Jar Refilling Days
By Stephanie Fysh
27 Aug 2008
The day that gives me the most pleasure isn't a Saturday without any work, or the day the kids go back to school, or my birthday, or the first day of spring, or Christmas (okay, maybe Christmas, so we'll leave that one out). It's Jar Refilling Day.
On Jar Refilling Day, I take down, one by one, the empty or only partly filled mustard jars from the open shelves in my tiny kitchen, the ones above the butcher-block cutting board. And, one by one, I fill those empty or partly filled mustard jars to the very brim, with small foods ready for cooking with or snacking on until the jars begin to feel too empty and it's Jar Refilling Day again.
I've been doing this for many years now. The jars really are empty mustard jars --- the good mustard, the Dijon with all the seeds in it, comes in those jars. They're pretty, and reusable. You can buy them empty, but those ones can't possibly be as good. They didn't have seedy mustard in them.
The food that fills the jars comes from bins in the market that I can walk to from my home, or from big bags purchased in the grocery store. There's a shelf in my corner kitchen cupboard that's full of twist-tied bags of food that won't fit in the mustard jars . . . yet. I don't have any Jar Refilling Day photographs of that shelf.
I started photographing Jar Refilling Day the day that the joy of refilling the jars overflowed and had to go somewhere. Somewhere other than the jars, and the overflow-bag shelf, and me.
These are the photographs of joy: each photograph nothing more a simple container filled to the brim with good food. Legumes, rice, nuts, whole grains, dried fruits, flour, salt, sugar --- food that has been planted and nurtured, harvested and cleaned and dried and packaged, transported and finally sold to me, and that waits now to nourish my family. This is plenty, and this is potential. This is the soul of home, and it is the heart of civilization. Welcome to my Jar Refilling Days.
2 responses
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Sarah Dudley gave props (13 Dec 2008):
Nice series! interesting idea.
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Aleksandra Wysocka gave props (12 Jan 2009):
Thanks for putting a huge grin on my not-so-happy Monday-morning-face :))
