Two sure signs that summer is coming: the storage container drawer is filling up and the potatoes are sprouting in the cellar. I just did an inventory of the freezer – counted all my pork chops and mooseburger packages, sized up the frozen corn situation and asked myself if I seriously thought I would actually do anything with the frozen fish stock I put away.
As we eat down our stored supply of garden produce and the meat from last December’s harvesting, spinach, asparagus, garlic and rhubarb sprout assertively in the garden. In another month the tide in the freezer turns, and stuff will flow back into the spaces emptied as we consume the last package of green beans, polish off the homemade scrapple, and turn the last container of lobster meat into quiche or stew. Rhubarb will be first in, followed shortly by asparagus, once the new stalks outpace our capacity to devour them.
People living in the age of supermarkets, myself included, have a hard time comprehending how hard provisioning a household was in April, May – and in Maine, even June – in past times. All of nature greening up outdoors, young animals being born, and the past year’s supply is running out and there isn’t much new stuff yet. Thank goodness chickens pitched in with eggs and there were always dandelion greens. While there was probably enough to get by, my bet is that the monotony factor was high. Lots of corn meal mush, salt pork, potatoes, salt fish, all good – to a point.
Last year was a very good potato year for us, and the winter was cold enough that I have not had to snap the sprouts off the potatoes until now. One old cookbook says that you only have to snap them off three times and the potatoes will stop sending them out – but nobody told the potatoes. Except for the new potatoes we swipe in August, I won’t dig the new crop until mid-September, but we have another bushel and a half of potato salad, mashed potatoes and breakfast home fries to go. Last year mice attacked the carrots, but this year I put them in mud-buckets (spackle buckets) and hung them from a nail. We still have a half a bucket of those. One cabbage, green and lovely, wrapped in newspaper and placed on a mouse-proof hanging shelf in the cellar, equals a couple of coleslaws to go with the first things we decide to grill outdoors.
There is one big old rutabaga, but I think that will become a boiled dinner some cold rainy June day with one of the two hams left. I want one ham to serve up mid-summer, but I have to keep an eye on it – it is hung presently in the wood room, the space between the kitchen and barn, and I suspect it needs a few hours’ re-smoking to dry it a bit more and to put on another layer of protective smoke. There are a few beets left, also in a safely suspended mud-bucket, and I predict red flannel hash will follow the boiled dinner.
Gone are the pumpkins, squash and onions. Onions are such a challenge this time of year. Even if you keep them in the dark, they want to sprout. Apples are gone, too; the last were wizened. If it were a hundred years ago, we’d have dried apples still, but until the rhubarb comes there isn’t anything for fresh fruit pies. I don’t even have anything in the freezer and it’s another month or so to strawberries. Old-timers polished off the last of their mincemeat about now. Or made vinegar pie.
Vinegar pie. It sounds like punishment. But is one of those surprisingly good things, looks just like lemon meringue pie and tastes very similar to one. It is in the same family of pies as chess, shoo-fly, buttermilk and even pecan pies: sugary goos thickened with egg yolks and/or cornstarch. It chief virtue is if you have lemon flavoring but no lemon you can still make a favorite kind of pie.
Vinegar Pie
1 pre-baked pie shell 8″ to 9″
2 tablespoons butter
One and one half cup sugar
3 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons vinegar
One-half teaspoon salt
4 egg yolks beaten
One-half cup milk
2 cups boiling hot water
2 teaspoons lemon extract and/or grated peel of one lemon
4 egg whites
4 tablespoons sugar
Cream together the butter and sugar, then add in the flour. Add to that mixture the vinegar, salt, and beaten egg yolks. Beat all together until smooth and soft. Add milk and water and cook in a double boiler or a very heavy saucepan until the mixture thickens. Test as you would for custard. Flavor with lemon. Pour into the pie shell. Allow to cool. In another bowl, make a meringue of the egg whites and sugar and top the mixture in the pie crust with the meringue. Put into a 350-degree oven for just a few minutes (minimum of 10 minutes) until it is golden.
Sandy Oliver cooks and writes on Islesboro.