I think there should be a magazine for people like me called "Stop Me Before I Martha Again!" It would feature monthly stories of domestic arts gone horribly, horribly wrong. Case in point: it's peach season. I grew up in Georgia, and I love peaches--in all forms: fresh, canned, pickled, spiced, brandied. Yes, brandied! I saw a recipe for this in the NYTimes Magazine week before last, and was inspired, because around here, unless you buy from the Amish, you can't get peaches in any form other than packaged and syruped to a fare-thee-well. I went out and bought jars and lids and, I dunno, about 10 pounds of peaches. Then I spent an entire morning blanching them, peeling them, slicing them, sterilizing jars, making sugar syrup, doling them into jars and pouring a bit of brandy on top (except I ran out of brandy halfway through and thought, what the hell, rum works too). When I was done, I had a wrecked kitchen but also one dozen pints of lovely brandied peaches. I thought, Martha would be so proud. They'd make perfect Christmas gifts. Look at the money I saved!
The jars sat there on the kitchen counter for several days--I couldn't figure out where to keep them--and finally, at lunch on Saturday, I thought: I am going to sample some of my delectable creation. So I opened up a jar and took a bite.
Let's just say that if someone had been holding a Bic lighter in front of my mouth at that moment, I could have a new career as a circus fire-eater. If I'd HAD any tonsils, they would've been gone. We are talking way, WAY too much brandy...and it didn't mix so well with the peaches, either. The last time I tasted something like that, it was home-brewed in a car radiator. About the only good thing I can say about them is that if you keep on eating, you will soon be too drunk to give a shit about how they taste.
So now I have a dozen jars--make that 11--of something that looks like peaches but which would actually be better put to use as charcoal lighter fluid, or maybe as a field dressing for open wounds. Then again, maybe I'll just display them prominently on a shelf so people will think I am a domestic goddess. Then, if they annoy me, I can take a jar down and say sweetly, "Here--let me give you one of my jars of home-made brandied peaches"--and watch their heads explode.
Recent Comments