There is a buzz all around, wherever one goes in Paradise because our children begin school mid-August. We had our tax-free shopping last weekend. Our school buses will be back in full force next week.
The start of a school year for me, is the start of the Fall season which is always chock full of change: a new teacher, a new grade, new clothes and shoes, weather changes, time changes, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, and of course lots of hearty cooking and traditional baking.
Even though it is always warm in Paradise, the sun has its changes in the Fall. Just like the Northeast, the light starts to show a bit differently and one gets the sense of the change. Even though the light is different, in Paradise Fall brings drier weather, cooler in the evenings but still beautiful, warm weather during the day. The change is not dramatic but welcomed and we do see a change in vegetation – as a reminiscence of Fall in the Northeast – the big oak on our front lawn starts to drop acorns.
We are blessed in Paradise to have a glorious Spring with vibrant flowers of every color imaginable growing everywhere albeit we are without the incredible fragrance lilacs or the majestic beauty of hydrangea. I don’t miss winter except for the very first snow, and summer – well, it is with us year around. But nothing can come close to Fall in the Northeast.
I think back to October days when the trees produce an incredible picture show, followed by a leaf fall that gives you that wonderful crunch underfoot. A windy day slides into a cool evening, cool enough to light a fire and you know that Fall is in full swing – soon the wonderful aroma of a roast turkey, pumpkin pie and then Christmas cookies will be, again, upon us.
Ever Fall, I remember putting my children on the school bus, waving good-bye and hurrying back into the kitchen for the beginning of making preserves. This is a project that would take all day but it was wonderful work. With the children off I would have no distraction: preparing jam or jelly is cooking on the wild side, but what a reward at completion! Beautiful jewel-colored jars of jelly. Mine was always a flavor most people had never tasted – Beach Plum. They are a very sour fruit but they make a perfect, rich, red, clear jelly. In preparation, we would drive to Island Beach State Park for the harvest and do our picking on a weekend after school’s start. It would always be a cool day with a warm sun and we would pick the plums off the large bushes back off the water’s edge in the tall dunes.
Preparation would include peeling and pitting the little plums through a Foley food mill followed by cooking the crushed meat to a rolling boil until the ingredients thicken. I forgot to mention a lot of sugar is added and because the little plums were so tart, only a small amount of pectin was need to produce the perfect consistency. The container prep is very important and one must be very careful in the was pouring for the final seal. The finished product was a beautiful array of Ball jars that I stored in a little wooden cabinet with glass doors in my kitchen, to await the Christmas season. Each year my children would take their red wagon filled with baskets for each of our neighbors with homemade tea loaves and homemade beach plum jam each tied with a big bow in clear wrapping so the beautiful jelly jars could be seen.
I love to bake and cook especially in the Fall, but I haven’t made beach plum jam in a very long time and probably will not any time in the near future. My new quest for Fall is the perfect the biscuit. And more precisely the Southern buttermilk biscuit which will be the topic of my next blog. I’ve eaten very good and not so good biscuits, but having lived in Tampa, FL – a very southern city – I was privileged to have tasted some of the best, and they were almost always served with strawberry butter. So, I’ve researched every recipe I believe is authentic and I’ll be busy in the kitchen. I’m smiling as I write this because I am thinking of cooks from another time that would prepare a chicken dinner AND biscuits. That means deep-frying chicken, cooking/baking sides at the same time while rolling dough and cutting biscuits and baking them – and being skilled enough to make sure that everything perfectly prepared, hot and served at the same time.
In addition to cooking, I have decided to start embroidery or needlepoint again, something I hadn’t been involved with in many, many years – the embroidery fell into the same time frame as the canning of the beach plum jam and also included hand-monograming shirt cuffs and shirt collars, pillowcases and blankets. I still haven’t started the needlework, but at the top of this blog is a piece that I completed in 1975. The piece measures 22″ x 34″ and was intended to be entered into a contest at the local Women’s Club. I enjoyed working on it very much but my life changed and I never saw it mounted and framed. It was left in a box that ended up in my mother’s garage. A number of years ago after my mother passed away my sister, Marge, found it, had it framed and gave it to me as a surprise Christmas gift. I have treasured it dearly ever since – and it is nice to have it in person rather than a memory in my mind.
The Sampler hangs in my kitchen and every time I look at it, I think back on the days when it came to life, and of my children getting off the school bus at the end of a day, running up the driveway happy to be home and how much I loved to cook, even then. And of my own school days: the smell of waxed wooden floors, windows that needed to be opened with a special tool, ink wells and cloak rooms.
For me, there is nothing that can match the fanfare of arrival of Fall.
Paradise Found 