Pumpkin Bread & Other Good Deeds

Dedicated to Christian

When I was 19 years old, I met a man who became my best friend, and one thing we loved most to do together, was to cook. He had a handwritten recipe card back then for Pumpkin Bread, and it was all sugary tastiness. We always made it with canned pumpkin, though ... and I've changed a lot since then ...

Because we both wanted to focus on school, and because the places we lived after marrying never had big enough kitchens, Christian and I didn't get to cook as much as we would have liked over the next four years. Slowly our diet became mostly comprised of grilled cheese & tomato soup, mac & cheese from the box, and various frozen dinners. We liked to cook, but we were students! I'll still always thank Christian in my head and heart every time I make Pumpkin Bread, though.

We eventually misplaced the handwritten recipe card, and we didn't make it for probably a couple of years. But one fateful day after I had enveloped myself in LGBTQ equality issues, I looked up a recipe for Pumpkin Bread online, stayed up well into the night making a fridge FULL of loaves, and the next day delivered one of the larger ones to none other than Chris Buttars. He actually not only accepted the loaf, but invited me and 3 friends into his home to sit with him for about an hour to talk about issues that were important to us as identifying LGBTQ constituents. And today, a year later, this same Chris Buttars, who said that day was the first time he had ever talked in person with a group of LGBTQ people about issues that were important to them, is talking about cooperating with Equality Utah this coming Legislative Session!

I made about 15 loaves of Pumpkin Bread today. I'm no longer married to Christian, and I miss the close friendship that we had, but am now happily in a relationship with a woman with whom I know I can spend the rest of my life. As I said, I've grown a lot since I was 19 years old! Instead of using canned pumpkin and making tasty sugary loaves, today's loaves tout all-organic and fresh ingredients - much tastier! Kristen cut up fresh pumpkin and boiled it, making a chunky, flavorful puree for me to add to All-Organic Canola Oil, Cane Sugar, Cage-Free Eggs, white and wheat flour and all the good pumpkin-y spices.

These loaves are like my pride and joy. They were made today in a spacious kitchen with the love of my life, and I can't wait to scatter their goodness all over our workplaces and neighborhood.

A New Holiday Tradition

Report: Homemade Eggnog A Striking Success!

Here is what I personally used to make it:

Ingredients:

* 6 Organic Large Eggs, plus 2 yolks
* 1/2 cup Organic Cane Sugar
* 1/4 teaspoon Kosher Sea Salt (Redmond RealSalt)
* 4 cups Organic Whole milk

* 1/2 cup Barbarossa Spice Flavored Rum
* 1 Tablespoon Pure Vanilla Extract
* 1/2 teaspoon Ground Nutmeg

* 1/4 cup Organic Heavy Whipping Cream, whipped to soft peaks
* Additional Ground Nutmeg for garnish

And someday, I would like to try it with freshly-grated nutmeg! I was curious to try some Eggnog this season as I began seeing it appear in groceries, but there was no Organic version to be seen - beside which, I had heard that Eggnog was originally an alcoholic drink, which just sounded delightful, so I determined to make some of my own. As I was heating the egg, sugar, salt and milk on the lowest possible setting for 45 minutes, as directed ... I was not sure anything at all significant was happening. But I continued on to strain that mixture (separating out tiny bits of cooked egg whites) into a large bowl, add the Rum, Vanilla and Nutmeg, then pour it into a container to cool in the fridge for 3-4 hours ... and hence a new Holiday Tradition was born!

Something magical happened, either in those 45 minutes of stirring over the stove (thank you, Kristen, for taking over a portion of the time!), or in those long chilly hours, because what resulted was something unlike anything I've ever tried. Whomever was it (as Travis, mystified, wondered), one chilly winter day/night, to think to add eggs, milk and rum together to make such a concoction?? I thank them from the bottom of my heart as I look forward to many Thanksgiving and Solstice and Festivus and Christmas celebrations with Eggnog to come.

A la recherche du temps perdu

Learn French.

I decided I couldn't possibly expect myself to write this French paper without first blogging about how enlightened I feel I have just become by reading Marcel Proust.

How could a man write like that? Am I more like a man than I thought? Or did all men used to write like that, and I'm just old-fashioned? I'm so dramatic ... have you ever READ Marcel Proust, though!?

"Will it ultimately reach the clear surface of my consciousness, this memory, this old, dead moment which the magnetism of an identical moment has travelled so far to importune, to disturb, to raise up out of the very depths of my being? I cannot tell. Now I feel nothing; it has stopped, has perhaps sunk back into its darkness, from which who can say whether it will ever rise again? Ten times over I must essay the task, must lean down over the abyss. And each time the cowardice that deters us from every difficult task, every important enterprise, has urged me to leave the thing alone, to drink my tea and to think merely of the worries of today and my hopes for tomorrow, which can be brooded over painlessly.

