Well, brrr. These past two weeks have not been chilly. They've been COLD. Frost several mornings in a row, and in the shaded spots, there has been a hard freeze. It is that time of year, I know, and silver linings include way fewer bugs and no mosquitoes! I fully admit, though, that I am already thinking about the gardens for next year. I cannot decide if I want to try my hand at a huge coneflower spread in full sun or a large scarlet red lantana patch. I'd really like to go for the coneflowers, but they might be tricky to grow. We'll see how it works out.
There's some real beauty in the month of November! Our leaves are starting to show off, and I begin making the odd Thanksgiving Day comfort food here and there. We had dressing and gravy the other night with our supper. Today, I've got a green bean and rice casserole that just came out of the oven, made old-school style topped with homemade sweet Hawaiian roll croutons. It smells like mid-morning of Thanksgiving Day when these types of dishes are being baked. You can imagine that the parade is on TV, and everyone is mentally preparing to overindulge in the annual sacred goodies. I think next week, I'm going to do some baked cranberries with sugar and orange citrus. Mmmmmm. So good, especially on biscuits.
One of our gorgeous trees is pictured below. Last year, the color was just okay. This year, it's been extra nice, and I will be so sad when the leaves are all gone. The casserole is pictured below, as well. Notice the close-up of the homemade croutons. I do not like mine overdone, just dried out and barely golden. They're wonderful in soups, on top of casseroles, on salads, etc. They're just straight-up tossed in butter and toasted. If I know I'm going to use them exclusively for salads, I add quite a lot of parmesan cheese. But for the casserole below, they were just tossed in salted butter.
I've been thinking about TV. Yes, I mean the talkie box thingy. I'm tired of too many streaming services and the overwhelming choices of often-mediocre entertainment. I think that, mentally, it's become exhausting. I feel it the most during the holidays. Holiday specials used to be just that - special. Now, you can own them and watch them at any time. You can watch them on a million different channels, put them on a loop, often find them streaming on YouTube - you name the special, you can probably find it and view it all year long.
For me, personally, that's depressing. The specialness of those things that we loved as children is gone. Kids now days think that all this stuff has always been at everyone's disposal, and I have to think hard to imagine what is special to them because it is an enjoyed rarity at only certain times of the year. I truly cannot come up with anything. Maybe the every-now-and-then new holiday movie? Even those have gotten watered down and feel empty. People fight getting older, but you know what? I'm grateful to have been born in 1970.
I'm not saying it was easy for anyone, especially those on the receiving end of prejudices and disregard for simply being a human being because they did not fit what society adhered to. I know that for many people, the experience in that time was much, much different.
But I still believe that some things were better, that the lack of materialism was a good thing. All of the things that made holidays special were only rolled out once a year and not months in advance. The colored lights were an enormous treat, then "designers" ruined that with white lights. I like white lights for winter, but if you were this little girl in the 1970s, you loved colored lights, chocolate covered creme drops, chocolate covered cherries, hard candy ribbons in holiday colors, and the smell of orange and peppermint. You watched the Peanuts specials once because they were on only one of the major networks and those networks ran them only once.
I could go on forever, but I'll stop there out of fear of becoming a cranky old ranting coot. I plan to enjoy Sunday and that casserole and the leaves and pumpkin ice cream today! I hope you do, too. If you are my age or older, I hope you find the loveliness in the season; don't let how things have become drown out your nostalgia. We are so much more than the million-miles-a-minute stuff that gets thrown at us 24/7 these days. Maybe one day, we could all band together and say "no more" and push the initiative that more is not always better.
Love to you on this Sunday of the first full week of November. It's going by so quickly. Make the most of it!
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