Homemade food & drink love
I started gardening in my late 20s with the land on my now ex-fiancée’s home property. As a kid who grew up in a housing project and a duplex with no real yard, I didn’t have any opportunities or inclination to grow anything. However, when my ex bought her first house, she encouraged me to start planting things in select areas of her front and side yard. One of the things we planted were tomatoes; we bought some plants from a local, independently owned nursery. The owner of the nursery advised us to plant the tomato vines with kelp, Epsom salt and natural fertilizer to make the fruits taste sweet. I had always heard that homegrown tomatoes taste better than store-bought ones; as I wrote in my flash nonfiction piece “The Finicky Eater,” I grew up detesting tomatoes, but the ones my ex and I grew were a mind-blowing revelation for my taste buds: tomatoes really are sweet and delicious!
Later on, after my ex broke up with me and I went on to buy my own first house, I started removing the turf grass, covering the yard with wood chips and planting perennial flowers and herbs. I had no interest in mowing or maintaining grass, so I put in years of hard work and trial-and-error to create a turf-free, flower-full yard.
Years later, my wife and I now live in a house with a bigger yard. Along with wood chip covering and perennial planting, I acquired tomato plants from a number of free sources, including Craigslist’s and nextdoor.com’s freebie listings. This year, I got at least 10 tomato plants for free, so many that I had to plant some in my front and back yard. This resulted in a bumper crop that I knew I’d have to do something with because I wouldn’t eat them up fast enough for them to all stay fresh.
My next-door neighbors to the south of my house have a chain link fence that they use to grow vine plants; most of the time it’s some kind of cucumber, either the green ones most Westerners are familiar with or the Chinese yellow cucumber. Many of the fruits of their vines spill over into my side of the fence, and the neighbors let me know that anything that grows on my side are mine to keep. I’m not a cucumber fan, but I am a pickle fan, so I decided to teach myself how to make pickles.
My wife has experience making and canning jam, so with her advice and three instructional videos on YouTube, I turned the neighbors’ cucumbers into dill and garlic pickles (pictured in the above photo collage, left). I was so proud of my work; I gave jars to my pickle-loving oldest niece as well as my sister.
For two years, I harvested cukes from my neighbors’ vine and made pickles. This year, the vine didn’t really fruit; I still have one jar of pickles left from last year though. However, this year I had my productive crop of tomato vines, so I figured I could can and preserve them as well. Again, YouTube is my teacher and my wife my guide in this endeavor. It turns out that canning tomatoes is simpler than making pickles; there’s no need to cook up a brine like with pickling. I’ve made two pots of pasta with sauce made of whole tomatoes thanks to my canning work. In the center image above, there’s one jar of my canned tomatoes.
On a seemingly unrelated topic that I’ll connect with this blog’s theme, I discovered an alcoholic drink (via the Costco liquor store) called limoncello, a lemon liqueur of Italian origin that’s only recently been available for sale in the U.S. I love citrus, so limoncello has become a favorite drink of mine, usually mixed with a clear sweet soda pop such as 7-Up.
Another alcoholic beverage, or really beverage maker, I discovered online is Du Nord Social Spirits, an independent distillery that I can barely believe exists: founded and based in my Minneapolis hometown, and owned and operated by African Americans! Upon learning that this Black unicorn exists, I went to their website to find where their products are sold. The list on the website isn’t very reliable, I learned, so I decided to just check out any nearby liquor stores whenever I ran errands or did grocery runs. I scored on one trip: a liquor store next to a Joann Fabric & Crafts store I was shopping at had two of Du Nord’s products. I bought their vodka, then I had an idea: make my own lime-oncello!
Now like I said, I love citrus but I am madly obsessed with lime! It’s been a lifelong passion, from lime-flavored Kool-Aid to lime sherbet, to 7-Up and Sprite, to limeade made with bottled lime juice, sugar and water, to just taking a slice of fresh lime and sucking it into my mouth. After I discovered limoncello, I joked with my wife that if they ever made lime-oncello I’d become an alcoholic.
With the bottle of Du Nord vodka, I had the first ingredient to my boozy fantasy. An online search later, I had two recipes that I used to begin the process of making my lime-oncello. First, I needed lots of limes to zest, preferably organic ones that aren’t coated with wax like citrus fruits in the grocery stores usually are, so off to my co-op store I went. Along with limes, I picked up a Meyer lemon and an exotic, small, round lime with a very thick rind that I forgot the name of to add a little variety to the flavor. I then zested all the fruits and dumped the rind bits into the vodka bottle. I covered the bottle and let it sit for about three weeks, shaking up the mixture every day or two.
Meanwhile, I had all this zested citrus fruit that I needed to do something with. Limoncello needs about a cup of sugar syrup mixed in once you’re done letting the vodka-and-zest mix age, so I found a recipe online for making a sweet citrus fruit syrup. Basically, I juiced all the fruit into a pot, added a cup of sugar and cooked it. When I was done aging the vodka-and-zest mix, I strained out the zest as I poured it into a bowl, added the cooled syrup to the mix and then put it into a bigger glass bottle and corked it. I then let that bottle sit for about two weeks. When that waiting period was done, I poured the new lime-oncello into the Du Nord bottle (see the image above, right). I left the extra liqueur in the big bottle, and then put the Du Nord bottle in the refrigerator to chill since limon(lime-on)cello is best enjoyed cold.
The result: OMG, it smells and tastes so good! I sipped it straight from a shot glass first, then later mixed it with soda water. I don’t think I’m ever going to buy limoncello again now that I can make my own lime-oncello.
For a person who grew up not growing anything in a garden or doing any homemaking crafts like canning, I’ve grown to make a lot of homemade love (apologies to the late J. California Cooper) in food and drink.
