Jack-o'-lantern

The fall holiday season which begins with Halloween has officially gotten underway as we hosted our annual pumpkin carving party last weekend. With orange rind as blank canvas, I thought you might like to take a peak at just a few of the jack-o'-lanterns that emerged from the creative minds and hands of our guests. Enjoy a sampling:

Since this is the season of harvest, I thought I might share two delicious pumpkin recipes you might like to try, if you cook up any of your pumpkins as I do. These sweet treats make a satisfying snack, coffee complement, or autumnal dessert.

Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes

           

1 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour

⅔ cup baking cocoa

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon table salt

1 cup pumpkin puree

½ cup buttermilk

1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract

¾ cup unsalted butter, softened

¾ cup brown sugar

¾ cup granulated sugar

3 eggs

1. Place cupcake liners in standard cupcake tins. Set aside.
2. Sift flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and set aside.
3. Combine pumpkin, buttermilk, and vanilla and set aside.
4. Beat butter and sugars together in large bowl, with an electric mixer set on medium speed, until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition, until mixture is smooth and light. Alternately add flour mixture and buttermilk mixture, blending well after each addition.
5. Fill cupcake liners with ¼ cup batter each or until about two thirds full. Bake at 375° F until wooden skewer inserted into middle comes out clean, or about 25 minutes. Cool cupcakes in pan for 5 minutes. Remove and cool completely on a wire rack prior to frosting, if desired.

Yield: 24 standard cupcakes

Apple-Flavored Winter Squash Bundt Cake

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, softened

1 ½ cups granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1 ½ cups cooked, pureed winter squash

½ cup apple cider

1 ¾ cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon ground ginger

Apple cider glaze, if desired:

1½ cups confectioners’ sugar

¼ cup apple cider

1.      Butter and flour a 9 or 10-inch tube or Bundt pan.

2.      In a large bowl, beat butter until fluffy. Slowly beat in sugar until mixed until light and fluffy again.

3.      Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Add squash and apple cider, and beat until well mixed.

4.      Sift together flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Add to batter in 3 batches, beating well after each addition.

5.      Pour into the pan and bake at 350°F for 45 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove and cool for 10 minutes, then turn the cake out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

6.      If making glaze, sift confectioners’ sugar into a small bowl. Add cider and whisk until smooth. Pour immediately over cooled cake and allow to set for 15 minutes.

Yield: 12 to 16 slices

Adapted from Gardeners’ Community Cookbook by Victoria Wise

Praise

I have been thinking about the nurses and healthcare providers around the globe, who are rolling up their sleeves to care for those with ebola despite the present risks and fear. If you have ever found yourself unexpectedly very sick or in the hospital or in a long term care facility for any reason, I think you know as well as I do how hard these individuals work and the difference they make in the lives of their patients. 

As with most of our working class, these are people, who receive insufficient praise and reward for their tireless efforts. Yes, there is an intrinsic reward and they are human, making mistakes at times just like us, but words of appreciation can go a long way to bolster people at work, working hard and working well, especially those at minimum wage or thereabouts.

In recent months, I have been trying to tell individuals I come across in my daily life that I appreciate a job well done, for example a clerk, who is exceptionally friendly or helps me solve a problem efficiently and effectively. I find that the more I do it, the less reticent I am to vocalize my praise and the easier it becomes. I also walk away feeling really good for sharing my gratitude. (To be fair, I have to add that I am trying to verbalize my dissatisfaction on the flipside as well, although this seems far less frequent.)

Today, I just want to send out a message to the universe or, at a minimum, the blogosphere, to say thank you to those caring for our most vulnerable patients here and abroad. Your work is seen within its difficult context and deeply appreciated. You, good workers, humble me by your example, which I sometimes need, too.

