• Two Thanksgiving Things (and a bunch of parenthesis)

    November 26, 2008

    1. I keep a yellow legal pad on my desk so that I can jot down notes for this blog whenever new ideas pop into my head. Back when I first started this blog I jotted down “Thanksgiving—Pieces of April”. I nearly forgot about that note, too, because there is a fairly large chunk of pages separating that page from my present scratching page.

    But I remembered, thank goodness. And this is what I wanted to tell you. If you are in need of a refreshing and uplifting (my opinion, yes) movie (not appropriate for young children, though I can’t really remember anything questionable—maybe one sex scene?) for the Thanksgiving weekend, go rent Pieces of April.

    The plot is this: A young woman is estranged from her family (she was a wild child) and is living with her black boyfriend, and her family (her mother is dying of cancer) is coming to their apartment for Thanksgiving dinner. That’s it. But you should see it, if for nothing else then for the sight of her stuffing the turkey with entire stalks of celery.

    2. What is a post on Thanksgiving without a pumpkin pie? That’s right. It’s not a Thanksgiving post. Therefore, I shall gift you with my recipe. (You best mind your manners and be thankful.)


    I normally make this recipe from butternut squash, but because I don’t have any butternuts this year, I’m making do with the pumpkins and squashes I pulled from my garden—they serve the purpose just fine (though I think they are a bit more watery).


    My children adore pumpkin pie. Yo-Yo Boy could easily tuck away a half a pie if I let him. And I often do because this recipe makes two pies (one an 8-inch and the other a 9-inch) so there is plenty to go around.

    And besides, I consider this pie to be a breakfast pie; in other words, good enough to eat first off in the morning. It’s mostly made of pumpkin, eggs, and milk, and if you use whole wheat in the crust, it couldn’t get much more nutritious (don’t argue with me about this). (Sure there’s some sugar in the filling, but hey, it’s not all that much—my baked oatmeal recipe uses almost as much sugar.)


    Of course, the pie is very good with a dollop of whipped cream on top, but we reserve that for special occasions. My children are thrilled enough when they hear I’m fixing pumpkin pie—they don’t even miss the whipped cream.


    Pumpkin Pie
    Adapted from The Mennonite Community Cookbook

    Updated, December 2015: Fill one large 9 or 10-inch pie shell with as much pumpkin pie filling as possible. Put the remaining 1-2 cups in a container and freeze. The next time you make pumpkin pies, thaw the leftover filling and then you’ll have enough for two large pies.

    2 cups cooked pumpkin
    1 1/3 cups brown sugar
    2 cups milk, scalded
    4 eggs
    ½ teaspoon salt
    1 ½ tablespoons cornstarch
    1/4 teaspoon ginger
    1/4 teaspoon cloves
    1 1/4 teaspoons cinnamon
    2 unbaked pie shells (8-inch and 9-inch)

    Using a hand-held mixer, blend together the pumpkin, eggs, sugar, and spices. Turn the mixer on low and slowly add the hot milk. Divide the pie filling (it will be very runny) between the two pie shells and bake at 400 degrees for ten minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees and bake for another 25-35 minutes, or until the filling has set and the pie is golden brown and slightly puffy.

    Note: If you don’t want to make two pies, just reduce the milk and pumpkin to 1 1/4 cups each, cut back the sugar to one cup, and keep the other spices the same—you should then have enough filling for one 9-inch pie. (I think.)

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  • Feminism: Part Two

    November 25, 2008

    So after the dinner we retired to the lounge for a devotional and then a movie.

    Oh-woman-of-nine-children led the devotional which was pleasant and even somewhat inspirational (this is high praise since modern day devotionals tend to make me angry rather than inspired). She shared her story, how she was a single mother and then got married and had stair-step children (as in one per year). She told of some debilitating illnesses she had experienced (such as one with the quaint name of, get this, “flesh-eating septicemia”) and how she and her husband had come to the decision to be foster parents. I didn’t agree with everything she said, but I appreciated where she was coming from. I respected her.

