“Extreme Heat Warning” is the headline for today, Monday. It’s been five days of Heat Advisory with a high alert for wildfires and no measurable rain since June. The rest of the world is soldiering on under far worse conditions than this, but for us it’s unusual. Some neighbors went out and invested in air conditioning; they are running their units right round the clock. (Our normally silent nights, enhanced by the calls of barred owls and flying waterfowl, are now all humming windows, angular auditory cubes of white noise.) Saturday night after sunset the temperature dipped by a few degrees, so I made two trips to the food co-op to refill my filtered water jars, almost a mile each way, and then got out the hose and watered the vegetable patch. Then with all windows open I ironed clothes, soaked beans and grains, cleaned the kitchen and bathroom, and washed floors until 2:30 am.

In the morning I woke up at 7:00 am. Here on the top floor facing east, the studio was already too warm. The sun was already uncomfortably bright even with the shades down. So I draped some fabric over the curtain rods to block more sun, resisted the false promise of sleeping later on a Sunday, and got to work improving the situation. Safety first: As an older person I stayed well out of the sun, did not go out and walk anywhere, and sipped plenty of water all day. That left an ideal day for housework.

Some chores had gone by the wayside these past few weeks, with the new habit of hitting the gym every day after work and getting home at 8:00. So today it was good to catch up.

The big venture was cooking. The fridge was packed full of paper bags of foraged and bargain foods. Down at the Fruit & Folks open air market the hot weather interfered with the refrigeration, so the dear proprietors offered fantastic bargains on vegetables to carry home. Our bike trail is lined with invasive Himalayan blackberries and cutleaf blackberries, and other very local wild fruits. Abandoned houses have public alleyways with unclaimed apples and plums. My own vegetable patch has kale, onion flowers, herbs, and horseradish leaves in need of picking, plus edible weeds like purslane, lambs’ quarters, and dandelion. At the food co-op, there is a last markdown sale with 6-packs of plants for only 99 cents each! Those hardy greens will grow all winter, so I carried home the box of little flats shown in the picture above.

It took eight hours to get it all cooked up and tucked away. Why so long? Partly because on such an ideal laundry day I got to wash the linens and towels in the bathtub and boil them on the stove, then hang them on the balcony to bake in the sun. Mainly because foraged / bargain / garden produce needs extra washing and trimming. Besides, the raised garden patch downstairs really needs water. So, all day I’ve carried buckets of vegetable wash water and dish water down 42 steps and around the corner to the garden, with a quick jog back up the stairs. This produce needs lots of trimming too, so batches of trimmings went down the same 42 steps all day to the compost collection bin, about 20 round trips.

Here tonight is half the contents of the fridge. (Where is the other half of the fridge? It’s labeled now and tucked away in the freezer.)

The trimmings and leftovers from the fridge cooked down for a vegetable stock to sip on. The dinosaur / lacinato/ Tuscan kale (shown above with the apples) needed a whole LOT of washing and trimming, then it was all shredded in the Cuisinart to break down the cell walls and enhance the nutrients. The stems were very tough, so I trimmed those away and shredded them separately and spread them in the garden as a green mulch. The kale cooked up into small jars for lunches, seasoned with tomato sauce or apple sauce, balsamic vinegar, garlic granules, and Ethiopian berbere spice mix.

The different wild berries needed a careful picking through on a white tray, then a gentle wash in baking soda water. Then they’re lifted out and splashed in white vinegar, then rinsed and placed in a glass pot to cook gently in their own juices and brought to a boil and strained. The first pressing of juice makes a good berry syrup for the freezer. The rinsed strained pulp makes a good sour berryade.

Wild apples like the ones shown above are a 33% proposition. Cutting them in quarters will reveal that a third of the apple is fit only for compost — bug-eaten or spoiled by a core of residue like dark shredded plywood. One third is fit for the stock pot, and then the other third can be stewed and blended for sauce with peel and all. Trimming these blemished little fruits is tedious, but the flavor of that 33% is much more lively than the taste of clean shining uniform store apples. Even when fruits are completely sour, they make a valuable dressing for strong tasting greens. One batch of apples was so sour that I blended them with some overripe bananas, water, soymilk, a spoonful of cocoa powder, and vanilla extract; that will be a dessert shake to drink after getting home from the gym.

The rhubarb was sliced up and cooked in the glass pot in water. After it’s cooked and in a jar, it’s sweetened with raisins; they plump up in the hot rhubarb juice. (It’s not a good idea to add sweetener while the rhubarb is cooking. The sugars can burn easily, and that’s a great way to destroy a glass pot.) Purple plums were blanched and peeled by hand, then pitted and stewed for a beautiful red-gold compote.

The other items could be washed and just boiled or steamed — millet, chickpeas, beets, tiny new potatoes from the neighbor’s garden, odds & ends of fridge greens for a cole slaw, mushrooms that dried out in the bargain bin but still make good stock, a red onion to chop up & pickle, and shake over salads as a condiment.

On one trip downstairs I was throwing water on some poor wilted berry bushes in back of our building. “Hey you! What are you doing trespassing here?” a voice shouted behind me. And “Why are you watering that bush?” said another. Two of my favorite neighbors, a bright young couple with a delightful sense of humor, came charging out their door waving their arms. “Well somebody had to, and you weren’t doing it yourselves, ya deadbeats,” I told them. Lively banter was had by all.

The whole day was just stove and pots and pans and freezer containers and wet linens and sloshing around with buckets and compost up and down the stairs. But having a fridge stocked up for the week is a massive privilege. All I could wish for is someone here who would like to share with me the choicest bargains that money or scrounging can acquire. It was a real gift to have this day at home and to wake up with the chores put to rest.

At every annual physical, my remarkably youthful primary care doctor looks at my chart and asks me in a concerned and caring voice, “And are you still able to do your own housework?” I tell him Sure, so far God willing. Next time I should bring him some plum compote.