Who Would Want to be an Apple?

Fall is in the air. The sun is bright and warm, but doesn’t produce a sweltering heat, which may also be eased by the gentle breeze that flows unhurriedly by. The air smells of earth and apples, plenty of which have already fallen from the trees; forced from the comfort of a sturdy, lush green home, surrounded by fresh, young companions to a morbid mass grave site, only a short distance below, where they face inevitable rot and decay, which completes their circle of life at the conclusion of this harvest season.

Yet, some may escape this unpleasant end, in exchange for another. Those that may be salvaged, whose bruises have not spread like an infection, penetrating to their core, and whose flesh has not been claimed as home to any number of burrowing insects, are carefully scanned, turned hand over hand, tenderly dusted of grit and grass, and placed snug in a bucket among other fallen comrades.

Now, clustered together in anxious anticipation in a single room with only a skylight, they await a plethora of alternative fates, which depend upon the creativity of their grim reaper and the availability of ingredients. Perhaps, they will be chopped into pieces, drowned, and boiled into an unrecognizable pulp. Or maybe, once in bits, they will be drenched in a sticky substance, suffocated between two sealed, heavy sheets, and endure a steadily intensifying, roasting heat.  Or, they may even be pressed between heavy weights until they burst from the unbearable pressure, their innards splattering and juices flowing freely. Some may be even less fortunate, meeting their end slowly and agonizingly, one chomp at a time. But I think that the “best” way to go is really a matter of preference.

Home-cooking

Over the past two weeks, I have assumed the role of cook, as it’s far too much work to cook for oneself upon completion of a day in the field and I find it to be rather therapeutic.  Generally, my recipes are either spur of the moment, written down on a scrap piece of paper in some drawer at home, or lost in cyberspace on a website that I didn’t bookmark.  In spite of this, a limited budget, and a lack of oven, I’ve managed to pull together some decent dishes.

My favorite meal thus far primarily resulted from an effort to make a dent in the jar of shredded beet root that had been sitting in the refrigerator for over a week.  I heated this up with fried onion and garlic, which are staples in every meal, par-boiled, fried carrots, and rosemary.  Mix all of this up with rice and a beet soup base, and, voila!

One of my co-workers had been going on about potatoes and his mom’s mashed carrots and parsnips, so this became dinner one night.  From the potatoes, I made home fries with garlic, onion, red pepper, rosemary, salt, and pepper.  I let them cook, covered, over a medium-low heat for about fifteen minutes, or whenever I remember to tend to them, so that the potatoes would soften.  Another fifteen minutes, or so, with the cover off and a bit more heat crisped them up nicely.

These aren't actually my pierogies, but they look similar.

I was feeling ambitious one day and decided to attempt pierogies.  Every time that I make them, I remember how time consuming and tedious a task this can be, so it takes a few months for me to forget the last ordeal and have the urge to make pierogies again.  My most recent experience was no different.  I didn’t measure ingredients very precisely, so I spent lots time kneading in extra flour to get the dough to the proper consistency.  I still don’t think I managed to do this, since I fought with the dough, as I usually do, to keep it rolled out with my makeshift wine bottle rolling pin.  The real kicker was when I wanted to count my stuffed and sealed pierogies, once I had used about two-thirds of the dough, and they were all stuck together in the bowl.  I couldn’t separate them, so I opened and gutted every one of them and re-rolled the dough.  I was fairly efficient with the boiling and frying process, probably because I was ready to be finished.  Although, in the end, my cabbage and mushroom and potato pierogies were enjoyed by all and I learned some valuable lessons, which I will hopefully remember for the next time...