Bowling

Have you ever gone bowling?  I don't know if bowling is something that has gone completely out of style these days or not.

My dad was a good bowler and for most of his adult life, he regularly bowled on a league, sometimes two leagues, if I remember correctly.

As a teenager, my brother set pins in a bowling alley a couple of blocks from our home.  This was, of course, before automatic pin setters were installed in all alleys.  Prior to that, the teenage boys who took on that job had to be quick and pay attention at all times.

When I was in college, there was a small bowling alley in the town and I frequently double dated with a good girlfriend, the guy she was going with and . . . now this is weird but I can't for the life of me remember who was my date.  (Oh, my brain cells must be elsewhere tonight or else that info is buried so deeply that I can't bring it forth at the present moment.  What do you want to bet I'll wake up in the middle of the night tonight trying to remember who that guy was.)  Anyway, the four of us all liked to go bowling and did so quite a few times.

One New Year's Eve, many (many!) years ago, I had a date with an old friend from high school.  (I do remember who he was.)  The company he was then working for had a huge holiday gala on that night which we attended.  The party was okay, but the company was a large one and since he was a fairly new employee, he didn't know a lot of the people.  I knew no one except my date.  We left before midnight.

As he was driving me home, he suddenly asked, "You wanna go bowling?"  

Why not?  To a bowling alley we went.  Upon arrival, there were only a couple of other alleys occupied.  Evidently, bowling wasn't an activity most people chose to do on New Year's Eve. 

I can still remember the dress I had on.  A sleeveless, emerald green brocade with matching long-sleeved jacket that ended at the waist.  Very classy!  Lucky for me, the dress wasn't a long one, but ended just above the knee.  I'm sure the rented bowling shoes added some real style to my whole look.

What fun the two of us had that night.  We bowled three games and I beat him at every one scoring just over 200 in the last game.

So, have any of you ever gone bowling?  What memories does thinking about your bowling experiences bring to mind.  Did this silly post jog a memory of a personal bowling experience?  Do tell!

Making My Own "Punky Pie" Filling

When I was growing up, I don't remember ever having pumpkin pie, which my mom always referred to as "punky pie," except at Thanksgiving and no Thanksgiving dinner was complete without it as the dessert.  As our daughter grew up, she put pumpkin pie at the top of her list of favorites, and I made it several times throughout the year.

These days, since Papa Pea and I both enjoy it, we still don't need a special occasion for it to turn up on our table.

A place to grow pie pumpkins always appears in my garden, even this year when I had to grow them in a 4 x 8' raised bed.

A good friend in New York state generously sent me seeds for her favorite pie variety, Winter Luxury.  Even in their small area, they produced prolifically for me.  I had more lovely, round, medium-sized pumpkins than I needed.

Here's how I prepare mine for the freezer.

The rind is tough so I needed a hammer and my longest chef's knife to cut them open.

The easiest way for me to clean out the innards is with a melon baller.

Although I have saved the seeds and made roasted pumpkin seeds in years passed, this year all the cleanings went to the chickens.

I tell them it's their Halloween candy . . . and they do gobble it up.

All set for the cookie sheets.

I've found covering the cookie sheets with parchment paper makes for much easier clean-up.  I bake them at 350° for 55-65 minutes.  Test with a fork on the meaty side until they are sufficiently soft.  Then scoop the pulp out with a spoon and place in a bowl and mash with a potato masher or you can use an electric mixer if the pulp seems stringy to you.

After baking, I measure the pulp into two-cup amounts.

Then I put it into small freezer bags, flatten to get the air out, and freeze.

Here's our first pie of the season.  Was it good?

Oh my, yes!

More On Witches' Broom

Although this may be an appropriate post title for this time of year, it has nothing to do with Halloween.

Back in the spring of this year, I did a post on May 11th entitled "Big Trouble in the Blueberry Patch" about Witches' Broom which is a fungal disease, a growth, we've seen on our domestic blueberry bushes.

Over the summer months, more of this dad-blasted, blankety-blank growth has appeared so yesterday I took my pruners out into the blueberry patch to cut off all of the new growth.

Some bushes had only a small amount on them.

 (The dark growth is the Witches' Broom.)

Others were almost totally covered with it.

Last spring, per the information I had gathered, I dug out three of our twenty-one bushes because of the growth coming out of the crown of the plant at ground level.

Yesterday I decided to cut that type of growth as close to the ground as I could leaving the bush in the ground.

Unfortunately, the outlook for our bushes is not good as supposedly the fungal growth will limit the amount of berries a bush produces and eventually kill the bush.

Seems there's not much we can do to prevent or halt the problem (as indicated in my previous post in May) as it's spread by spores on the balsam trees being carried to the bushes by the wind.  We live and garden in the middle of a heavily forested area and removing all balsam trees within a 1,200 foot radius of the bushes (as suggested by articles I've read) is not possible.

So what's the solution if we want to continue producing a crop of blueberries?  I still don't know.  I do know we had a heavier crop of berries this past summer than we've had in a few years.  Go figure.

Cranberries for Breakfast

This is a mama deer with her yearling offspring breakfasting this morning on our high bush cranberries.

