the friday feed: mom's pumpkin pie

On our drive home from the Columbus airport, Todd asked me if I wanted to stop at the grocery store to shop for Thanksgiving. I told him we could go to buy the turkey but I didn't have my Thanksgiving shopping list ready and I didn't want to wander around the store going through a mental list of "Do I need this or do I need that?" We bought the turkey, some celery and chicken broth (those were on the way to the meat counter) and passed a table filled with boxes and boxes of pies. Todd took notice of this display and said, "Patrick requested pumpkin pie for dessert. Should we get one?" 

"Sure." 

"Oh we can wait 'til tomorrow and you can pick one up when you do your big shopping trip."

Tomorrow arrived and I went shopping around noon with my well-organized list. I got to the pie table and there were no more pumpkin pies. (WHAT?). I thought, "I'll just buy a couple pie crusts and make pumpkin pie." I am not a pie baker but I have my mom's pumpkin pie recipe, it's an easy one, so why not?

I had to search through a few old recipe books and finally found Mom's handwritten  recipe. As you can tell, it's old, well-used, and the paper is getting brittle. It's my favorite pumpkin pie recipe because the ratio of spices is just right. So many times it seems like one of the spices dominates, but not in this case.

Mom smiles from above.

A tattered, stained recipe...

Tradition endures.

Back to baking the pies. I bought off-brand pie crusts and pre-baked them before putting the pumpkin pie filling in. Those crusts shrunk. Oy. Whatever...I poured the pumpkin pie mixture into them and then into the oven for baking. Not the best looking pies but nothing that a big dollop of whipped cream can't take care of.

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Pumpkin Pie

1 1/2 c. pumpkin

1 1/2 c. sugar (not quite)

1 1/2 c. milk

Pinch of salt (1/2 t.)

2 eggs

1 T. flour

1 t. cinnamon

1/4 t. nutmeg

1/4 t. allspice

1/8 t. nutmeg

1/8/ t. ginger

Bake at 450° for 10 minutes. Reduce to 350° and bake 35 - 45 minutes.

Sharp knife inserted in middle should come out clean.

gratitude and thanksiving

In yesterday’s New York Times, Sam Sifton started the morning edition with this thought:

“Good morning. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and odds are good that at some point during the day someone’s going to ask you what you’re thankful for.

It’s a good question to ask. People should think about gratitude more often. They should share their gratitude with others, in public, and not just on Thanksgiving. Saying it out loud is an act of grace, a gift to the people surrounding you.”

Today, Thanksgiving, is about gratitude and living with a grateful heart.

I want to share a couple of my favorite readings from this book. No religion, just food for thought on this holiday that centers around a meal and why we celebrate this day.

"Tonight we give thanks for the great gift of friendship. Thank you for the circumstances that brought us together and have bound us into the sacred bundle of life. Thank you also for the gifts of our friendship; for knowledge that comforts, for words that encourage, for insight that blesses, for all the experiences shared, for the sweet bliss of deeply knowing each other in so many ways; for history and a hope of the future, for conversation and laughter, for silence, for bearing each other's witness truly, for holding each other in our hearts with great love and tenderness."

~ Daphne Rose Kingma

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"One does not need to fast for days and meditate for hours at a time to experience the sense of sublime mystery which constantly envelopes us. All one need to do is notice intelligently, if even for a brief moment, a blossoming tree, a forest flooded with autumn colors, an infant smiling."

~ Simon Greenberg

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Thanksgiving blessings to you.

As always, many thanks and much gratitude to my friend Patricia Saxton for sharing her art and her wisdom.

wednesday's words and wanderings and wonderings

Todd's birthday was on Sunday so to celebrate he wanted to go the Cleveland Browns football game...in Las Vegas. Last Wednesday we drove to the John Glenn Columbus International Airport to catch our early morning Thursday flight. As always, I got my window seat and enjoyed watching the sunrise above the clouds.

We made a stop in Minneapolis-St. Paul to connect to Las Vegas. Did you know that SPAM is made in Austin, Minnesota, a town about 100 miles south of Minneapolis? I sure didn't. SPAM was a staple in the last two years of Todd's college diet when he lived in off-campus housing.

Hello, Las Vegas! As we walked to and through the terminal, the ding, ding, ding and the bright lights of the gambling machines enticed travelers to try their luck.

The Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix was going on while we were there. Lots of people came in to watch the four days of racing that was right in the center of town.  Thank heavens our hotel was away from the race route as it was impossible to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time. We bought a 4-day monorail pass to get from one end of town to the other and did a lot of walking, too. The race was blocked off from those who did not pay big bucks to watch it but when the cars zoomed by, it was obvious from the engine roar that those were some very expensive, fine tuned machines.

So much art in all the hotels. This was one of my favorite pieces, "Tulips" by Jeff Koons. Many years ago when my daughter lived in New York City, she and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Jeff Koons had an exhibit on the Met's rooftop. His art is large in scale and is fun, colorful, whimsical, and happy.

One of the days we went to the Mob Museum which is in Old Las Vegas. The Mob Museum really gave an understanding of organized crime's history and impact on American society. Walking around Old las Vegas was so different from the casinos on The Strip - the newer, glitzier part of town. Its Mid-Century architecture has been preserved. I really enjoyed this section of town and wished we could have spent more time exploring.

This breathtaking glass sculpture is Fiori di Como, created by Dale Chihuly, and it adorns the ceiling of the Bellagio Hotel's lobby. As its placard says, "Completed in 1998, this masterpiece is renowned not only for its staggering beauty and complexity but also for being the largest glass sculpture ever made, embodying Chihuly's distinctive style and unparalleled craftsmanship in the realm of blown glass art."

And here we are at Allegiant Stadium, home of the Las Vegas Raiders. Both teams came to this game with a 2-8 record. Not a lot on the line except the glory of a win and the Browns did give Todd a 24-10 win for his birthday. 

monday's mulling: who can relate?

 

This is me, particularly when it comes to my phone. I'm going to ask Santa for an iWatch. It has a "Find My iPhone" feature on it so Todd won't have to call my phone to help me locate it.

happy birthday!

For the month of November I’ve been writing in a daily gratitude journal and today’s prompt is “Animals.” It also happens to be Todd’s birthday. Hmmmm...how to combine the two...

Happy birthday to the guy who keeps me on my toes but also keeps me grounded.

He's a loyal DAWG* who bleeds brown and orange. He’s been through it all, starting as a 7 year old kid watching the 1964 Championship onto The Kardiac Kids, The Mistake on the Lake, The Drive, The Fumble, The Move, Rebuilding Since 1999, Factory of Sadness, The Helmet, and like the Energizer Bunny, he keeps on going! No matter what the Browns do, one thing never changes: Pittsburgh sucks.**  

Happy Birthday THouse...Here we go, Brownies, here we go! WOOF WOOF!

And now, 2 months and 1 week later, you're the same age as me!

*For those of you wondering about the Browns lore, the team's mascots are a "brownie" elf and a dog, typically a bull mastiff, in reference to the Dawg Pound, which is the nickname for a specific portion of the stands where the most diehard and rabid fans sit. The Dawg Pound has since been adopted and used as reference to the entire Browns fan base.

**The Browns - Steelers rivalry, or Turnpike Rivalry, is an intense National Football League (NFL) rivalry between the Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers.

collective nouns

A collective noun is a common noun that names a group of people, creatures, or objects. Did you know there are around 200 collective nouns in English?

A "simple" grammar rule for you: According to Grammarly,

How do you know whether a collective noun should be singular or plural?

Collective nouns are singular in form but plural in meaning. In American English, they are usually treated as singular and followed by a singular verb. However, many of them can be treated as plural in contexts where the emphasis is on the individual members or components of a group rather than on the group as a whole. In British English, collective nouns are much more frequently treated as plural.

And a few more:

Mammals

• Apes: a shrewdness
• Badgers: a cete
• Bears: a sloth or sleuth
• Camels: a caravan or train
• Cats: a clowder
• Dogs: a pack
• Dolphins: a pod
• Elephants: a herd or parade
• Ferrets: a business
• Giraffes: a tower
• Hippopotamuses: a bloat or thunder
• Kangaroos: a mob or troop
• Lions: a pride
• Monkeys: a troop or barrel
• Rhinoceroses: a crash
• Tigers: an ambush or streak
• Whales: a pod or herd
• Wolves: a pack 
  

Birds 

• Crows: a murder
• Eagles: a convocation
• Flock: a generic term for birds
• Geese: a gaggle or skein
• Owls: a parliament 

Insects

• Ants: a colony or army
• Bees: a swarm or hive
• Hornets: a nest 
  

Other animals

• Crocodiles: a bask
• Fish: a school or shoal
• Frogs: an army
• Jellyfish: a smack or fluther
• Squirrels: a dray or scurry 

And after all this, if you're still wanting more information on collective nouns, check out this article on The Fascinating History of Collective Nouns.

