Instead of working outside on The Project on Sunday, Tim and I toiled indoors at the canning kettle.

We started with a plan. Typically, we draw up a list of tasks we want to accomplish, each one of them achievable on a Sunday, but never all of them doable in a single day despite exhausting ourselves trying. This invariably leaves us not only bone tired, but also demoralized, as if crossing every task off the list is a reasonable ambition and we’re just slackers.

On this Sunday, I laid out all the recipes I had for the bounty of green tomatoes I harvested in advance of predicted frost.

            “Let’s make Green Tomato Chutney,” Tim said. “It’s so good.”

            “We still have some in the pantry from last year.”

            “Let’s eat more vegetable curries,” he countered.

            “Agreed.”

            “What about Green Tomato Marmalade?” he asked.

            “And not overcook it?” The previous batch was delicious and as sticky as epoxy, good for patching tires.

            We also refrained from adding preserved tomatoes to the list, a condiment we are curious to try—on another day. We stored the excess green tomatoes in the downstairs fridge and concentrated on the four items on our list: apple cider syrup, sweet cider, hot pepper jelly, and Green Tomato Mincemeat.

Sweet Apple Cider & Apple Cider Syrup

The previous day we’d brought home four gallons of sweet apple cider from the annual community cider press. Tim had already boiled down two gallons into two pints of cider syrup. The process is similar to boiling maple sap into syrup, and the result is a tangy, concentrated apple flavor we use on pancakes, waffles, yogurt, ice cream, fruit crisps, crumbles, pies, and all things pork.

            We canned the cider syrup in half pint jars and sealed seven quarts of fresh cider, keeping one quart for current use.  We did this even though a local farmer produces sweet cider year round. Autumnal cider tastes best, as does food processed with our own labor.

Hot Pepper Jelly

           We’d just finished the last jar of last year’s Hot Pepper Jelly, so we worked on that next. It’s a perennial favorite for ourselves and as gifts. All the recipes we’ve tried have been too tame for our taste, so we’ve been developing our own recipe: equal amounts of sweet and hot peppers, both red and green.

Green Tomato Mincemeat

Finally, we chopped the green tomatoes, measured out the raisins, sugar, spices, and vinegar; boiled it; added dark Jamaican rum, ladled it into jars. and processed the jars in the hot water bath.

            It’s probably been a decade since we last made this delicious vegetarian filling, but memories linger of a spectacular mincemeat torte at Thanksgiving and toothsome filled cookies at Christmas.

           For the torte, I sandwiched the mincemeat between a lemon-poppyseed shortbread and lattice crust. Sophisticated and yum.

            The cookies offer a different take on standard holiday fare, which in our house includes rugelach, a pastry with a cream cheese crust filled with cinnamon, currants, and walnuts, in a nod to the Festival of Lights.

Anticipatory Pleasure

            Food is my religion. How else can I account for spending a Sunday at the stove, putting up condiments for future use?

            The answer must lie in the enormous satisfaction of looking at the jars lined up at the end of the day, like guards against winter, and in the anticipatory pleasure of opening them to share when the garden is a memory under the snow.