Good Workers

Gary Johnson

Let us praise good workers (you know who you are)
Who come gladly to the job and do what you can
For as long as it takes to repair the car
Or clean the house – the woman or man
Who dives in and works steadily straight through,
Not lagging and letting others carry the freight,
Who joke around but do what you need to do,
Like the home caregiver who comes daily at eight
A.m. to wash and dress the man in the wheelchair
And bring him meals and put him to bed at night
For minimum wage and stroke his pale brown hair.
He needs you. "Are you all right?" "I'm, all right,"
      He says. He needs you to give him these good days,
      You good worker. God's own angels sing your
      praise.

Fall

When I write, I tend to utilize the word autumn more often than fall. Autumn reads with clarity, a noun specific to a season. Fall may be used as noun or verb, is more nuanced and less precise, and seems to tend toward negativity.

Yet, fall does imply movement and evolution as in to fall, falling, and fallen. The word does capture the seasonality of the moment exceptionally well: the changing of seasons, the harvesting of food, the storing and preparing, the slowing and gathering, the reflecting and planning.

I have been falling myself these days, I have been changing bedding, putting the summer quilts away and pulling out the down comforters. I am securing the storm windows and door frames at NOLD, which still has its original wrought iron windows and arched doorway and tends towards draftiness. I am wearing the rich colors of fallow soil in layers and natural fibers for the unpredictable weather that may bring brisk winds and warm sun in short order.

My reasoning may be fallacious these days as time flies by weeding and clearing beds in the garden, meaning the dust collects in the house and blog posts fall by the wayside. So much falls through the cracks as visitors arrive before the snow flies and the fresh air of cold north winds causes me to fall into bed at night in complete exhaustion.

Like so many, I have fallen in love with October, its colors and skies, the landscape, the rituals and happenings, the smells and flavors. Of course, I have been active in the kitchen and my cooking is one thing that hasn't fallen away but rather has been transformed with the season and, as a result, been reinvigorated.

Lest I fall into a stupor and forget my original intent here, let me share a few recipes before darkness falls and my play with language tries your patience such that you fall away. No, no, I say! Instead, let's cook with the flavors of autumn, whole grains and apples, and leave fall for another day.

Applesauce Mini Cake Donuts

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

½ cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup milk

⅓ cup buttermilk

¼ cup applesauce

½ teaspoon vanilla

1 egg white, lightly beaten

1.           Coat mini-donut pan with oil or butter. Set aside.

2.           In a small bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

3.           In a large bowl, beat together milk, buttermilk, applesauce, and vanilla.

4.           Fold flour mixture into wet ingredients until just moistened; fold in egg white.

5.           Add 1 tablespoon batter per mold, leaving the center peg showing above the batter.

6.           Bake at 400°F for 10 minutes, until dough springs back to the touch.

7.           Remove from oven and cool 2 minutes; loosen and remove donuts.

8.           While still warm, coat donuts in granulated sugar (which may be combined with cinnamon) or confectioners’ sugar.

Yield: 3 dozen

Granola

2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

½ cup sunflower or pumpkin seeds

½ cup chopped pecans or walnuts or sliced/slivered almonds

½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut

⅔ cup honey or maple syrup or brown sugar

¼ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons apple juice or cider

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground allspice

1 pinch ground nutmeg

1 pinch sea salt

½ cup dried fruit: chopped apricots, blueberries, sweet cherries, sweetened cranberries, currants, or raisins

1. Combine oats, seeds, nuts, and coconut in a large bowl.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together syrup or honey, juice or cider, olive oil, vanilla extract, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and salt. Pour over dry ingredients in large bowl and toss until well combined.
3. Spread out evenly on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350˚for 10 minutes, stir, and bake 10 more minutes. Brown further, if desired. Remove from the oven and stir again.
4. Cool completely, stir in dried fruit, and store in an airtight container.