Have a good day, y'all! (Is that a collective pronoun?)

the friday feed: le beaujolais nouveau est arrivé!

The third Thursday in November celebrates one of the wine world’s most exciting dates. “Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé!” (The Beaujolais Nouveau has arrived!) Every year, this is the moment when the very first red wines of the vintage are released. This year this wine was made available to the public at 12:01 a.m. (00:01) on November 20, 2025. What’s great about Beaujolais Nouveau is that, for once, wine isn’t taken seriously. There’s not a prestigious bottle, no need to be an expert picking up notes, and no tasting skills required. It’s just about celebrating wine and all the work that’s gone into this year’s harvest. This observance has grown from a local farmer’s tradition into a global celebration.

We were in Cleveland last weekend and one night babysat our little sweethearts while the big sweethearts went out for Jen's birthday celebration. Todd and Andrew had gone to Giant Eagle for a quick grocery run and when they got back to the house, Todd announced, "You'll never guess what I found!" He pulled a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau out of the grocery bag and after the little ones were all snug in their beds, we had a couple glasses. 

Young, lively red wine

to celebrate the harvest

at the midnight toll.

But then I got to thinking, this is November 15 and the third Thursday is the 20th. Hmmmm...somebody at the Giant Eagle didn't get the memo that this wine isn't supposed to be on the shelf until November 20. C'est la vie!

nothing gold can stay

Nothing Gold Can Stay

By Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

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Autumn's gold is disappearing and the falling leaves are brown. Around my neighborhood more trees are bare than they are leafy. It's the progression of the seasons. 31 more days until winter.

My first reaction to this poem was that it's a sad poem. But poems are meant to be read more than once and I read it a couple more times. Despite the theme that nothing beautiful can last, the poem is not necessarily meant to be sad. Instead, I see it as a call to appreciate precious moments while they last, because their impermanence is what makes them so valuable. 

wednesday's words and wanderings and wonderings

This past week I spent a few days working in the yard, cleaning out the flower beds and the rest of the herb garden. I pulled out the already dead dill plant, smiling at the memory of the swallowtail butterfly caterpillar chewing non-stop through one of the plants in a couple of days. I snipped parsley and rosemary for freezing, in anticipation of catching a taste summer freshness in my winter cooking. I let the marigolds go as long as they could, keeping the yellow and gold and orange flowers for last minute pollen gathering for the bees. After all 100+ plants turned brown, it was time to pull them out and turn up the dirt to make space for the new marigolds to be planted when the soil once again warms. Todd raked leaves to cover the bare soil for the winter. Over the winter the leaves will compost and nourish the soil for the upcoming spring. 

We took the yard waste to the Montgomery County waste facility and parked next to a man who was dumping his landscaping debris. Laying next to his flat bed was his red Craftsman wheelbarrow. Memories came flooding back of my dad and his career at Sears and how good the Craftsman tool line was. Back in the day Craftsman was exclusive to Sears. Now you find it at Lowe's, Ace Hardware, on Amazon, and probably other places. After the trip to the dump, I took my car to the car wash. It was embarrassingly dirty plus that impromptu snow storm from earlier in the week put so many wet, mushy leaves on the roads which topped off the dirtiness. 

We are headed off for a little weekend jaunt with some friends to celebrate Todd's birthday. After our trip to Cleveland, I'm not buying any groceries for this week and using up what's in the fridge. I've never made the popular baked feta with cherry tomatoes. I had the basics - the feta and cherry tomatoes - and added some fontina, green onions, and red bell pepper. I used the recipe but with my additions, cleared out a few items that wouldn't have lasted over the weekend. I emptied a box of pasta that had an inch of noodles left and after boiling it to al dente, enjoyed a nice little pasta lunch with that ooey, gooey cheesy sauce.