My babies are waking up! I got them out of the fridge yesterday morning; the poor things looked chilled to the bone, watery, and weak. So pathetic and sad! I almost felt guilty.

They clearly needed to get the blood moving again. To stir some life back into them. To eat something! So, I did what any good mom does when her kids look cold and weepy—I fed them (just water and flour, nothing fancy) and almost immediately, it seemed, they were back to their boisterous, tangy-scented selves. It made my heart swell with pride, it did! Silverton says to wait for three days before baking after chilling the starter, but I bet I could’ve baked with them today.

Anyway, all that to say: We’re back in business, folks, and I have a couple new recipes up my sleeve. Well, at least one … but I think it’s a good one. It involves pumpkin seeds and a sweet potato. Just in time for Thanksgiving, too.

1. I read Sarah, Plain and Tall, by Patricia MacLachlan, for the first time in my life this past weekend. I picked it up off the shelf in the library and had to ask the librarian if it was an abridged version since it was so thin. She said that no, it was the real thing. I read it to the kids in three days (we could’ve easily done it in one sitting) and finished it up on Sunday night. I don’t normally cry when I read to the kids (I do get a little choked up sometimes), but somewhere in the last chapter I started crying and I didn’t stop till I finished the book. I don’t mean a little sniffle cry; I mean, a tears-streaming-down-my-cheeks-and-Miss-Becca-Boo-flying-into-my-lap-to-hug-me type of cry. It is an exquisite book.

2. My Aunt Valerie gave me a new tip when she last visited me. She told me to save all the fruit juices that you have left in the bottom of your jars and use them to replace some or all of the water in your granola recipes. So in my last batch of granola I included sweet cherry juice, the dregs of the jar of apple cider, and some peach juice. I don’t detect a change in the flavor, but it makes me feel kind of smug to do it.

3. I have always cut up my squashes and pumpkins and boiled them till tender and then scraped out the flesh to use in pies and other dishes, but this year I decided to learn how to roast them. All you do is wash the pumpkin, cut it in half, scoop out the seeds, cut it into smaller chunks, and set the chunks skin-side-down on cookie sheets.

Cover the pumpkin with big sheets of tinfoil (I save them for the next time I do a pumpkin bake) and bake it in the oven at 350 degrees for a couple hours till the pumpkin is fork-tender.

After the pumpkin cools for a bit,

scoop out the meaty flesh.

Allow the scooped-out pumpkin to sit in the bowl for a little because some more liquid will ooze out which can then be poured off.

Pack the pumpkin into pint-sized boxes and pop them in the freezer.

(So I’m not very good at keeping mum. Ya wanna make something of it?)

I saw The Man yesterday, with my very own eyes, and you know what? He looks just like he does on TV. In fact, it was almost exactly like watching him on our fuzzy, static-y TV ‘cause with all the jostling and screaming it was kind of hard to get a good, focused look at him.

Here he is.

Oops, let’s try the zoom now.

See what I mean? He looks calm, collected, confident, and, believe it or not, energetic. How does he do it?!

The day’s events in a nutshell: Me and two friends took nine kids and some food to a field and sat there all afternoon in the freezing windy cold and then we didn’t get in because about five thousand people jumped in line in front of us (CURSES!) but then Obama came on to the back of the field (bless his heart) and we saw him for five minutes, after which Miss Becca Boo threw up, and then, after slinking (as if you can “slink” with nine children) through the woods on the other side of the building and seeing him exit the building and drive off, we went home. And thus ends the year’s history/social studies/political science lesson.

The extremes we mothers will go to in the spirit of home education! I think we should be sainted, or something.

Ps. Except that now he’s doing that special announcement thing tonight, so I guess we’ll be pulling out the TV (that we don’t have) and making some popcorn. At least we’ll be warm this time around.