{"id":10817,"date":"2023-11-05T18:13:07","date_gmt":"2023-11-06T00:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/?p=10817"},"modified":"2023-11-07T11:24:43","modified_gmt":"2023-11-07T17:24:43","slug":"fall-type-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/05\/fall-type-stuff\/","title":{"rendered":"Fall type stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"

OK, it’s November. We’ve had some days with a high of 35\u00b0 and other days like today where the high was 66\u00b0.<\/p>\n

One of the really cold days was last Tuesday, Halloween. I already posted a bunch of pics of our pumpkins but here they are lit on Halloween night.<\/p>\n

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We got hardly any trick or treaters, but no fear, we’ve eaten all the Halloween candy ourselves, except for a bag of snickers in Mark’s fridge.<\/p>\n

Last Thursday, I picked up my CSA extension share, a box in between the last regular season boxes and the “Thanksgiving box” storage shares that we’ll get in about two weeks. My farmer, Beth, called it the Squash & Sweets share<\/a>, 10 pounds of sweet potatoes and 16 pounds of squash. Beth also posted this lovely shot of dusk on their farm.<\/p>\n

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The first thing I made from the box was sweet potato fries to go with our open face toasted cheese sandwiches that we ate before going to see DakhaBrakha<\/a>. I made two kinds: deli turkey with cheddar and thousand island dressing and tomatoes, and Swiss cheese with zucchini pickles I made last summer.\u00a0 I bought some Whole Foods in-house roasted organic deli turkey breast because I thought Pia might eat it, she’s just been taking Cliff bars for lunch, and thought she might like to make sandwiches, and I thought maybe Jasper might like it (he didn’t – he dropped the turkey on the floor and opened his mouth wide for another bite of yogurt & applesauce). The turkey was really dry and crumbly, and definitely low sodium. So anyways, I used up as much as possible in these sandwiches, I ate some of it – with a ton of mayo – and the rest went in the compost on Saturday night.\u00a0 The fries came out pretty good – I tossed the cut sweet potato sticks with a little flour and smoked paprika and olive oil, and spread them out on a preheated, oiled, baking sheet. I didn’t get any pics Thursday, but when I get the recipe perfected I will post it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And DakhaBrakha, man they were amazing. Bob Queen and Nancy Kathman who organize & fund the Sessions at McPike Park<\/a> in the summer underwrote the concert so most of the proceeds could benefit Ukraine. For me the projected visuals were the best part, but I wasn’t careful enough about taking a pic of the credits at the end of the show. I might have to fast forward one of their recent concert videos to the end credits to get the artist info.<\/p>\n

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Bob Queen’s DakhaBrakha pic<\/p><\/div>\n

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Lisa M’s DakhaBrakha pic<\/p><\/div>\n

On Friday I steamed two of the butternuts and got enough puree to make a batch of pumpkin butter. With some leftover for a TBD pumpkin something. I’ve been flirting with pumpkin bread or muffins, maybe mini muffins, or maybe pumpkin pancakes, or maybe pumpkin pasta. We shall see. Pia is off on her State Dept. sponsored trip to DC most of this week, so it’s just me & Mark for dinner.<\/p>\n

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Pumpkin butter in a jar<\/p><\/div>\n

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Pumpkin butter on toast on top of cream cheese<\/p><\/div>\n

In house construction progress, I think I told you everything’s all built, and we’re at the painting phase. Which also involves lots of scraping and window trim repair and caulking and screen repair. Last week when it was really cold preventing painting, the painters told us that they were making a big push to get everything primered for winter and then if they ran out of good weather, we’d be their first job in the spring. This week I realized they were doing the maitre d thing – telling us it’d be an hour wait for our table so we’d be happy when they seat us after 45 minutes.<\/p>\n

Wednesday, one of the cold days, was Jasper’s first time coming here for granny daycare. It was always the plan that as he got bigger he’d come here because there’re more things to walk to than out at Al & Emma’s on the far west side. He only took one nap, but otherwise, I think we had a good day.<\/p>\n\n\t\t