Six

Six is sword fights & musket drill & cowboys & Star Wars & squirrel hunting, and this time I'll be the bad guy because you were last time. And six is getting up after you killed each other and sharing a couple of pouches of lemonade, and planning the next round.

Six is building rockets with legos, and castles with hay bales, and tables with Dad's hammer, and entire worlds with your imagination.  

Six is a drawer full of soccer jerseys, and running after the ball til you're sweaty and falling down, and chasing your friends to get popsicles like you didn't just run for an hour.

Six is still loving a cuddle, but being ready to play. And jokes that you make up yourself with punch lines that make you laugh for hours.  And being pretty sure that summer is never going to end. But making sure to ask for more play dates with your friends, just in case. 

Six is sweet, and thoughtful, and making sure your friends are having a good time. And being concerned when someone scrapes their knee. And sure that a band-aid will fix pretty much anything.  

Six is being brave enough to conquer the world every morning. And tired enough to be carried to bed every night. 

Six is happiness.  

Pickled Pears

We inherited an ancient, 25' pear tree in the yard when we bought the house. It's clearly lost some major branches/trunk lines, is lopsided, and clearly past its prime. It sits over in one corner of the yard next to an equally-old and gnarled apple tree of unidentified variety. 

Every year, a few pears grow high in the branches, well out of reach of everyone but some brave squirrels. In the fall, the ones that have been missed will occasionally fall out of the branches to splatter down. Literally splatter. By the time they fall out of the tree, they're so grainy and gone that they burst into inedible little smears on the grass. 

However, for some unexplained reason, the tree put on a burst of youthful, showy production this year. I looked out and saw a tall, 6 point whitetail buck munching nonchalantly on something in the tree the other evening. When I walked out, I saw a huge number of small, perfect pears in the lower branches.  

I'm not sure of the variety. They're as small as a Seckel. But they're green turning russet like a Bosc. Not that it matters. I was so excited to see both this and the apple tree producing that we got to picking. 

Pears are only ripe for a few milliseconds. Then they go grainy and awful.   If you let them ripen on the tree, they're not worth eating. You pick them when they come off easily, and set them in a cool place on your counter. But not too long for these - they were destined to be pickled, so we still wanted them a bit firm.   

My Bride put these up (the picture at the top) using a combination of a recipe from the BBC Food website and a recipe in one of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage episodes (the Christmas one, I think).  

Here's more less the adjusted recipe used:  

• 1 lemon
• 10 cloves
• 2.5 tsp black peppercorns, lighltly crushed
• 1 small chili, halved, diced fine, seeds removed
• 1 tsp allspice berries, lightly crushed
• A bit of ginger, sliced thin
• 2 pints cider vinegar
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 2.5 lbs sugar
• 2.5 lbs pears

1. Zest the lemon and put in a pan with all the spices, sugar & vinegar over low heat. Stir until sugar dissolves.
2. Peel, quarter and core the pears.  (If this takes a while, toss the peeled pears with a little diluted lemon juice to keep them from browning).  
3. Add the pears to the pan and simmer for about 10 minutes.
4. Pack the fruit into sterilized canning jars, and pour over the warm syrup from the pan. Seal and put aside to finish.  

They'll be ready to eat in a few days, but even better if left to sit for a month or so before you crack open the jar.  

Pickled pears are a great side with pork tenderloin or other meats. Or just serve them in a small bowl along with a really nice set of cheeses. 

We'll set these aside to serve along with a nice glass of wine or four to our Christmas guests.  If we don't get tempted and dive into them sooner. 

Okra & peppers

The gardens have been in full-on production mode for some weeks now. We were very successful with the early greens like arugula and lettuce, our snow and sugar peas. The zucchini came on in their normal mad rush, requiring constant vigilance at the risk of producing a cricket bat sized squash hiding beneath the leaves if you turned your back for a second. All of the squash has done pretty well - I have pumpkins ripening that may last until halloween (always a bit of a gamble), and a new variety of chinese squash that a colleague gave me that are just a gorgeous pale green. 

My tomatoes were gnawed to stumps again by our neighborhood deer - we saw a young 6 point buck yesterday evening standing underneath the pear tree. He was pretty nonchalant about seeing us as well, and flipped his tail at us as he trotted back into the wood line. I swear I could smell his guilty tomato breath from across the yard. 

For the first time ever, we've had a really successful crop of peppers. Our summer isn't normally long and hot enough to produce good peppers of any kind. But I tried a few banana peppers this year and have had a terrific crop that I've grilled, chopped and tossed with sausage and other goodies. 

I didn't plant okra this year (though I have in the past), but we scored a couple of bags at the town farmer's market this weekend. And my lovely Bride was kind enough to pickle up the bunch, along with the peppers I hadn't gotten around to eating yet.   (Both of these recipes came out of the Martha Stewart Living cookbook)

They're still warm and fresh out of the canning bath, and I'll have to wait a few weeks to try them. But I'll be putting these into a special 'Dad only' part of the pantry. They'll make an appearance on sandwiches and salads after they've had a month or two to mature.

Amazing what a little vinegar, spices and peppercorns can do to keep these vegetables long into the colder months.