Fall Harvest Sauce

I invented a new condiment. 

I know you’re probably thinking we don’t need a new condiment. After all, we’ve got ketchup, soy sauce, mustard, relish, plum sauce, salsa…is there space in the fridge and on the table for another one?

As a writer, I sometimes wonder if I have anything new to contribute to the book world. Occasionally when I enter a bookstore I have a moment of panic. There are so many books in there and how can I write another one to jostle for space on the shelves? Would anyone even pick up my book if I ever get published?

 

I call my new condiment “Fall Harvest Sauce”. It started as an attempt to make green tomato ketchup. In October, I found myself overwhelmed by a huge quantity of green tomatoes from my Covid garden. I roasted a huge batch on the barbeque, then smoked them, and finally cooked them down in my monster-sized stewing pot. I added all the left-over peppers and fresh spices from my garden and stirred in apple cider and brown sugar. However, it did not taste like green ketchup. Instead, it tasted like smoky vinegar. The whole thing was too acid. 

Not to be thwarted, I added red tomatoes, more hot peppers, more sugar. It transformed into a big pot of brown goop. And it was still not edible. Now I had a thick concoction of hot, smoky vinegar. I needed to get creative.  

Sometimes when I read back a section of my writing, I know it’s not working. It’s too stale, nothing is happening, it feels boring. Or maybe too much is happening, there’s too many characters or places or events and it feels crowded on the page. When this happens, thinking outside the box can be the best thing. Sometimes, I can change the verb tense from past to present; change the point of view and it can come alive. Doing research can help to inspire. Other times, I need to re-write it completely. Although it can feel daunting at times to throw away a chapter you spent hours working on, I find that the re-write produces something so much better than editing could have fixed. 

The creative progress works differently for all of us but whatever we do to fix a failing story, it can require us to think differently, to try something new that we otherwise would never have tried. Whenever I am faced with this challenge, something magical can happen on the page. A story becomes something new, unexpected.  

For my Fall Harvest Sauce, after doing some research on how to combat acid in sauces and tomato flavour balancing, I ended up adding strawberries, carrots and black tea. I never would have put that combination together if not forced to fix a failed ketchup. The result: Magic Sauce! I pressure canned dozens of bottles and I’m keeping every single one * because it’s so precious (plus I’ll never be able to duplicate it again).    

Fall Harvest Sauce is still a brown colour. I like to think of it as “autumn bronze”. It is sweet, smoky, spicy and savoury — all perfectly balanced. It adds umami when I add it to soups, rice, curries, gravy, eggs. It turns out, we were missing this condiment from our collection!  

“…just this morning I broke out the, you got it, FALL HARVEST SAUCE! It was the missing ingredient for my veg and eggs. Who knew?”

~ a text from a FHS fan * I did give away a few jars.

Sometimes failures can allow us to bring out the best of our creativity. Next time faced with a flat story or one with too much acid, try something new, something unexpected and maybe magic will happen for you too. And the answer to my original question: there is always room on the shelf for a new book.