And suddenly the memory revealed itself . . ."

- Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu, or, In Search of Lost Time - Volume 1 - Du cote de chez Swann, or, Swann's Way - Translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Revised by D.J. Enright

Learn French. Or get the translation at least! Keep reading. Find out what Proust lost memory of, how he recovers his memories ... it's like the most miniature-scale mystery ever written, in seven whole volumes of dramatic suspense and passion!

Life and Death

Summer and Winter . . . Happiness and Sadness . . . I love how it all blends together. How, from the day we're born, our bodies are aging toward death. How, in the heat and ultimate dry hot splendor of the Summer Solstice, the earth is actually beginning it's retreat and turning it's way back to the cold, and how, in the ultimate cold wet crisp peak of winter chill, I celebrate the beginning of the return of the warmth of the sun!

I began taking anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication last Tuesday. The last time I took this medication was situational, back in October, and I only took it for a month ... it seemed to help, but I didn't stick with it because life seemed to get better for a time, and I wanted to enjoy a few drinks with family and friends during the holidays.

This fall, I have been reveling in some of the happiest times in my entire life ... hiking, walking and jogging frequently ... and I have felt healthier than I have in years. Plus during the past few weeks, I have started eating healthier not just as a passing fad, but as a complete change to the way I cook and bake and shop ... and I don't care who says "Organic is just a scam," they just don't want to pay the extra cost, so they haven't actually tried it, and they don't know that it REALLY DOES TASTE DIFFERENT ... that's a pretty good scam, I'd say. EVERYTHING tastes better organic. And I really don't think it's just in my head.

I took a few weeks, maybe even a month or so, longer than I should have to go see my doctor about starting this medication. My life is so good, every aspect of it, that I didn't want to face that my feelings of losing motivation and having to drag myself out of bed every morning, were only going to get worse as the weather got colder. I've been so much more active this summer and fall than I had been in the past, that staying indoors curled up in blankets has been taking it's toll on my body. Now that I've finally accepted this, I've been sleeping more peacefully, and waking feeling more well-rested - and it's only been a week. I think the benefits will only continue to be observable in my day-to-day levels of motivation. I want to graduate with high marks. I have a couple of quite difficult classes this semester, and I know if I can just pass one, and do well in the other three, I will be able to get financial aid my last semester, and I know I can do well in all the classes I am registered for in the Spring. I LOVE learning language and culture! And after I graduate, I will only continue doing so, through teaching and studying with other students of ESL.

Life and Happiness ebb continuously with thoughts and realities of Death and Sadness. Two of my Grandparents have recently passed, and I know that such a large part of life is dealing with loss and grief. I just hope we can all get through this winter with the people we love most close to us, and that we can all remember to actively appreciate those people we love throughout every year - during the warm months and the cold.

Pumpkins

This fall I've discovered the beauty of pumpkins not as carvable Halloween emblems, but as members of the squash family of vegetables. I have finally fulfilled one of my curiosities of making pumpkin pie from scratch! It is actually not complicated, as I thought it would be!

1. Cut the top off the pumpkin like you would a green pepper, cutting a circle around the stem and then pulling it off

2. Pull out the seeds and put them in a bowl, squishing off excess pumpkin guts as you do so (I'll explain below what to do with the seeds!)

3. Cut the pumpkin into workable sections, and scrape out the guts with an ice-cream scoop (toss or compost the guts)

4. Place the scraped-clean sections in a glass Pyrex dish filled 1/2 - 3/4 full of water

5. For the microwave, use a 9x9 Pyrex, cover it loosely, and microwave the sections for 15 minutes. Uncover the Pyrex and move the sections around a bit, microwave for 5 or 10 more minutes, then pull it out

6. For the oven, use a 9x13 Pyrex, cover it with tinfoil, and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour

7. When you take out the Pyrex, drain the water, then use a fork and spoon to scrape the now-very-soft pumpkin away from the skin. Or you can pull the skin off the pumpkin ... either way, drain off as much water as possible and put all the pumpkin in a bowl ... then fill the dish back up with water and repeat, until all the pumpkin sections are cooked. Mash it all up and continue draining as each "batch" is cooked and added to the bowl.

So simple!!! Takes a while, especially for larger pumpkins, but it is so worth it! The puree of one large pumpkin will make oh, 4-6 pies, the puree of one small one will make 2-3. The small ones are called Pie Pumpkins, and are supposedly the ones to cook with, but I've used both and it all cooks and smells like pumpkin puree to me!

