today was a day where i struggled with technology; my iphone is no longer a phone, just an i. and my laptop secretly makes up data to fill it’s hard drive without me knowing, so much so that in a day it can go from ok to FULL. but oh well. i will survive.
i turned away from the technology a bit and instead to the kitchen again. to try and distract myself i realised, but also to use up come of the vegetables that have collected in the fridge over the past week of me coming and going from newcastle. today it was beetroot; i’d forgotten it was there and ben reminded me; there was talk of eating it at lunch then i decided to pickle it, then make chutney from it. the fist step in this process after deciding to preserve it was to find a recipe. i’m living in newcastle at the moment, in a house that’s not mine, and one that i like to refer to as the bachelor pad. it’s pretty low on any form of domesticity, and so there was no hope to turn to the bookshelf and find a beetroot chutney recipe. instead, the internet. i searched as taught by paul (i turn taught by courtney) for the ‘best ever’ recipe, but ended up just limiting my search to the abc website, thinking that listener contributions from the abc community would be pretty a-ok. i found this recipe for beetroot chutney on the abc tasmania local radio site and set to prepare for it. the three lonesome beetroots in the fridge needed a whole lot of accessories to be preserved into chutney – onions, apples, spice, sugar, vinegar. a lot more than the marmalade project for sure.
i’ve measured and peeled and chopped the onions, apples and beetroots, all in the right order, and things are simmering nicely on the stove. the bachelor pad-ness of this place meant i had to peel with a knife, and finely dice instead of grate the beetroot, but i think it just means it will be a chunky chutney instead of a smooth one.
in turn i’ve been thinking about the preservation process again. these were beetroots grown by a local hunter valley farmer, that i got form the food co-op here in newcastle last week, and that i wanted to preserve instead of abandoning in the days before i leave this city i’ve kind of fallen for.
learning to preserve
as i hunted around the internet for a ‘reliable’ recipe to preserve these beetroots in my fridge, i thought about the last preservation project, the cumquat marmalade, and how i reached for a recipe book (the Australian women’s weekly fruit and vegetable cookbook) to guide me. and this time i relied on something also as domestic, motherly and reliable, the abc website, to guide me. it got me thinking about the process of preservation, and how we source instructions for it – who do we turn to, who do we trust, and how do we know it will work? how do i know that the beetroots (however transformed they are now) will be preserved and edible (their purpose perhaps?) when i go to open the jar again in the future? i trust the recipe that i’ve been give, that it’s not only going to be tasty, but also will work. that the vegetables will stay in good condition, edible, and won’t go off or decay.why do i trust the women’s weekly and the abc over, say, www.about.com or www.oliver1.com? the idea of reliability through familiarity? the domesticity that both represent?
thinking about archives then, where do we go to get instructions for preservation, who do we trust and why? why do we turn to the standards set by the ISO or archives societies to preserve objects? what makes us decided to use 500 year old paper or acid-free boxes? where has the knowledge come from to preserve like this? why do we turn to certain experts and not others?
choosing to preserve
and on the other hand, what made me decide to preserve the beetroots but not the green beans in the fridge? in reality, it’s twofold – the beans were a bit past preservation state, limp and aged. and the thought of eating beetroot chutney was more tempting than green beans preserved somehow (how? frozen?). so there are choices being made to preserve that are not just about the importance of the object. it’s about my personal preference for consumption, and the state that the objects are in. how does this transfer to other archival objects?
