When I was in high school I spent my summers working at Church Camp. Actually, there were two: Camp Hudgens , located just a few miles north of McAlester on Lake McAlester ; and Falls Creek Baptist Assembly, just outside Davis in Southern Oklahoma .

Falls Creek wasn’t that far from Ardmore , and so on the weekends, I would drive down, or catch a ride down to Ardmore to stay with Grandma and Grandpa Bomar. As I’d pull into the driveway, often I would find my grandmother out on the front porch watering her ferns and African violets. She loved to make things grow.

During the summertime, their garden out in the back yard would flourish. It was a rather small plot, right behind the detached garage, but it was prolific: corn, green beans, potatoes, onions, green onions, carrots, squash, tomatoes; you name it, they grew it.

It seems so curious to me, as I think back on this: she had a large grapevine right in the middle of the back yard and a big fig tree at the side of the house. That fig tree was big enough for a boy to climb and get a stomachache full of figs when they were in season. They were smaller figs than I usually see out here in California . I don’t know if the variety or the climate made them smaller, but they were still good. She would serve them fresh and then make some homemade fig preserves with what we couldn’t consume on the spot. Preserves are really pretty simple to fix:

Fig Preserves

This same formula works for peaches, plums, apricots and probably just about any other soft fruit you would want to try.

Take equal parts of fresh figs and sugar and cook at low heat until juice turns to syrup and begins to thicken. It’s that simple, but here are a few hints:

Chop fresh fruit about as small as you can without turning them to mush (they will turn to mush soon enough). Use a Dutch oven, but do not cover with a lid. Add fruit first and then sugar. Use low heat so as not to burn either the fruit or the sugar. As the fruit and sugar begin to dissolve, stir slowly and mix thoroughly. Check and stir often. The preserves should develop a very slow boil. It looks kind of like a smoldering volcano.

You never can tell how long it's going to take, but there is one caution: When the preserves cool, they will thicken significantly. So, stop before the syrup gets too thick. Think about this: how does warm maple syrup or honey pour vs. refrigerated maple syrup or honey? Quite a bit faster, right? I would go for the consistency of room-temperature "real" maple syrup, then turn it off.

Remember, canning should only be done with the proper equipment, clear and reliable instructions and a very clean environment.[1]

Summertime… and the Livin’ was Easy

Anyway, I would usually arrive from a hot week of summer camp in the Arbuckle Mountains on Saturday around noontime. Bomie[2] would sit me down at the dining room table and serve up a huge glass of sweetened iced tea, a plate full of pressure-cooked vegetables from the garden, fresh corn carved from the cob and some hot buttered cornbread.

My favorite was a combination of pressure-cooked green beans, carrots, small red new potatoes and pearl onions, all right out of their garden. Her secret was to sprinkle a little sugar on them before closing the lid.

Pressure-Cooked Summer Vegetables

8-10 new potatoes, halved or quartered

4-5 small to medium sized carrots

1 fist full (or more) pearl onions, peeled

1lb fresh green beans, cut

salt, pepper and sugar to taste

You can use regular red potatoes if you can't find any new potatoes. Just pick the smallest you can find and quarter them. Small carrots are great whole, but larger carrots should be cut in half and the thick end should be halved lengthwise. Pearl onions may be hard to find. If so, just use regular white or yellow onions and quarter them. There is no substitute for fresh green beans. Cut the stems and depending on size, you can leave the small ones whole, cut the medium-sized in half and the large ones in thirds.

If you have a pressure cooker, it's really pretty simple. Just add a little water, place the steamer grate in the bottom of the cooker. Add potatoes, carrots, onions. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add fresh cut green beans last, sprinkling with a little more salt and pepper and if you like, a little sugar. Steam under full pressure for about 4 minutes. If you don't have a pressure cooker you can do this in a Dutch oven with a steamer tray and lid, but it's going to take about an hour on low heat for the vegetables to soften.

Iced Tea

It may seem silly to give an iced tea recipe--you know: Boil water. Insert tea bags. Steep. Get a big tall glass. Add ice. Pour tea into glass. Add lemon wedge, sugar and stir. Drink.

Actually, Sun Tea is really nice and many people don't know that you can make tea without boiling water. Get a clear (preferably glass) gallon container. Add about 12 tea bags. Cover with clear plastic wrap and set out in the sun for several hours. Add 1/8tsp baking soda, 1c sugar and 2 lemons thinly sliced and stir. The nice thing about sun tea is that it doesn't cloud up after refrigeration. Enjoy.