The UPS guy rang the bell. He waited the customary "Mississippi-One" and bolted back to his truck, as I made my way down the stairs to the front door. There was a box at the door. I took it back upstairs; it weighed under ten pounds (four kgs.) by the feel of it; it rumbled slightly when I shook it.
In the kitchen, I set it down and retrieved a box cutter from the "omnium-gatherum" drawer. (Latin-English comic speech" "all gathering".) Sometimes I call it "the Duke's drawer" or "Plantagenet's drawer" to befuddle outsiders, referring to Trollope's Duke of Omnium etc. in The Pallisers. (Plantagenet Palliser became the Duke of Omnium and Gatherum in the series of novels.)
Thus, omnium gatherum. I did not know what "box cutters" were until some days after 9/11, always having referred to such things as "that little knife thingie", thinking of it more as a miniature utility knife (which it surely is in an adapted way) rather than a thing to get into boxes. But it did explain those neat gashes in the tops of cereal boxes in the grocery store. I had always avoided such defaced products, but did wonder why someone would go around cutting the tops of cereal boxes... undoubtedly they were up to no good: taking minute portions of product out - not amounting to much, but adding up after a million or so boxes - or depositing something baneful within. I never trusted some stores too far, either. I had bought some cereal once with an Olympic logo proudly displayed a year or so before the Olympics were scheduled to open, only to find upon returning home that the logo was from the previous Olympiad.
The UPS box contained lemons. Strictly speaking, it contained a mesh sack with the previously mentioned avoirdupois of citrus within... citrus of the yellow and sour kind: to wit, lemons.
Muttering "Thanks, Life! Thanks a lot!", I grabbed the container and looked for the thoughtful sender's name. It merely had the name of the offending fruit company or fruit monger or fruit jobber written.
That was a lot of lemons.
I know how Marie and Frank Barrone felt when Raymond and Debra (From Everybody Loves Raymond) gave them a Christmas present of a fruit of the month club membership: more fruit! every month! no end to it! (I learned later my brother had sent them to me, he having stumbled across a treasure trove of New Age lemons, or Nouvelle Vague lemons, or "artisinal" lemons - in a genetic sense, I suppose - that put past lemons out to stud for the rest of their lives... I always say "artesian" instead of "artisinal", and when I talk of fancy-schmantzy "artesian" cheeses, people must think I have a "cheese fountain" in the back yard!)
Well, what does one do with just over eight pounds of lemons? I mean, you cannot serve them for breakfast for the half-asleep and dispose of them that way. One taste would readily awaken all sluggards.
I stored them in a corner and waited.
She-who-must-be-obeyed arrived later, and I put the quandary to her sterling mind. She smiled at me - rather condescendingly I think, in a manner redolent of the way a mother smiles at a child who has taken a full two weeks to learn to tie his shoelaces and has not quite yet come up to speed, and whose smile-bestowing mother is wanting to go to home from the mall to make dinner, and in the midst of numerous other fellow shoppers is patiently waiting for her small son to tie the shoes up so the laces do not get caught in the escalator and pull him down to the under-world (as he himself worries!) and must keep her calm, not wanting to seem a bad parent.
I did not let it bother me.
She said "When Life sends me lemons, I make lemonade."
Same smile, only a bit less strained, the layers of stress visibly lessening as she spoke.
"Ah!" I said. "Ahh-ha!" I said then, and began looking for our green Depression glass juicer.
"What are you looking for?" she asked.
"The juicer." I said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world; and it was so, in my opinion, unless one was expected to await the second part of Life's shipment : a juicer, which had somehow been lost in the mail.
"Right door by the stove, lower rear; find a good size pitcher, too. We'll use my Aunt Stella's recipe."
"Recipe?" I thought. A recipe for lemonade? Surely just squeeze, taste, add sugar until the pucker leaves your face. Recipe?
In time I discovered that there can be small amendments to the basic Neolithic ritual of lemonade. Over time, mankind stopped merely slicing lemons with flint knives and squirting the contents into their fellow cave dwellers' eyes; things became civilized: lemonade was no longer enough; there had to be refinements and ambiance, things like mint leaves stuck into the cool tumbler and small portions of spices let sit for an hour, then strained out in a final filtering which also removed the pulp.
