Crab Apple Jelly

My partner and I have been gathering crab apples recently - those grape-sized (or sometimes larger) bright red mini-apples you see this time of year. (Fun fact: they happen to be the only apple variety indigenous to North America). We live in a neighborhood with quite a few crab apple trees, some very old, so our forager tendencies took over and we spent an afternoon walking around sampling the fruit of various trees, like some urban and slightly demented version of the biblical Eve. I found a vintage recipe for crab apple jelly, which appealed to the thrifty old lady who lives somewhere inside me, because after you make the jelly you then use the leftover pulp to make crab apple butter. It also appealed to me because the recipe was winsomely titled "What To Do With a Peck of Crab Apples." Full disclosure: I had to Google "peck" to figure out that it's the measurement equivalent of two dry gallons.

Along with Xuxu, we picked at least that much. That peck is sitting in our refrigerator right now, waiting to be jellied, because with a brand new baby daughter I haven't exactly made it to that part yet. Which is why, at a recent local farmer's market, I literally started salivating over one vendor's beautifully canned pear harlequin.

It was so pretty in the half-pint mason jar that I almost bought it. Until I remembered that a) I didn't have the money for it and b) I still had all those crab apples I'd committed to putting up.

We've been having a pretty hard time lately, not just financially but emotionally. I won't go into details, but it's been pretty rough. And no, I'm not going to turn this crab apple jelly story into some wonderful mommy blog article about how adversity teaches you stuff, or difficulties build character. Because it's too easy to read that kind of inspirational crap everywhere you go. Because that's not how I roll. And because as a fellow I rode the bus with a few weeks ago put it: "You can't grow flowers in battery acid."

Being satisfied with my own crab apple jelly, and forgoing the beautiful and no doubt delicious pear harlequin is really just an extension of what I'm trying to do with the rest of my life right now: work with what I have. It's not a new concept, not after living off the grid in the country for the last four years, and after a lifetime of poverty, It's just something that seems alien to a lot of folks I encounter, and to the American mindset in general. Don't have it? Buy it. Why make it when you can buy it? Why notice what's right in front of you when you can buy something else? Something that's supposedly better?

Really, though, re-attuning my mind to this way of living is teaching me some new things. Things I hadn't really assumed I needed to learn. New adventures in canning, for sure. Saving and pinching every available penny, certainly. But I'm also learning all over again how I'm surrounded by generous, amazing, loving friends. How mutual support requires emotional openness. How raising your children means being flexible with time, money and your heart.

And patience. It's in baby steps, but yes. Quick-tempered, loudmouth, little ole me is learning how to wait, how to hold my tongue, and how some things don't need to be said. They just don't. I knew this. I just wasn't sure how to do it in real life.

Some of these lessons are as recent as today. Most of them will continue being learned over a lifetime. All of these lessons learned are going into my parenting toolbox, my own little mental compartment I examine whenever I am covered in my infant's spit up and Xuxu is screaming at me to wipe her daggan and I'm exhausted and stressed because goddamnit I need some coffee after getting 2 hours of sleep.

That parenting toolbox is my life toolbox , too. I'm never going to arrive at a place where I have all the answers. I''m never going to be able to walk this path alone. And I'm not ever going to not feel hurt at the way the world works, at the way people can let you down. But I can deal with it.  I can move ahead. I can eat my crab apple jelly on my homemade bread and be satisfied, because I have enough. I am full. I am content because I used what I had, and I have some truly wonderful things in my life.