Digging Up The Daylilies

So much for salad tonight. I was going to get salad greens at the Farmer's Market this morning. I didn't get out early enough, and there were no salad greens. I did get one bag of spinach, which I'm going to make into a matzah kugel so it goes far enough to feed 17 people. But the salad is bugging me a little. I'm supposed to take salad to seder tomorrow night too, so I was counting on yummy spring salad greens. It was the first outdoor market today -- it was packed! And my usual salad lady is a vendor who I can find at the indoor market, but not the outdoor. Frustrating.

Ah well. Off to gnaw on a lamb shank for brunch (I already had grapefruit and a rhubarb pastry) so we have a shank bone for dinner.

The summer is coming to an end. Here in my midwestern college town the students are coming back. The weather is cooling (although yesterday was 90F and 75% humidity). And the canning supplies are here.

In every hardware store and almost every grocery store there are canning supplies. Jars, lids, pectin, all bearing the Ball or Kerr logos. Even in grocery stores where you're lucky to find barley or decent produce. Is this normal across the country? I don't remember it from other places I've lived. It's not like I live in a tiny rural town. We have a population of over 220,000. We have a major university and lots of government and an airport and all that.

This week we gave in to the lure of Home Canning. I prepared 25 pounds of tomatoes this weekend and on Monday night Drew canned 4 quarts. It doesn't sound like much, and doesn't look like much, but that was all that would fit in our canning pot. When you're canning on a weekday night after dinner, you can only do one batch because the USDA and UW Extension agree that tomatoes packed in juice need to be boiled for 90 minutes. Last night we bought canning tongs (they are curved at the bottom to fit around jars) and a round cake rack, so our next batch should be much easier. And having seen Drew translate the written word into real life, I can do the next batch myself.

I'm excited to have local tomatoes available for spaghetti sauces this winter!

ETA: To my friends across the pond -- What do you call preserving veg in jars, like putting up marmalade? I want to write to my grandparents about this, but I want to be sure I use the right words. Thanks!

We just got home from Jeff Erlanger's funeral. It was huge and beautiful. Jeff Erlanger was an amazing guy in our town, here's his obit, the memorial in this week's Isthmus, and a memorial in the Capital Times. Jeff had an amazing spirit and touched way more people in 36 years than anyone else I know. As a result our synagogue was packed. They opened the wall into the social hall, like for High Holidays, and then put chairs all the way to the back. Jeff's funeral had attendance comparable to Kol Nidre. Amazing.

And it just got better from there. The eulogies were great. Everybody made us laugh and then cry. And thanks to Jeff's personality and his many years at OSRUI (Olin-Sang-Ruby Institute, a big Jewish camp), Debbie Friedman sang most of the service. That was a final blessing from Jeff. Wow. I've never heard her in person before. She blew me away. Drew said afterwards that it's going to be a really long time before he can ham up Gesher Tzar Me'od again, because she had us singing through tears. She also chanted the El Malei Rachamim in her best High Holiday cantorial style -- wow. It made me want to be in her congregation for Yom Kippur; she just grabbed you by the gut and pulled; you knew there was some serious praying going on.

Jeff's presence will be missed in Madison and in our congregation. But I think we showed him out in style.