The recipe, however, proved elusive.
Neither digital (computer) nor analog (pencil-scribbled 3 by 4 card) was to be found. I suggested starting with the squeezer and being adventurous, but merely got the malocchio (or, the maloyk, as they say on The Sopranos). The recipe was a faithful reflection of how it was done along the Ottawa River from the early 1800's down to World War II; it was the drink that often accompanied the "Sea Pie" or "Cipaille" that was the food of the annual summer parish get-together; it was tradition. Problem is, it seems to have fallen into desuetude.
I have my own recipes squirreled away. Since these are sweets - cookies, pies, chocolates, etc. - I keep them in various versions, having numerous back-ups, and often committing them to memory. I can recite them, and often do, for example, reciting a recipe for Thanksgiving Cranberry-Orange sauce when asked to say a few poignant remarks about the season in a Thanksgiving dinner toast... of course, I dress the words up a bit to make them sound like Wordsworth writing about some feast he had hungrily stumbled upon while staggering about Tintern Abbey.
In fact, our friend of Swedish descent wrote last Christmas asking for a copy of her own Swedish Sugar Cookie recipe, which she and her Swedish-descent mother had both lost track of, and had been given to me (I do overindulge in cookies at Xmas!) 25 years or more ago.
Of course, I had it and the recipe was off via email within minutes. I had scanned the original hand-written 3 by 4 card she had made for me, so she knew it was the real McCoy.
In that Fahrenheit 451 future of illiteracy which awaits, we shall gather by the river and I shall recite the recipe for Heavenly Brownies with Almond Extract.
By this time, the lemons were out of the bag, and a few had some blue mold, which were quickly disposed of. I washed the rest and piled them on a towel. They felt a bit thick-skinned. The amount of lemonade to be processed should be reduced by a third, I thought.
Meanwhile, She-who-must-etc. was on the phone, polling the relatives and the closer friends about Auntie Stell's recipes. Cousin Jane seemed the best shot. She had vast reminiscences of food stuffs and beverages. Allowing for the translation problems from the backwoods Canadian of Aunt Stella's early days to the Aylmer-esque patois of Cousin Jane's young adulthood to the Ottawa-ish brogue of her present day digs, we could have a winner.
She told us about the cakes with geranium petal frosting. One does not see many real geranium petals being used these days, nor rose petals either. I bet they would taste pretty good; maybe sugar-coated rose petals!
She would dig up the lemonade receipt (as they call it there) posthaste.
Meanwhile a few more citrus bit the dust. I decided to use some to keep the apple slices destined for two apple pies from browning (I do the baking, She-who-must-etc. does the cooking), along with various and sundry uses to which lemons are put.Our Indian neighbors stopped by and surprisingly needed to borrow some lemons for cooking. They must have heard of my sudden windfall. I bestowed some on them with the pomp and circumstance due as if these fruits were citrine and sapphires from Ceylon. I wanted to let them know they owed me big time. I still wait for my invite to a curry feast, however. I have noticed that Indian folks - the younger ones, that is - are quick to speak about curry invites, yet slow to issue them. Their parents, being my age, follow through much better.
I spent some time reading up on citrus. Sour orange and lemon pie sounded good.
When the recipe came, there was the mint, as expected, and the type of sugar, unrefined, as unexpected, and other bits and pieces (and the usual measurement problems where the folks of the 19th century say thing like "take a hogshead of bitters" and you are left looking at your Cuisinart brushed silver measuring cups and scales).
It was twelve days since the Sour had first darkened the doorway. There were not all that many left. Those that remained were thick and in the process of dessicating. Juice flowed like molasses through titration tubes.
There was enough for a fine glass of lemonade for each of us, today and maybe tomorrow. Cheers.
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pix: http://thisisnotahappyplace.blogspot.com/2011/06/lemons.html
http://www.robinavni.com/lifestyle-insights-blog/index.php/2009/08/26/make-lemonade-while-the-sun-shines/
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