Wordless Wednesday: First Day of Spring

Wordless Wednesday: Azalea Walk

Wordless Wednesday: Fall Beauty

Squashed!

While apple picking, we also picked up pumpkins, some to carve and some to eat, but all quite decorative.

I love things that are beautiful and useful!

This year we got some old favorites:  banana squash (sweet and good for pies, bread, and soup), a blue hubbard (fantastic for soup).

We also tried a few new experiments: the brownish one to the right is a Fairy Tale Pumpkin which is supposedly so good that you can slice it thin and eat it raw.  We'll see if that is just a legend...

The orange and green one under the wagon is a Cinderella Pumpkin.  It is French,  sweet and custardy when cooked, and supposedly the very best pie pumpkin.

We shall see!

The flat white one is a White Boer, a South African Pumpkin that is supposed to be tasty and firm - soup and stew rather than pie.

And, of course, everyone had to pick out a warty gourd.  I put a few more smaller edible squashes in there: carnivals, butternut, acorn, and spaghetti.

Apple Picking

 Yes!  We went apple picking!

We only got about 55 pounds, which is a bit low for us, but they only had two varieties ripe. 

On the plus side, the two varieties were Empire (sweet tart and good for baking and fresh eating) and Golden Delicious (no relation to the dreaded Red Delicious, and a sweet apple also good for eating and baking and excellent for apple sauce).

We separated them into the perfect "keepers," the slightly imperfect "pies," and the sauce and butter apples.

So far we have made apple sauce, apple butter, apple fritters, apple dippers, and, of course, we've eaten a bunch of apples!

Klenda has plans for a few pies, and I'd like to make turnovers. I'd also like to mull some cider, and maybe even make more apple sauce - what I made is pretty much gone already!

Apple picking is such a lovely way to start autumn: it was a lovely cool fall day and we got to spend it with Grammy, picking apples and pumpkins.

Happy fall!

Poem of the Week: Candlemas/Groundhog Day

If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Come, Winter, have another flight;
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Go Winter, and come not again.

Or,
If Candlemas Day is bright and clear,
There'll be twa (two) winters in the year.



 Or,

If Candlemas day be dry and fair,
The half o' winter to come and mair,
If Candlemas day be wet and foul,
The half of winter's gone at Yule.

Because, of course, February 2, Groundhog Day is, not coincidentally, Candlemas, the Feast of the Presentation.  It's another one of those cross quarter days, minor holidays that fall in the exact middle between solstices and equinoxes.

The others are Halloween/All Saints Day, Midsummer's Eve/Feast of the Assumption, and May Day/ Feast of St. Joseph the Worker.  Notice a pattern?

Yes, they are all ancient (pre-Christian) Feasts that were "baptized" and turned into Christian feasts while retaining a party element.  That's interesting historically, even interesting now in the sense of, "what can we adapt from our culture to present the Gospel."

Something else I find interesting is that these cross quarter days land on when the seasons are at their peak.  I know winter started December 21st, but it didn't feel like winter then (55 degrees F).  It feels like winter now (8 degrees F).  Late January and early February are our coldest time of the year.  When the vernal equinox hits in March, it's almost certain to be cold and muddy, but May 1st is likely to be as warm and flowery.  It's interesting to me that people from earliest times celebrated both the astronomical beginnings of the seasons as well as the peaks of  the seasons.

Candlemas, by the way, was always the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, 40 days after Christmas, but it evolved into the day people brought their newly made candles to Mass to be blessed.  Candle making was a winter occupation, and was connected to Christ as the true light, revealed in the Temple to Anna and Simeon by the light of Faith.

HT: Groundhog Day

Apple Picking

 Last week we made it to Larriland for apple picking!

It was an amazingly beautiful day: perfectly clear and about 75 degrees while we were there.

They had Mutsu (my favorite), Empire, Ida Red, and Golden Delicious (no relation to the icky Red Delicious) varieties ripe.

63 lb=29 kg

The Zoomlians rapidly picked 63 pounds of apples (!).  Actually, I think it was 65, but they told us not to pay for the ones we ate (it was factored into the price).

 Next it was off to the pumpkin field where everyone quickly found one they liked.

I remember there being a lot more angst when the kids were younger: does this pumpkin truly express who I am?

Or, possibly, it was the fact that the cool rainy summer produced a huge number of very large, very perfect pumpkins!

Next up, we stopped by the broccoli field, intending to get two, perhaps 3 heads of broccoli.  But I didn't specify that quickly enough, so we ended up with six heads... nearly 8 pounds.

I thought it was a problem until I tasted the broccoli: that was the best broccoli I've ever had! We had it as soup, as plain (steamed) broccoli,  raw, and also added to other dishes.

We also got some mini pumpkins, some warty gourds, some very pretty popcorn on the cob, and an amazing array of summer and winter squashes!

Next time, I'll tell you where the first 40 pounds of apples went!