Fall marks time for thanksgiving

We’ve supported our Lions throughout the football season and attended most of the home games. Despite a loss in their last regular game, they made it to the playoff games, traveling to Pottsville Friday night. Unfortunately, they dropped that game too, so now we’ll look ahead to building for next year.

Sister Nancy’s grandson Austin played pee wee football again this year and we went to his playoff game on Nov. 3, when they defeated the Wyandotte Bears. Sadly, their season came to an end Saturday as well when they lost the Super Bowl at Commerce, Okla.

Even our Hogs lost on Saturday but at least they pulled off a victory in the first basketball game of the season.

With several windy days lately, the trees are rapidly losing their colorful leaves. The plum trees in the back yard and the maple tree and walnut in front of the house arealready bare.

A good rain Sunday watered my coxcomb, Swiss chard and ornamental kale and filled the birdbath again. The green tomatoes I picked are slowly ripening, and we added them to our menu a couple of nights last week. Temperatures in the upper 20s the first of this week probably put an end to most gardens in the area. Reminds one of that line in the old hymn, “All are safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin.”

Now that November has arrived and Daylight Saving Time has ended, darkness comes an hour earlier each evening. With that change and cooler temperatures, we focus on making our homes cozy for the winter months indoors. Fall decorating is easy, with everything you need right in your own backyard. Colorful autumn leaves, pumpkins and gourds, acorns, pine cones and bittersweet berries are abundant. All

you have to do is gather

them, bring them in and

mix them with candles

and ribbons, country

tableware and coarse-tex

tured placemats. You can

work wonders with little

bits of nature and lots of

creativity.

With families gather

ing for bountiful meals to

celebrate the upcoming

Thanksgiving holiday, an

old McCall’s magazine

suggests combining fall

flowers with clove-stud

ded apples, nuts, cin

namon sticks and whole

nutmegs for a savory au

tumn table arrangement.

Hollow out vegetables

from the fall harvest to

use as containers. Turn

a pumpkin into a soup

tureen or fill an eggplant

with dip. Make candle

holders out of red or

green peppers. (Brush cut

surfaces with vegetable

oil to keep them fresh

and moist.) Leaf-shaped

cookie cutters can also be

used to cut designs from

these colorful peppers to

accent your veggie trays

or serving platters.

Jim took the walnuts

I’d picked up to the huller

the first of the month. My

harvest this year totaled

266 pounds, netting me

almost $35 in extra spend

ing money. I have a few I

picked up after he madethe sale. Although they’re hard to crack and the kernels are difficult to remove from the shell, it’s worth the effort. Black walnuts have a higher oil content than regular walnuts and therefore are more flavorful. I really prefer them to pecans for making holiday fudge and brownies. I surely miss the big pecan and the walnut we’ve lost to storms in the last few years when I note that the nutmeats are $8 to $9 a pound on local supermarket shelves.

We’re still enjoying fresh produce from the farmers’ market. I prepared stuffed peppers for a recent Sunday dinner and have a zucchini squash I plan to fry soon. Crisp radishes, banana peppers and green onions accent our meals, and I’ve used several of the onion tops in scrambled eggs. Juicy pears and sweetapples have made tasty healthful snacks. We are fortunate to have a local market that’s become one of the best in the area.

We’re looking forward to Thanksgiving dinner at the senior center Friday and a family dinner over the weekend. Writer Ralph Schoenstein says Thanksgiving is his favorite holiday, partly because he’s addicted to cranberry sauce. He recalled asking his seven-year-old daughter, “Do you know why we give thanks at Thanksgiving?” Her reply was, “Because the Indians decided to eat turkeys instead of Pilgrims?”

Schoenstein says he’s conscious of the need to be grateful at this time because he remembers a fable that a Spanish teacher told him in college. In this fable, a poor man was walking through the woods and picking up whatever bits of vegetation he could find for food, eating what he could and discarding the rest. He was feelingsorry for himself until he happened to look behind and see another man picking up what he threw away.

“And so on Thanksgiving Day,” he writes, “I always take a good look over myshoulder, to remind myself of my good fortune.”

Susan Holland, who works for the Westside Eagle Observer, is a lifelong resident of Benton County.

Opinion, Pages 6 on 11/14/2012