    But things went downhill when they got the movie out. Oh-woman-of-nine-children was totally thrilled to be showing us the movie. She kept saying that she couldn’t believe that no one had ever taught her this stuff—she had seen the movie for the first time just a couple months before. “We need to be teaching this to our daughters!” she trilled. So all the kitchen staff daughters joined us for the movie and the ensuing conversation.

    I can not imagine, ever, showing that movie to my daughters.

    I don’t remember what the video was called, but it was from the camp of Women Against Feminism and it consisted of two young women, beautiful and stunningly intelligent sisters in their early twenties, speaking at a father-daughter conference about why feminism was wrong and the importance of the father-daughter relationship. I agreed with a part of what they said, I disagreed with another part, and I was sickened by yet another part. I don’t want to go into all the gory details, yet (I feel a Part Three coming on), so this is what I will give you.

    They believe that:
    1. Females are to be under the covering of a man at all times—first their father’s, and then once they get married, their husband’s.
    2. Everything women do is to glorify their fathers/husbands. They are to carry out the vision that the men have. The women may do many different jobs/occupations, but whatever they do needs to further their father’s/husband’s mission.
    3. Women are to be selfless in all ways, gentle, listening, humble, intelligent, courteous, etc. They are also to take good care of their appearance so they are pleasing to look upon and bring honor to their husbands and fathers.
    4. They are to fully support their husbands and fathers, never questioning and challenging, but always helping them obediently.
    5. And so on.

    A discussion time followed the movie. One military wife shared about how in six years of military service she had acquired more medals than her husband had in twelve. She realized this (her success) was hurting him and so she left the military and thus saved her marriage. The ex-military woman said that her mother was a feminist who criticized her husband in front of the ex-military woman. This made Ex-Military Woman sad and upset and she vowed to not talk negatively about her husband in the presence of her children.

    (It is never right to disrespect another person. I did not realize that “feminism” equaled “disrespect for men”. In fact, according to my dictionary [and maybe my dictionary is outdated?] feminism means that men and women are equal. And the word “feminism” also refers to the organized activity surrounding the interests of females.

    So then, by that definition, those young women in the movie were feminists. They said, at one point in their lecture, that their mother was not superior to, but also not inferior to, their father. In other words, equal. [They just had different roles, no?] And they were speaking on behalf of an organization that focuses on the interests of females in a way that they believe makes women more fulfilled and whole.

    “Feminism” has taken on so many connotations that it may be hard to get to the root of the word, but from what I gathered, the speakers were equating “feminism” with the women’s liberation movement, and from what I’ve heard, some of those women in that movement were downright hateful and disrespectful to men. And like I said, it is never okay to be disrespectful and hateful to another human being. Ever.

    Maybe it would be more accurate for the women in the video to refer to their activity and organization as “Feminists Who Love Men”?)

    Another woman said that when she and her husband were first married and both working, she had been bringing home more money than he had. She felt bad about this and apologized to him. He laughed, “Honey, it don’t bother me none. Keep it comin’!” She told us, “Now, eighteen years later, we are no long in the same place as we were then, praise the Lord. It has taken some adjusting for us to get to this place, but now my husband agrees it is for the best.”

    (Wait a minute. But who led you to make that change? Your husband liked it the way things were, so did you force him to change? Were you, a mere woman, in charge of that decision?)

    The same woman later said that when she “comes before her husband—”

    (Eek! Does her living room sport a throne? The only throne in my house is the white enamel kind.)

    —with a question, she words it very carefully because she doesn’t want to sway her husband either way since it is very important for him to make is own decisions.

    (First of all, if I want to talk to my hubby I’m more likely to squawk, “Ho-o-o-ney, get your tight little hiney in here! I gots something I wants to say to you!”

    And second, are men such weak and fragile little creatures that we must tiptoe around them? That they can’t handle a different perspective? That they must be pandered to and babied like a six month old? No-no-no. I respect men way too much for that. Yes, they need to be built up and encouraged and loved and respected. We all do. But I respect men too much to tiptoe around them—they are real, solid, strong people who are big enough to handle differing ideas and opinions without wilting. At least I thought they were.)

    I badly wanted to join the conversation to state my observation that it seemed they were painting men as weak creatures, in dire need of our female protection; that the way they were talking it seemed like they thought women were more powerful than men; that I thought men were much stronger than they were making them out to be.