Because of our heavy deer population, any garden produce we're serious about growing and harvesting for ourselves needs to be enclosed within our 7' high deer fencing.  These high bush cranberry plantings are not.  No wonder we never get a good harvest from them.

Pictures taken through our (less than sparkling clean) back porch windows.

Apples and Coziness

Our fall color season is over and most of the tree leaves are now on the ground.  The scenery is starting to get that black and gray look that will last until the white of a snow cover is added to the mix.

The dear lady who writes wisps of words posted a lovely blog today which echoes my feelings about this time of year.  It's such a cozy time of warmth in the home, a pulling in and gathering in preparation for the winter season, oven meals and thick soups which seem so delectable now, and even a pan of Apple Slices that I couldn't keep myself from sampling earlier today.

As you can see, I wasn't the only one sampling.

Speaking of apples, even though we've had two frosts already, the forecast for this coming Tuesday night is for it to get really frigid.  So on the schedule for tomorrow afternoon is harvesting all our apples.

We've been sampling them for what seems like weeks now and saying they need "just a little more time."  Well, time has run out and we can't dawdle any longer.  It's time for all apples to be gathered.  Our small orchard of the dwarf trees has produced abundantly and a couple of our big trees have some apples, but not many.  Friends of our daughter's have offered us as many apples from their large, old tree as we want so we'll be in their yard tomorrow gathering some of that bounty.

What will we do with the apples?  Make a lot of applesauce as we've been plumb out for well over a month now.  Daughter wants to try making some juice/cider, we'll eat out-of-hand the best tasting ones, and of course there will be the occasional apple pie, apple crisp, pan of apple slices, etc. during the coming months.

What a glorious time of year.  Candles, quilts, nights before an open fire reading a good book while sipping a warm drink.  As words of wisps says, this is The Season of Quiet . . . and rest and enjoyment and visiting around the harvest table.

Addendum:  I've posted about my Apple Slices before here on my blog and if you're interested in seeing the original recipe (as some of you here in the comments have indicated), go way down on my right hand side bar to the Search box and type in "Apple Slices" and it should take you to posts wherein the Apple Slices have been mentioned.  Scroll down to the post dated October 12, 2010, titled "Only Because You Made Me Do It" and the recipe will be shown there.

A year or so ago, even though the crust in the original recipe was good, I finally gave up on it because it was so hard to work with and roll out.  I started using my regular pie crust recipe and feel it's just as good.

This time around I simply used my pie crust, about 10 apples (they weren't too large), added 2/3 cups sugar (apples were a tad under ripe), and a rounded teaspoon of cinnamon.  Much simpler and just as tasty. 

Thanks to you all for your interest.  

Did You Ever Have A "Pen Pal?"

Long before the computer age, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, people would communicate with each other by writing letters and sending them through the U.S. Mail.  Often a person you corresponded with on a regular basis was called a "pen pal."

When I was in third grade, my teacher was Miss Kuter.  (Yes, it was pronounced "cuter" but she was such a beloved teacher that I don't remember anyone ever making fun of her name.)

Miss Kuter, bless her heart, was my very first pen pal, the first person I ever corresponded with via posted mail.

She was a wonderful, dedicated, long-time teacher, warm and loving toward her students, and on the last day of third grade, I remember telling her I wished she could be my teacher "forever" and that I would miss her as summer vacation began.

Our family lived in a residential part of our town in Illinois and Miss Kuter lived with her parents in a farming community about seven miles outside of our town.  In that day and age, I suppose she could have been labeled a "spinster" or even "old maid" as she was well into her forties (or perhaps even fifties) and had never been married.

She told me that if I had time during the summer (what did I have but time?), I could write to her and tell her what I was doing.  She gave me her mailing address, we said good-bye and I went home wondering how long I should wait to send her a letter. 

I don't remember specifically how long I did wait to write to her, but I can't imagine it was long or that my letter was full of stimulating information.  I'm sure my correspondence must have been fairly hum-drum and boring.

But write to her I did and almost immediately received a reply from her.  I was thrilled.  Her letters were full of things happening on her parents' farm and I remember folded inside her first return letter was a small sample of the wallpaper she was putting up in her bedroom.

I eagerly looked forward to her letters which always were so interesting (to me) and usually contained some little trinket that made me think her life was extremely interesting.  Once I even received a black and white glossy print of a picture of her father's herd of milk cows grazing in a pasture.

We wrote letters back and forth all that summer.  What a considerate, sweet person she was to take the time to correspond with a nine-year old girl.

Near the end of that summer, I was looking forward to seeing her in person when school started up again.

Then one evening as my mother was reading the local paper, she commented that there was a marriage announcement for Miss Kuter!

Unfortunately for me, this turned out to mean she didn't return to my elementary school as a teacher that fall, and I never saw her again.  It was also the end of our correspondence.

But I still will never forget how kind she was to take the time to be my "pen pal" for that summer of 1952.  I do believe that started me on the track of becoming a frequent letter writer, and probably prompted me to eventually become a blogger when the age of computers came on the scene. 

So thanks, Miss Kuter, for introducing me to the art of writing letters and being my pen pal.