Jabberwocky for 2005 May 22

I'm not worth much today. I didn't even get up until noon, which means I slept through Stake Conference. Better to sleep through it in bed than in the congregation, I suppose. About 3 p.m. I tottered out to make infused vinegar and minestrone. The carrots I was going to use were bad, so threw them out, but the soup is pretty good anyhow. I'm starting to have lots of basil in the garden, and some of the okra is up.

Remaining to do today, can apricots. I'm afraid they are not going to last until tomorrow.

I have canned nine quarts of apricots; I hope to end up with a dozen. I'm going to give them to Robert for Christmas because he has been jonesing for home-canned apricots for the last twenty years or so. I'll drive them up to Utah when I go for Shelley's wedding in September.

They aren't as pretty as they might be because the fruit got scarred during the hailstorm we had this spring. The fruits on the "late" branch are a little bit nicer.

When we lived in New Mexico, we had a gigantic apricot tree in front, and then when we moved to Sunnyvale there was one in the front and one in the back. The one in back died early on, but what I'm saying is we always had a plethora of apricots. We canned and dried them. Dad built a screen rack cabinet to dry them in, but they always turned out sort of hard and black. Still great flavor, but a really tough to chew dry mouthful. High school kids of the day often had a summer job cutting apricots and spreading them out to dry for Mariani's. (I notice they are still selling dried fruit.) I never did it; I always worked in Aunt Jeuney's hobby business.

The church had a welfare cannery, and when the sign up sheets went around Elders Quorum, Dad always signed us up for apricots rather than peaches or pears because the apricots are easier; they don't have to be peeled. I remember one time in the cannery I had the job of dumping a quarter cup of sugar into the cans as they went past on a conveyer. That night I lifted four hundred pounds of sugar, a quarter cup at a time.