A Neighborhood Says Goodbye to Summer

I’m a city girl, born and raised. I spent most of my life in and around Manhattan, and my idea of saying goodbye to summer used to involve standing on line for three hours at the Barney’s Warehouse Sale while reading the September issue of Vogue.

But since 2004, I’ve lived in a northwestern Fairfield County town that can run the continuum from suburban to rural in the blink of an eye: my street is littered with ranches and raised ranches, and on the corner is a nice old farm house inhabited by our friends Sherry and Mark, who raise chickens.

Those chickens (being chickens) often cross the road, and one early evening not long ago—right around the time that the sun was going down and the coyotes were starting to howl—I tried to herd the girls back onto Sherry and Mark’s property to keep them safe. It was not an attractive thing to do, and I’m certain that I looked like a lunatic, but I did it. Because in our neighborhood, we all take care of each other, and that includes our animals. Who include chickens.

Anyway, I never for the life of me imagined that I’d ever be so lucky to live in a place where I’d herd someone else’s chickens; or where we’d have snowstorm parties in deepest winter (we just carry over what we were planning on eating for dinner that night to someone’s house, and eat together); or where my neighbor’s teenagers would just let themselves in to play with the cats while I’m testing recipes; or where we’d love everyone so much that we’d invite them to stay in a rental house with us while we were on vacation. But that’s the kind of neighborhood we live in, and so when Sherry made the executive decision a few weeks ago to have us all spend Saturday night of Labor Day weekend sleeping in tents pitched on her backyard, it didn’t necessarily seem weird, except maybe a little bit to me and one of our other neighbors; we’re the only Jews on the street, and generally speaking, we’re not historically rugged people.

So Saturday afternoon rolled around and by four o’clock, there were seven McMansion-sized tents pitched about a hundred yards from everyone’s respective houses. The campfire was going full steam, and by six, we had all shown up with various dishes: Neale and Joan made brats that had been braising in beer for the better part of a week; we made spicy chicken wings; there was macaroni and cheese, incredible homemade pickles, hamburgers and hot dogs, soft drinks for the kids and beer and wine for the rest of us, and by the time it was dark, one of the more gregarious children told ghost stories. We went home just as everyone else was

climbing into their tents, woke up early the next morning, and showed up in time for coffee, the blueberry muffins that Susan had made the day before, eggs in virtually every permutation (including scrambled on pizza), and mounds of bacon and sausage. It was a breakfast that would not have made my cardiologist happy. But every once in a while, who cares?

So summer—theoretically if not actually—is over; the conversation over the fire pit on Saturday night turned to pressing issues, like canning ratios and brines. The kids are back at school, and last night, Susan and I planted a ten foot box (formerly housing the potatoes) with chard, spinach,broccoli, and two types of kale. The air is a little bit crisper than it was this time last week, and when we showed up for breakfast on Sunday morning, we discovered that a bunch of the tent-dwellers had spent the wee hours of the morning shivering under their blankets.

We all agreed: Fall is on its way.

Sweet Pickles

I’m generally terrorized by the idea of canning, but this old-fashioned Slovak pickle recipe, adapted by Sherry—who is an astonishingly great home-style cook—is a keeper: it’s fairly simple, can be tarted up as much as you’d like (Sherry’s version contains neither cayenne pepper nor coriander seeds, and a bit less garlic), and is plainly delicious.

Adapted from The Anniversary Slovak-American Cookbook

4 quarts thinly sliced cucumbers

6 white onions, peeled and thinly sliced

5 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced in half

1 green pepper, sliced into thin strips

1 red pepper, sliced into thin strips

1 cayenne pepper, sliced in half, lengthwise

1/3 cup canning or pickling salt

3 cups white vinegar

5 cups sugar

1-1/2 teaspoons turmeric

1-1/2 teaspoons celery seed

1-1/2 teaspoons coriander seed

2 tablespoons black mustard seed

1. In a medium bowl, combine the cucumber slices with the onion, garlic, and peppers. Sprinkle with the salt, cover with cracked ice, and let stand for 3 hours.

2. Drain the vegetables, combine the remaining ingredients with the cucumber mixture, toss well, and pack into 8 sterilized pint jars.

3. Seal the jars, place in a canning bath, and bring to a boil.

Makes 8 pints

Tagged as: canning, end of summer, Neighborhood picnics