    But I didn’t say anything. These women were sincere, good women. We had just had wonderful pre-devotional conversation, and as a result I respected them and cared enough about them that I didn’t want to say anything to upset them. This was a time for them to be recharged and encouraged, and it wasn’t my place, nor would it have been appropriate, to antagonize them. So I kept my words to myself.

    Until the next morning when I lectured Mr. Handsome for over an hour about the kind of wife that he was supposed to have.

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  • Fighting The Cold

    November 23, 2008

    I’ve been so cold lately; I can’t warm up. My feet feel like rocks—hard, heavy, and rough.

    We have an open-air house; there are lots of open spaces where the air can get in. And the air doesn’t just quietly sneak in; it blasts in. The other day Sweetsie told me that it was snowing in the house. I said, “It is not,” and went about my business, but she kept saying the snow was coming in the house, so I finally went over to the closed kitchen door where she was standing and sure enough, the snow was blowing in through the crack in the door. (When Mr. Handsome got home, he pointed out that you have to close the door all the way if you don’t want the snow to blow in. Duh, honey. I thought it was shut.)

    We also have holes in our floors. These holes are big enough for us to have “lost” numerous toothbrushes (the monsters in our basement have plaque-free fangs). We also have big cracks in between the floor boards and under the front door. Furthermore, the kids have a bad habit of opening the windows (they like to climb in and out—more fun than the door, I guess) and then neglecting to shut them. To make matters worse, we live on the side of a valley (not to be confused with living on the side of a mountain) and we get tremendous winds that pound the house, rattling the tin roof (sounds like an earthquake—I was in a small one in Guatemala and it scared me senseless), and knocking the porch rockers over backwards.

    All this means that even though we try to keep the main part of the house at 70 degrees, the floors remain icy cold and my feet get chilled despite my lusciously L.L. Bean slippered feet, and everyone knows you can’t really warm up if you have cold feet.

    As a result of all this coldness, all I want to do, all day long, is sit around by the fire. (I’m in front of the fire right now. I fell asleep by the fire last night. I did my SSR by the fire this morning. The fire is a good place to be.)

    And it means that a bowl of hot soup holds great charm.


    I made a good soup the other night. Actually, it wasn’t that great the first time around because I was off on my calculations, but the next day I corrected them and then the soup was fine. It’s a classic recipe, so you’ve probably already heard of it: Julia Child’s Potato-Leek Soup.

    I first heard of it when I read Julie and Julia a couple years ago. The author of the book (hear, hear, Oh Blogger Brethren—her book started as a lowly blog!) talked about this soup, imparting only the sparsest of directions, so I made it and it was simple and every bit as good as she promised it would be.

    I don’t normally buy leeks, but now, with this dearth of potatoes cluttering up my basement, I decided to make the soup again. It certainly couldn’t be any more simple to make: potatoes and leeks simmered in water, roughly mashed, and seasoned with salt, black pepper, butter, and cream.


    A pleasant bonus: the kids liked it. The Baby Nickel scoured his bowl with his tongue.

    Potato-Leek Soup
    Adapted from Julie and Julia, by Julie Powell

    These amounts are only guesstimates. You are aiming for a semi-thick creamy soup of pure coziness.

    If you include the green part of the leeks, the soup will take on a greenish tint, but if you use just the white part of the leeks, the soup will have a cleaner potato-look It’s up to you; I put in the greens.

    Of course you can garnish the soup with chives or parsley or rosemary or cheese or bacon or boiled eggs, etc, but this bare-bones soup needs not a single enhancement. It does not, in any way, disappoint.

    6 cups potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped
    4 cups leeks, well-rinsed and roughly chopped
    salt and pepper to taste
    2-4 tablespoons butter
    ½-1 cup cream

    Put the potatoes and leeks in a soup pot and add just enough water to cover. Simmer till the veggies are tender. Roughly puree the soup with an immersion blender, or with a hand-held potato masher. I like it to be just slightly chunky. Add salt and pepper, the cream and butter, and heat through (do not boil). Eat.

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