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