Picked up a new pup at the pound a couple of days ago. Beauty dog! They tell me she's a Roti-Mastif cross. Fourteen weeks old. She's got black-orange brindle markings and she's very shy.
While I tell you the dog story I gotta get on with making a batch of currant jam. I picked a whack of red currants a few days ago, and they've been sitting in the fridge, and I figure it's pretty much jam time or compost time. Maybe currant wine time. But I'm going for the jam. Got the mason jars, got the sugar, spent hours on the web checking out currant jam recipes - I'm ready to go.
The dog situation around here has, frankly, been at a low ebb. We lost a couple in the spring. Charlie was a beautiful black Roti-Lab cross. She came out of the same pound ten years ago. They actually said Neuf-Sheperd cross, but my gut feeling is that they just take a quick glance at the dog and make something up. I'm sticking with Roti-Lab. Anyway, beautiful disposition, very gentle. One little character flaw; she couldn't help herself from eating kittens.
Took me an hour and a half to pick roughly a quart of red currants. We've got the gold ones here at Falling Downs too. Currants are little. It's a lot of time spent to get a quart. I'm thinking we'll have three 500 ml jars by the time we're done mashing and boiling things down. I'll leave you the complete recipe along the way. An hour and a half picking berries. At minimum wage I'd have spent fifteen bucks plus just picking the berries. We're over five bucks a jar and we ain't even started.
So the other dog we lost was Gussie. Normally Gus wouldn't be my kind of hound, but life happens and circumstances brought us together. I'm not fussy about breeds that have the word "cock" in their name, or the word "poo". Just a little over the top for me. Gus had them both. Cock-a-poo. I know. What the hell kinda dog is that? Right away you're thinking, well that's an animal that a size twelve work boot can fix in short order. That's certainly what I would have thought. I was wrong.
Like I said, I perused a lot of currant jam recipes. At some point I realized that there was such a range of instructions that it didn't really matter what you did - eventually you'd find a recipe that more or less came close to justifying your actions. For example, it was pretty common to see a 2:1 ratio berries to sugar, but quite a few recipes went heavy on the sugar, even going as far as more sugar than berries. I've got the sugar in now - went just under 2:1. I don't mind a slightly tart jam.
Gus died from complications arising from obesity. I know - that just isn't right. There's children starving in Somalia and my dog dies because I overfed him. That's got to throw a wobble into the wheel of karma at some level. He'd been with us for about ten years, and we weren't really clear how old he was when we got him, so I suppose he had a reasonably good life. Lots of good food for sure. Charlie was with us for ten years and we were fully expecting five or ten more when she was diagnosed with cancer. Excuse me a minute.
Damn! You really have to keep an eye on things when you're boiling up the berries. Ten seconds of inattention and now I've got a major boilover to deal with. Probably lost half a jar. Shit! This will add to the elapsed time on the jam project for sure. I'm sort of trying to cost it out.
Both Charlie and Gus were part of our three-dog unit, the other third being Boomer. She was just a beautiful Roti-Sheperd cross, at least that's what we were told. She's about five or six now. When we lost the two older ones within a month she got really sad. Then she realized she didn't have to share the rib bones or the bones out of the t-bone steak with the other guys. She was starting to like it.
The reason I'm trying to cost out the jam is because, just a few miles down the road from Falling Downs, you've got a situation that is surely a historical anomaly. There's mile after mile of apple orchards. Think of them as plantations. Picking apples isn't nearly as laborious as picking currants - you can fill a quart basket with apples in no time. What bothers me is how we pick them. We pick them by flying in brown people from third world countries who are eager to work for a wage that, apparently, none of the locals will work for. And here's why it bothers me; pretend you're an alien who set down on planet earth somewhere in rural Alabama around 1850. What would you see? Well, you'd see a few white bosses and a bunch of dark people doing all the work. Now pretend you're an alien and you land between Clarksburg and Meaford in 2011. What would you see? A few white bosses and a bunch of dark people doing all the work. Think about that for a minute while I check the stove.
Sorry. The new girl we call Lucy. She's the first dog I ever had with a docked tail. That always struck me as kind of dorky and unnatural, but after even a few days I'm starting to see the benefits. When Boomer romps through the room it's a red alert. I've seen her take four empties and The Best of Gary Larson off the coffee table with one sweep of her tail. Not with the new girl. She's got a few idiosyncrasies of her own, but at least your beer is safe.
The jam is doing fine. I'm boiling up the jars at the moment. The pectin question varies from recipe to recipe. Some call for it, some don't. Currants are one of the fruits that make their own, so apparently it isn't necessary, but I added a touch anyway. So back to being an alien. 1850 in the southern states. 2011 in south Ontario. You tell me what's changed.
The Canadian government brings tens of thousands of foreign temorary workers into the country every year to work in conditions that the rest of us would consider slavery. The American government turns a blind eye while millions of "illegal" brown people come to America every year to work in conditions the rest of America would consider slavery. We all go along with it because we don't want to pay more for our canned peas, our fresh vegtables, our apples and our currant jam.
After what I lost in the boil-over, I ended up with 2 and a half 500 ml jars of currant jam. Judging by the taste of what I licked off the ladle, it's damn fine. If I paid myself minimum wage and threw in the cost of the cleanup, we're looking at about twenty bucks a jar. Something to think about in the dog days of summer.
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