A Gourdly Season

For behold, the Lord said: You shall find vines growing in the land, and you shall gather thereof gourds of orange flesh and round.  You shall carry these gourds nigh unto the thresholds of the canning factories of the house of Libby wherein they shall be turned into canned pumpkin. 

Be not anxious for the particular subspecies of gourd: for the Lord does not make a distinction between the carving pumpkin and the Dickinson pumpkin.  Behold, they are all squash.  You shall eat joyously of the Dickinson pumpkin, because the house of Libby has named it after a very interesting poet.  And having pumpkin, let us therewith be content.

Take you also unto yourselves principal spices, of clove and ginger, and of sweet cinnamon.  This shall be a sweet savour before the Lord.  And you shall call its name ‘pumpkin spice’.  Let all the people of the land rejoice.

In your mixing bowls and your cooking pots, you shall combine the gourd and the spice, and it shall be holy and acceptable unto all households. 

You shall mix pumpkin spice into all manner of foodstuffs;

even into your coffee and your sausages;

            You shall blend it into your cream cheese and your pop-tarts. 

Yes, there is Pumpkin cream cheese
and pumpkin spice sausage.
Haven't tried the sausages yet.  I think
the cream cheese is pretty good.

And you shall bake royal dainties: even shall you make pumpkin muffins (see recipe below), pumpkin raisin bread, pumpkin pies, pumpkin challah, pumpkin cookies, and low-fat pumpkin custard. 

Muffins for the masses and loaves for the freezer.

And it shall be pleasing unto all members of the household, even unto the next generation.  And all your household shall inquire of you, “Are these pumpkin muffins for The Ladies*, or can we have some for breakfast?”  Thus shall you reply: “I have not invited any Ladies.  You may have muffins for breakfast and lo, the rest will go into the freezer for a time to come.”   And their hearts will be filled with gladness.

Thus saith the Lord: You shall keep this ordinance in this season from year to year.  You shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days, nor twenty days; But even a whole month and longer. 

Some of the people will wail and gnash their teeth and say, we have had pumpkin spice until it come out at our nostrils, and it be loathsome unto us.  It is true that Pumpkin Pie Pop-tarts, while alliterative, are an abomination. 

 

This photo is from 2011.  That is the last time I bought
these Pop-tarts, and I vowed never to buy them again.

The coming of the season of pumpkin spice shall be a sign unto you that it is time to start cleaning out the freezer to make room for the Thanksgiving pies. 

And there is evening, and there is morning, and there is pumpkin.  And it is good.

                                                                 - the Book of Comestibles 11:18-35

* * * * * * * * * 

Common Household Pumpkin Bread

Makes 2 large loaves, or lots of muffins

Dry ingredients:

3 1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 1/2 cups sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

3 teaspoons cinnamon

Wet ingredients:

4 beaten eggs

1/3 cup orange juice

2/3 cup oil

2/3 cup water

1 15 oz. can pumpkin 

Optional ingredients

raisins, nuts, craisins, chocolate chips are optional

Grease and flour pans.  Preheat oven to 350 F.

Mix together dry ingredients (you can sift them if you want).

In a separate bowl, mix together wet ingredients.

Make a well in dry ingredients.  Add wet ingredients and mix until you are tired of mixing.  Add optional goodies if you want, and stir.

Bake in  350F oven for about 1 hour.  Or make muffins, baking for about 20 minutes.

Nutrient content:

1 serving of vegetable (for Son)

a little less fat than the other version, which has no orange juice and 1 cup oil.

First lines: August edition

Here are the first lines of some of the books I read during August (yes, I know it's the end of September - I'm just trying to get caught up).  

With the library “Bookshelf Bingo” program to spur me on, I read ten books, which makes it sound like I was lolling around doing nothing but reading.  Looking back, it’s clear that some of this material was pretty bleak, but thankfully three of them were children’s books.

Book #1 (for the bingo square “Novel with a two word title that doesn’t begin with “The”, “An”, or “A”)

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, shipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. 

Book #2 (“A best novel of  the 20^th century, chosen by Modern Library”)

All this happened, more or less.  The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.  One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn’t his.  Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war.  And so on.  I’ve changed all the names.

Book #3

Zoe Chambers eased the Monongahela County EMS ambulance to a stop next to a heap of dirty snow.

Book #4

Coraline discovered the door a little while after they moved into the house.

Book #5

After the death of Joshua, the Israelites inquired of the Lord, “Who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites, to fight against them?”  The Lord said, ‘Judah shall go up.  I hereby give the land into his hand.”

Book #6

In a smallish London suburb where nothing much ever happened, my family gradually became the talk of the town.  Throughout my teens, wherever I went, I would always hear the same question, “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

* * * * * * * *

Here are the titles and authors.