Yield: 1 quart

Millet Bread

5 teaspoons active dry yeast

2 cups warm water

3 tablespoons honey

3 tablespoons molasses

2 ½ cups whole wheat bread flour

1 cup rye flour

2 teaspoons salt

1 cup millet

1 ½ to 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1. Mix yeast, water, honey, and molasses in the bowl of a standing mixer with a dough hook until well combined. Add whole-wheat bread flour, and stir until well combined. Add rye flour and salt, and stir until well combined. Add millet and mix well. Finally, add enough of the unbleached all-purpose flour (about 1 ½ cups) to make a fairly firm dough. Let dough rest for 15 minutes.
2. Knead dough with bread hook until elastic, about 5 minutes, adding more unbleached all-purpose flour as needed. Dough should feel slightly sticky and spring to the touch.
3. Place dough in bowl covered with a kitchen towel. Let rise in a warm spot until doubled in size, about 1 ½ hours.
4. Oil two bread pans. Punch dough down, divide in half, and shape into two loaves. Place loaves into prepared bread pans, cover with a kitchen towel, and let rise until doubled in size again, about 1 hour.
5. Slash tops of loaves with a sharp knife, if desired. Bake at 400°F until golden and sound hollow when tapped, about 30 minutes.
6. Remove from oven and turn out onto wire racks to cool.

Yield: 2 loaves

Note: Millet gives this bread a wonderful forgiving crunch which toasts well. Millet Bread is adapted from a recipe of the same name in Farmhouse Cookbook by Susan Herrmann Loomis.

***

Oh, and just one small poem from my fall brain....

A Single Cause

Yesterday, under brilliant sun and blue sky, the wind picked up and sent autumnal leaves into a frenzied dance of absolution.

I paused in the garden like the rodents that work alongside me, often at odds, with senses on high alert, when hawk circles the neighborhood, hungry.

I turned my face upward into the circling chaos raining down from above as yellow whisked past my cheeks and caught in my hair.

Faith has never been my cause despite the best efforts of my youth, but joy, simple and complete such as this fuels faith in a single cause:

To live in relation to other by letting go completely and seeing what might possibly grow as unimaginable as the outcome might be.

Slog

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. Albert Camus

An article in the New York Times has caused a stir in the blogosphere. The issue is one that has been brewing for some time. It revolves around the fact that some bloggers are paring down their posts or giving up blogging altogether due to the unrelenting nature of the beast which has left some feeling spent and uninspired.

Of course, the bloggers discussed are trying to make a living off of the medium with little help and minimal overhead. How many times can someone redecorate a house or come up with an original DIY project with enough glitz and gloss to satisfy the current social media frenzy and compete with traditional print magazines in the same genre without selling one's soul to the advertising options available in order to make a dime?
'
Seems like a real slog that I am grateful to avoid, and I must say that the result seems to be a lack of authenticity. I have stopped subscribing to numerous blogs over the years that either simply fail to inspire and interest me any longer or lose their appeal as real and fresh. The bloggers fail to connect and inspire the reader with depth and honesty. Rather, the blogs read more like a mainstream, popular magazine you would buy in desperation at the airport bookstore as you search for something to lull you to sleep on the red eye to California.

Let me speak for myself here: just as the fashion industry needs to expand its understanding of beauty, I believe the blogosphere needs to mature by nurturing a bit more grit and reality rather than polish and glamour. The readers live lives that are complex and certainly would appreciate bloggers who strive for authenticity as they struggle through the day-to-day personally and professionally, creatively and reflectively. I know I am looking for this authenticity when I vett blogs. Thankfully, I still stumble across blogs that motivate me to subscribe.

So, I hope we continue to say yes to blogging and support our fellow bloggers who give us something that resonates with our lives and the struggles and triumphs we experience as well. In this vein, I assure you that I strive to blog authentically as I share with you, dear reader, my own comings and goings. I won't apologize anymore for my absences, because my life is real, too, and I struggle to juggle the demands. I never share thoughts that don't come from the heart. I take my own photos and share my own words, recipes, activities, and life happenings.

I share a sliver of my own reality and hope you enjoy. However, if A Measured Word does begin to get stale for you, do not hesitate to move on. This blog should never be a slog for me nor should it bog you down either. I hope you continue to enjoy this partnership and look forward to what might come in the next post as much as I do. And, don't hesitate to comment either. I do so enjoy the conversation.