I could be the only person in town who leaves the recycling center with more than I brought in.
Recently I went by to drop off a few empty milk jugs and hoped to find a box in which to pack away tea cups from the justcompleted tea party fundraiser for the Friends of the Ferguson.
I did find a nice box, so perhaps I can finish that chore and the Redheaded Stranger won’t use the tea cups for target practice.
But I also found about a dozen one-gallon glass pickle jars. What a boon!
Now, before someone starts shouting I am robbing the city of a valuable resource, let me remind you that Watonga is still searching for a recycler that will accept glass. It seems the previous partner, through Weatherford, has stopped taking glass. But the city is working on finding a new company that will take glass. So there.
What do I want with that many gallon jars? I use them all the time, nearly every day.
They are great for storing dry goods to keep mice and bugs out. They are perfect for sun tea and pickled eggs. They hold a lot of eggs for water glassing, a way to preserve the perfect little packages of protein over the winter when the hens stop laying. I am almost out of the three gallons I put up last summer so it is just about time to start preserving them for next winter.
This isn’t the first time I have made a haul from the recycling center. Last time I absconded with resources it was a box full of empty wine bottles.
In the dark recesses under my kitchen sink, in a one gallon pickle jar, lives an excellent mother. No, not a human mother. The beautiful gelatinous mass that makes wonderful apple (or peach) scrap vinegar. It is called the mother, and those who purchase commercial apple cider vinegar know that of which I speak. It’s what makes the really good vinegar expensive. It is also what makes it work as it should.
Several years ago I traded a Wyoming neighbor eggs for apples. He was just going to let the deer have them anyway and thought it was the funniest thing he had ever heard that I had never picked an apple from the tree.
I wound up with tons of apples and used the peels and cores to make vinegar, which produced the mother. Like sourdough, if you take care of it, mother will keep on producing indefinitely.
Oh, wait. Sourdough. I could start a batch in one of the new jars. And maybe some kombucha. And sangria. Sauerkraut.
I may need a second refrigerator.