Summer tomatoes

In America someone who does their own canning is considered charmingly eccentric. A health nut, perhaps, scared of preservatives, or an ecologist mindful of individuals’ carbon mark. For Turkmen, canning is an essential part of annual winter planning. In winter there will be no vegetables in stores, no fruits in the market, no color at all in either nature or for sale. For an obscene price a few withered bananas might be available, imported from Pakistan, but most families wouldn’t consider buying them except as a centerpiece for a New Year’s spread. So, to make up for the four-five month vitamin dearth, Turkmen take the fruits available in summer and turn them into hand-made jams and turn the vegetables into sauces and pickles. Last summer my host family did these tasks without me as I was working all day at the school and doing projects after classes, and the dynamic was more like a lodger than a family member. But since I moved, and since my classes ended early so I could spend the summer on vacation, I had no such excuse this summer. I had to help.

For the record, cutting tomatoes for sauce changes from a charming novelty into a chore after ten minutes. It begins well. I was squatting on the ground in the yard with five other women, surrounded by freshly washed tomatoes glistening in the light of the single light-bulb in the night like glass ornaments or globules of blood. They gossiped and chatted and it was all fun and games. The kids washed the tomatoes in the outdoor faucet and brought them in heaping platters to us, who cut off the head and then chopped them into large chunks, and then the oldest women took our overflowing bowls of disemboweled tomatoes and put them into the three boiling cauldrons and fed the wood fires beneath them. The anthropologist in me was pleased and proud to be included in this multi-generational task of preparing for winter, a simple ritual that has barely changed in thousands of years. And then I looked down at my watch and realized that I’d been doing nothing but chopping tomatoes for ten entire minutes.

At the half-hour mark I realized with horror that we were really going to chop the entire pile of tomatoes tonight in one go. The pile was huge, enough to fill the interior of a four-door car from the floor to the window. With five of us going, we had barely made a dent in the pile since I sat down.

At the one hour mark I developed blisters on three fingers from where my knife was rubbing against my skin and layers of tomato peel and juice. My poor host sister was the victim of my increasing clumsiness as my tomato juice splash-zone more often than not got her instead of me.

At an hour and a half I began to systematically try different positions on the ground as my knees were beginning to snap and crack from squatting so long.

At the two hour mark, when I was released from duties, I sent a prayer to God to never leave the land of supermarkets again and that I would exercise twice the next day to hopefully regain the use of my legs. In the two and a half hours that we worked without break, five of us produced 25 huge glass jars of tomato sauce. And we’re going to have to do it again the day after tomorrow and next week as well. It’s a good thing I leave for a conference next week, otherwise I’d be roped in for apricot jam production. Sounds fun, huh? Imagine pitting apricots at midnight for nearly three hours and if that sounds like a grand night, you’re free to take my place in the cutting circle.

As most who know me personally are aware, the reason for the long break between blogs was that I’ve been on vacation for the last two months: first to America for three weeks and then to Thailand for two. Thank you to everyone who made my two vacations so splendid, I can’t wait to see you all again in December. Most important wisdom learned during my vacations: smoothies can make every day better, and smoothies with friends who love you are the best thing ever.