Sunbonnet Soliloquy

By Jewell Ellen Smith

How to Make Vinegar

Vinegar is a valuable item to keep on the pantry shelf. Even though it is just a simple sour liquid, it is prized as a condiment and a preservative.

And vinegar is easy to make.

There is an old, old recipe for fermenting vinegar that every HEDGEHOPPER reader should have. Guaranteed to work every time, it goes like this:

“Take a barrel of good sweet cider, preferably apple cider. Roll the barrel into a warm corner of the cellar. Turn the barrel to such a position that the bunghole is accessible. Stoop over. Place your lips close to the bunghole and whisper in the names of three sour-tempered women.

“Back away from the barrel, ease your way out of the cellar, close the door, and then wait for three weeks.”

The only difficulty you could possibly encounter would be thinking of the names of three women whose dispositions fit the recipe.

Maybe you don’t know any ill-tempered ladies. What if you can think of only one, or perhaps two at the most? That will be a serious problem. You must have three names, for the characteristic sourness in vinegar is due to acetic acid, ordinarily three to nine per cent. Two names would not produce the necessary acid.

Could you whisper in your own name? Would it help to change a barrel of sweet liquid into a sour solution? You may never know unless you check yourself and find out!

It won’t take a minute to look In the mirror and do a bit of face-reading. You can tell if you appear glum, grumpy, snappish, huffy, sullen.

If your eyes have no sparkle but rather a listless leer, if the corners of your mouth turn down from constant frowning Instead of up because of smiling, and if the lines on your forehead are knotted deep and grim, why, so far so good. It may well be that you can use your own name.

But that’s only the face test, the outside check. Before you blurt your name into the barrel, determine what you are like on the inside. Start with your thoughts. See if they are sour.

What ideas do you let go swirling through your head? (Please keep in mind that only you can control the swirl.) As you get into this phase of the analysis you may find that it is impossible to examine your head apart from your heart. For, indeed, “as a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” If you discover that morning, noon and night you are thinking only of yourself and what you can get out of every endeavor “for me,” chances are you have run across a bit of selfishness, not sourness. But the two are so close that in a pinch the selfishness would count toward the vinegar-making project.

So far, you have checked only how you look and how you feel. Now, consider the tone of your voice and what you talk about, generally.

For instance, when the family sits down to supper, do you consciously try to make everybody at the table feel irritable by giving a long whining account of how the dog from next door spent the afternoon sleeping in your tulip bed (all Junior’s fault because he has been too friendly with the mutt), how the sink drain got stopped up and you wasted an hour looking for the plumber’s helper (all Husband’s fault because he didn’t put the p. h. back in the right place the last time the sink got clogged), and how you were invited to a coffee but didn’t get to go because of Sally (all Sally’s fault because she had such runny nose she couldn’t be carried to the nursery)?

If this is the kind of thing you report with glumness when all family members should be taking turns recounting the pleasant experiences of the day, maybe your name will qualify for the vinegar barrel.

To be absolutely sure about your talk, though, recall in detail what your conversation is like when you are with friends. If time after time your comments are devoted to how bad the weather is, how stupid and inconsiderate so-and-so is, how dull the program you’ve just seen was, and how the whole world and everything and everybody in it is full of faults, why sure enough you might have a wide streak of acidity in your disposition.

So, if your face, your head, your heart and your tongue all check out sour -- and there’s not some overwhelming sweetness about you that counteracts all this -- why you can use your own name as one of the three to whisper into the barrel of cider.

Good heavens! Now it occurs to me that you might not have to analyze your temperament after all. You might just as well put my name into that bunghole.

I had better go check my disposition. Yes! That’s what I’d better do. See how sour I am before I try to tell you how sweet you ought to be. Much less, tell you how to make vinegar!

Published January 1978. Click your browser’s “Back” button to return.