Book #1

Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck.  We read this for book club.  I love this book!  Steinbeck gets it just right – presenting his characters with humor, but without mocking them.  And there are frogs!  My husband is big on the book club snacks pertaining to the book.  We wanted to get chocolate frogs, but they were too expensive.  But since we had book club on my birthday, we had birthday cake.  It was a perfectly lovely way to spend my birthday.

Book #2

Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The children's Crusade : A Duty-dance with Death, by Kurt Vonnegut.  Difficult topic.  Great writing.  The story is not told sequentially, which normally drives me nuts, but it works in this case, and seems appropriate.  It is good I did not read this earlier in life, because it would have disturbed me so much that it would have prevented the main points from getting through.  It was a struggle to read this right after Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, because of the frequency, arbitrariness, and distressing occurrences of death.  And so it goes. 

Book #3

Circle of Influence by Annette Dashofy. This is a murder mystery that takes place in Pennsylvania.  It was a bit too nerve-wracking for me (other people might call it a good page-turner), but I liked the main character.

Book #4

Coraline, by Neil Gaiman

For a children’s book, this one was awfully creepy.  Excellent writing.  This was recommended by Younger Daughter.

Book #5

Judges (The Bible).  This book contains several gruesome stories which should not be read by children.  Kids, go read Coraline for a good scare.  The main point of Judges seems to be that the people just can’t resist doing evil.  And evil, nasty things happen.   

When I was a child I was fascinated with the story of Samson, which I read in a sanitized version in a picture storybook.  That version left out the part where Samson visits a prostitute.  Samson is kind of like The Incredible Hulk of Bible times, crashing around, tearing down buildings and slaying thousands with the jawbone of an ass.  The biblical text passes no judgment on him for any of that stuff, but, boy, does he get in trouble for hanging around with Delilah.

Book #6

Thinking in Numbers: On Life, Love, Meaning, and Math, by Daniel Tammet.

“Like works of literature, mathematical ideas help expand our circle of empathy, liberating us from the tyranny of a single, parochial point of view. Numbers, properly considered, make us better people.”  I found this book fascinating, since it sits at the junction of philosophy and math.  Includes one of my favorite math concepts, Riemann sums, as applied to history.

Open House observations

Last night we attended our last high school Open House.  This is the event where the parents wander helplessly through their kid’s schedule, attending class for 12 minutes each.  We saw awesome classrooms and teachers.

This awesome classroom is not at our high school, but at one of
our local universities.

English

Quote on the wall (pick from more than 35 quotes!): 

            A crocodile cannot stick his tongue out.

This was the only one I could read without putting on my distance glasses.  This classroom also had a clock which had the names of Shakespeare plays substituted for the numbers.  It’s always time for Shakespeare! There were lots of posters on the wall referring to Irish writers.

Organic Chemistry

Poster on the wall, featuring a drawing of an otter:

            Do as you otter: wear safety goggles.

There is a plastic fruit hanging from the projector above us.  Younger Daughter tells me that is the “Lone Pear.”  There is a gigantic slide rule hanging in the back of the classroom, just to remind us how far we have come, I guess.

Economics

There are a lot of posters of the brain in this classroom, because it is also used by the psychology teacher.  At the front of the room, attached to the wall, there is a collection of sock monkeys.  A box of Mini-Wheats cereal is affixed somehow to the chalkboard.  Younger Daughter tells me the teacher often uses snacks to make points about economics.  What is your Marginal Oreo Utility?  If you have already eaten ten Oreos, how much would you pay for the eleventh Oreo?  When I took economics it was all about widgets, and there were no Oreos in sight.  Once again, the upcoming generation wins over my generation.

Physics

There is a nice collection of old license plates adorning the walls.  No quotes, but a few posters showing how physics and sports are related.  The teacher has a square meter built out of four meter-sticks bound together with duct tape.

Creative Writing: Poetry

There is a poster at the front of the class with this written on it:

            Sorry for your luck! 

Any questions? 

- Mr. [Teacher]

Also there are a number of posters of The Boss around the room.  Being taught poetry by a no-nonsense Springsteen fan is going to be good for my kid. 

AP Biology

We missed class, but ducked in just as the presentation was ending.  There was a huge number of posters of animals all over the classroom.

Physical Education

My husband attended this class while I went in search of the bathroom.  The kids are going to learn golf, badminton, and boating and water safety.  (The previous sentence was brought to you by the Oxford comma.)

Calculus

This room was positively overtaken by cartoon characters all drawn on graph paper.  That’s good, because the color scheme of the room was that certain shade of puke green that many of our high school’s classrooms seem to feature.   The only quote I saw was this one from Yoda:

            Do or do not.  There is no try.

I'm not sure I agree with Yoda.  It might be a good quote for math class, but not so much for high school in general.  By that time, though, it was far too late in the evening to have a philosophical dispute.