and up.  They’re being sued for mislabelling their products as ‘healthy’ and ‘natural’ when they’re not (allegedly).  What’s wrong with getting your dose of Pam Butter-Flavoured Spray, low-cal and fat free? Well, perhaps it’s the isobutane and propane propellant that gets it out of the can and into your pan. Yummy!!!

Read about the lawsuit here.

Check out ‘Recipes’ for pickling.  After we do our tomatoes on Sunday, we’ll post some pics and a recipe too.

Thank you.