Now, are you wondering what to do with those seeds? I hope you have a strainer, because this is ultimate fun and pleasure:

1. Put all the seeds in the strainer, in the sink, and run water over them as you run your fingers through them!

2. As you experience said pleasure, remove remaining pumpkin from the seeds. Once they are sufficiently clean, place them on paper towels to dry

3. Allow them to dry for about an hour (about the same amount of time as the sections of pumpkin cooking)

4. Once they are sufficiently dry, put them all in a bowl with 1 Tablespoon of olive oil and sprinkle salt on them as you shake and coat them

5. Once they are sufficiently oiled and salted, pour them onto a cookie sheet and shake them around until they cover it fairly evenly. Roast them at 250 degrees for 10 - 15 minutes ... you'll know when they're done by how beautifully golden brown they are

These pumpkin seeds are nutty and perfect for snacking. On laundry, cooking and cleaning day, all of the wait times sort of blend together and at the end of it all, you won't really even feel like you put forth so much effort, when you consider your house now smells like fall and healthy desserts and snacks ... if anyone is interested in the Sweet Potato Pumpkin Pie I've become a fan of making with this fresh pumpkin puree, just let me know and I'll hook you up.

Happy Healthy Halloween!

The bluish-gray of tonight is eerie and enchanting ... there is one thin line of silvery-white breaking through some of these mysterious clouds right about where the sun is setting in the west. The branches of the dying trees outside my window look dark purple, dark green, or maybe just black, as they shudder at random against the darkening backdrop of sky.

Is it any surprise that a holiday devoted to eeriness, the strange and unknown, was thought up by humans so long ago, in weather very similar to this? Even tonight, in 2009, I can feel such a connection with them, as I watch the picture outside my window change by the moment! Now the branches seem lower, the wind seems to be moving them a slight bit more, they seem weighted down by the cold and chill that is descending upon them with the loss of sunlight. And the sky can't make up it's chilly, darkening mind as to whether it wants to be dyed purple, brown, pink or gray.

Tomorrow is Halloween! Whether or not you like what this holiday has become: a marketing dream come true, a commercialized feast of corn-syrupy, sugary, chocolate-y headaches, stomachaches and hyperactivity - reading up on the history of Halloween is worth the few extra minutes of your time! Celtic and Christian in origin, it's closely tied to All Saint's Day, which is November 1, and All Soul's Day, which is November 2.

I think that the celebrations of these days have devolved, rather, into a commemoration of "monsters," all things frightening, dead or unknown. We like to tell scary stories, dress up in strange, different, or scary costumes (marketed further to include some sexy, beautiful, and horrific costumes) - many like to pretend to be something they're not.

One thing I like about the way Halloween currently is, is the opportunity for creativity in costumes. Perhaps when I am older and more regularly handing out treats to Trick-or-Treat-ers, I will only give treats to those with costumes that appear to be homemade - or, I'll give small treats to everyone but money to those with truly creative costumes. What an opportunity Halloween provides for people to plan, create and display something meaningful!

What I do not like about Halloween, however, is basically what Halloween really is to most kids today. A contest to "earn" the most candy, when really, what "work" are you doing, running to as many houses as you can to mooch off strangers? Perhaps I'll let my kids go at it completely, filling pillow-cases full of junk, and letting them eat as much as they possibly could want ... so that they may learn, by their own personal experience, what that kind of junk food actually does to their bodies, how it makes them feel, etc.

But what I would most of all like to do for Halloween, would be to celebrate the time with other friends and families who are committed to healthy eating ... staying indoors, having games and activities, playing songs, doing everything we can think of that is "healthy," physically, emotionally, mentally, in all sorts of ways! Learn new yoga poses, read lots of children's books about Halloween-like celebrations all over the world, and enjoy good food together and a few select healthy treats. For kids who come to the door, focus on the creativity of their costumes, and hand out all-organic, all-natural treats like fresh mini homemade bread loaves, or, if they must be packaged, Barbara's or Annie's gummy bunnies or animal crackers. Start a trend in a neighborhood! The best of the best costumes "earn" a dollar or two in addition to their little healthy treat. So next year, even more creativity will be encouraged, and maybe even more houses will be offering more healthy treats!

Humanism

The American Humanist Association strives to bring about a progressive society where being “good without god” is an accepted way to live life. Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.

These statements resonate so soundly within me that I officially joined the American Humanist Association and am proud to call myself a Humanist . . . for the greater good of humanity! The Humanist Manifesto III is a great resource for any interested in reading more.

If you live in Utah and are interested in regular meetings with people who feel this way toward general theological belief, who uphold scientific inquiry and always encourage free thought and forward thinking, check out the Humanists of Utah - and if you are interested in joining this local group, here is a listing of all their upcoming events, and how you can become a member - but feel no pressure to "join" officially; all events are open to the public to learn more about Humanism in Utah!