Thanksgiving plans and pumpkins

 Handsome Son visited yesterday with groceries, and we continued talking about how to do a safe Thanksgiving meal.  I'm a bit hazy on safety of food sharing from a common dish at this point, so we're thinking he will pick up individual prepared foods, ready to reheat, at the store where he works, so that will be minimal contact, but we can sit at either end of the table.  He estimates it at six feet distance, so that will work. One Christmas when I was too sick to cook, he picked up a lovely meal, first course crab stuffed flounder, next cooked turkey with some veg, forget what, and pie.  It was great, what I could eat of it.  So we're thinking of a version of that, for different reasons, we're both hoping to be well then.

When he visits and I serve him tea and a snack, I'm gloved handling his food, and we have separate teapots, milk, etc.  I also wash my hands before gloving them.

So yesterday we had the Victory Cookie and icecream.  They had to be separate because the cookie is crisp enough you need to pick it up to eat it. But we bravely managed anyway.  Handsome Son liked it enough to do this whole thing a second time.  And now he thinks it would make a great Thanksgiving dessert.  Fine by me.  One issue solved.  He really enjoyed this. And texted me this morning to say he's still recovering from the sugar overload!

Then, while we were in this high level conference, next door neighbor opens the front door, calls out here's the pumpkin I promised, and leaves this in the hallway for me.

This is part of the Pumpkin Exchange Program.  He doesn't like pumpkin, loves the seeds.  I don't like the seeds, like the pumpkin.  So when I had my mini pumpkin I washed and dried and gave him the seeds.  He's removed the seeds from this much bigger one, and it's now mine to cook.

It's better for soup or maybe cake than pie, not really a pie pumpkin.  And it's in the oven now roasting happily away for the moment.  I looked up recipes for roasting pumpkin, mainly to find out the oven setting, and found a major problem in all of them:  they all say to cut it down first.  But here's the thing: I can't possibly get a knife through this behemoth. I need to roast it in order to cut into it.  So I just went on in the way I think might work. 350F for and hour and 20 minutes. Since it's already empty, this will be an easy job to peel and dice. I'll let you know how this works out.  It's on the last 20 minutes now.

Beautiful weather suddenly, in the 70s.  I was sitting out reading yesterday afternoon.  So, the allergies made a brief reappearance in the middle of the night, had to get up and attend to my eye.  Better today. It's such a treat, though to be able to be out without a coat, if only for a few days.  Lovely walking, too.

New alarms about the GOP admin refusing to release funding for Biden's transition team.  This may be another, yet another, court case. She's claiming the final vote is not yet official. Except that every state with a complete count has called it officially. But I really won't be alarmed about this.  There will be a lot of deliberate obstruction, and we will have to overcome it.  Kamala is a topflight lawyer, she will know exactly the remedies.  And there's ACLU which has done wonderful work through this whole period.

Meanwhile, Biden's already assembling his Covid team for planning to handle the virus. A real team, this time, with doctors and epidemiologists and people who know what they're doing. So I'll try to leave it to them to worry about!

Today is walking and spinning and just enjoying the day.  Seize the day, as they say.  Carpe diem. Which does not mean carp all day long.

Sugar pumpkin and flu season

Yesterday's visit to an allergist, prompted by my primary care doctor, to see if I can safely somehow have a flu shot this year ended in a nope. Too risky after a bad reaction some years ago. But at least I did explore it. And while we were at it she wrote a script for next year's allergy season. A cheering assumption that I'll still be here!  Fine by me. Handsome Son has agreed to get a flu shot to protect me. 

It's worth remembering that if you can get a shot, you're also protecting the community, so there's that.

The little sugar pumpkin has come indoors to rescue it from the squirrels, and I steamed and diced it. I'm wondering now about a pumpkin cake..the seeds have been booked by my neighbor who loves them, except I'll keep a few to plant. 

He has a pumpkin he bought for the seeds, and plans to give me the flesh when he cuts into it. A pumpkin exchange! The pumpkin rind is now back on the ground on the patio, to feed squirrels!  The circle of life in a way.

So please vote, not by mail, use a dropbox or hand your ballot to a poll worker on the day, or vote in person by machine. Too little time to mail considering the sabotage at USPS conducted by the pmg.

And if you can get a flu shot, please do. That's two powerful things we can do right now.

Apres Halloween...the pumpkins bite the dust

What with my own pumpkin, now that the frosts have started, needing to come indoors and with next door's carved pumpkin, likewise, this morning was a madhouse of cutting and carving up and seeding and chopping and dicing and steaming and need I go on...two solid hours.

 But a huge yield of pumpkin steamed and ready to use instantly when needed.  Soup, stirfry, bread, muffins, pancakes, no end to the possibilities.

In the freezer already five bags of steamed pumpkin dice, and here's the last hurrah, heartfelt, I may say.

I think I'm getting people trained with my aversion to food waste -- neighbor said he was planning to toss their Halloween pumpkin now Halloween was past, but suddenly thought he'd ask me.  

I said, that's not trash, that's FOOD!  and he burst out laughing and said that's exactly what I thought you'd say!  I did promise to give him the seeds from my pumpkin, since he loves them toasted, and I'm not fond.

I still have winter squash to do something about but maybe not today.  Their need is not as urgent as the pumpkin. 

I saw "Dive" last evening, a documentary made by young filmmakers in LA about dumpster diving for food, largely but not only, at Trader Joe's, and it was amazing how much perfectly good food they found, still with days to go on their sell-by date, even. High end foods.  Gah!  they were sharing with family, friends and the local SA shelter.  Then a lot of the stores began to padlock their dumpsters.  I'm guessing fear of liability.  And rats.

Then the group began, having got nowhere with the top brass at a number of food corps., to deal directly with local managers, some of whom gave them a window at the end of the day in which they could take away food for any purpose they wanted -- some shelters are taking advantage of this opportunity, too -- before the food hit the dumpsters.  And they all discovered, as people in the field have long known, that salvaging and re-serving food is very heavy and demanding and timebound work.  A small version of which I did this morning.

They were not so much interested in feeding themselves, though they were happy to do that, as making a point in the hope that we can collectively do a much better job at food conservation and sharing than we've been doing up to now.  And they give ideas on what any of us can do next.

Food waste is endemic in a lot of supposedly civilized countries, very sad state of affairs, when hunger exists there, too.  Anyway, I recommend it as a sobering insight, or a confirmation of what we knew, depending on where you're coming from on this issue.

And, since Thanksgiving in the US will be here soon, I always remember that people aren't just hungry then.  It's all year round. Food banks need our help all the time.