Mrs. Ball’s secret recipe. (man-oh-man…this is some good South African shit!!!)
Edward Ball, Mrs. Ball’s grandson scaled down this original recipe to make 18 bottles of (mild) chutney.
612 g dried peaches
238 g dried apricots
3 litres brown wine vinegar
2 1/2 kg white sugar
500 g onions
120 g salt
75 g cayenne pepper
1 to 2 litres of brown wine vinegar for soaking
About 2 litres of brown wine vinegar for mixing
The fruit should be left in the soaking vinegar overnight, then cooked in the same vinegar until soft. Drain. Put the fruit through a mill. Add the sugar (dissolved) and onions (minced) and cook in a pot with the brown wine vinegar. The amount of vinegar depends on the consistency: it should not be too runny or too thick, but have the same consistency as the end product you find in the bottle. Add spices and cook for one to two hours. Stir occasionally with a wooden spoon to prevent burning. Sterlise your bottles and spoon in the mixture. That’s it – you’ve got Mrs Ball’s Chutney.
To make the chutney hot, add 75 g chopped chillies.
To make peach chutney, omit the apricots and use 850 g dried peaches instead.
It’s the stream of conscious exercise…let’s just type away, and see what comes of it, shall we…we shall.
Yes, things have been pretty bad and depressing of late, perhaps a lifelong illness of sorts, although I do not believe illness to be the right word. Although, perhaps it’s just of the chronic sort, like the ulcerative colitis I have down in my belly, or the psoriasis I have going on in the T-zone of my face, my eyebrows and down the sides of my nose, plus my lip and chin find my way in there. But, those “illnesses,” come and go, and they likely will for the rest of my life.
But…psychological states of being seem to be of a different category than my face breaking out dry and red, or my stomach receiving sharp pains that send me doubling over and to the toilet. The psychological states are my personality.
I’ve lost all sense of myself recently. I’ve had the recurring thought that, “I know nothing.” To some extent, this is true, although I have found it odd that it should strike me now in life. But, it’s not just knowing nothing in the academic sense, but spreading into pop culture, into daily activity, friendships. Ask me a question, and I’ll likely struggle to come up with an answer, certainly not one with any enthusiasm.
And much of my thinking has been about my personality, my mind, my memory, and this is not the type of stuff that is easily up for conversation. So, I have tried to develop strategies to change how I perceive things so that I might hope to re-insert myself, or rather, simply insert myself into normal life, and normal social interaction. But, each attempt I have known would be futile. “OK…from now on, I’m going to pay extra attention to things as they happen,” “OK…from now on, I’m going to be extra conscious of funny things that happen,” “OK…from now on, from now on, from now on.” Suddenly…I might feel different for about a split second, feeling like things are starting to make sense again. A book, a movie, a song, directly to me. But that’s part of the problem, after all. Nothing in this world was created for me, “OK…from now on, I’m going to remember that nothing in this world was created simply for me.”
Yet…it might be a cup of tea that does the trick. You see, I struggle to bring the past with me, like a boy who can’t carry his Halloween candy. All the new ideas and experiences just overflow from the top, and I’m left with the same delicious, but quickly growing old, candy at the bottom. But, a cup of tea represents a year of my past that I’ve quickly dropped to the side. Let me explain.
Making a cup of tea, I feel like there is something in this world I know how to do. Not just do, but do with confidence. I can get through a day, but of late, I haven’t gotten through a day confidently, or with purpose. Making that cup of tea, I made it with purpose. English Breakfast tea, splash of milk, two spoonfuls of sugar. Both the taste and the experience made me think of such an important daily task I experienced in the past, that I’ve let go.
Deliberate. Do something deliberate each day. I feel regret that my college days have passed me, this feeling that I had an unlimited opportunity to explore, but why has that changed? Why can’t tomorrow be unlimited?
So…I want to make, from scratch, a peach chutney, to add flavor to a traditional budget meal that I wish to make in my parents’ home, rice and sweet kidney beans. And…since I have an entire day, I’ll go on a half-day excursion, without worry of time. I’ll bike to the beach, run and stretch, read and write. I’ll wear my helmet, pack warm clothes and some lunch.
Plus movies, another one for tomorrow. A movie a day. And my time on the internet will be more deliberate. You see…I spend hours searching, but I don’t even know for what. I read things I can’t fully comprehend, or looking at programs that I have no intention of partaking on. I’ve come to skim headlines, and not read content. Letting others influence me to the point that I can choose no direction of my own.
So…movie, bike, beach, run, stretch, chutney.
And my hair…I’ve always thought of growing it sort of long. And just before the haircut, I begin to fade away from the situation, and just let the person with the scissors do whatever THEY want. Why can’t I be more deliberate about what I like, or, what I’m interested in???
I’m so tired of spending hours wandering book stores and libraries, not looking for anything, and ultimately, not ending up with anything. Maybe a page here, or a page there.
I need to be deliberate about the task at hand. Am I wandering just to wander, or because I’m lost? Today I’m gonna read a little history, tomorrow some fiction. What am I hoping to get from something, and what do I get?
From this post…I was hoping to get some writing down, some stream of conscious, some self-therapy, since the person I went to speak w/ recently couldn’t help me beyond my own confusion. This post isn’t just a game plan for tomorrow, and hopefully for at least a few days after that, but, it’s hopefully the beginning of a state of mind thing. “OK…from now on, I’m going to start my day with a cup o’ tea,” sort of thing. Yeah…that’s right, something that simple that can make me feel alive.
I often wonder what it would be like to belong to a writing club. To meet face to face with people who read and thought about my writing. It would probably be kind of weird, but actually, I really miss/crave having an extended time to discuss my writing. Don’t get me wrong, comments are great, that’s why xanga is the best thing out there, at least, better than a non-internet journal. But to sit like I did in my freshman writing class, and even there, it was so short and superficial.
But…one time, I went to a class, creative non-fiction writing. I wasn’t even signed up for it, but I went. And it was so great to have 10 people give me back my paper with their thoughts, and it was so interesting how we spent maybe 5min. talking about it, and how some people wrote such in depth and insightful things that made me confident, and how my professor had only negative things to judge my writing by.
And that was that…my one opening to explore myself as a creative non-fiction writer, for better or for worse, shot down. Life is long and so someday I may find myself in a similar situation…
But, recently it’s dawned on me how short life is. How I may never turn into/become the person I once believed I’d become. A great cook, writer, thinker…father even.
Today I thought…I don’t think I’d make a good father. And I thought, that’s actually ok, lots of people never become fathers, although I kind of assumed my whole life that I just would be one. And like most sons, I thought, “I’m gonna do all the things my dad never did,” and now it’s dawning on me how difficult it is to manage my own life, how am I supposed to manage my child’s? And there is just one more thing on my list of things that I may never become…or may simply become further down the line than planned on.
Maybe I should re-read this…ehhh, another time, I’ll let you guys have fun w/ it.
and you know what the coolest thing is, this is 5-pages double spaced, i couldn’t write a 5-pg. research paper, but i could probably write 100pages (of this shit i write) tonight if my wrists wouldn’t fall off.
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