Category Archives: Miscellany

Holiday Rituals; Life Rituals

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pie2015

This year’s Thanksgiving pies: pecan, pumpkin, and peach-blueberry. Facebook just offered me my 2013 Thanksgiving pie photo as a memory, and it shows the same three pie flavors–in the exact same photographic arrangement. See what I mean about ritual?

Holidays bring out the ritual in me, and I don’t think I’m alone in this. Who doesn’t have some sort of ritual associated with major holidays?

For me, it starts with the food:

  • Thanksgiving = Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and lots of pie – always including pumpkin pie
  • Christmas = Swedish meatballs and potato sausage, baked beans, Swedish mazarin torte, and mostly the same kinds of cookies year after year after year
  • New Year’s Day = Lentil soup
  • All holidays = Sour cream macaroni & cheese for my vegetarian son

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Feeling Thankful

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Fall color, Illinois

Just a couple of days before our whopping November snowstorm, this is how it looked.

It’s that time of year, of course, when we’re inundated on social media by “be thankful” memes. You know the ones: “Join me in a month of thankfulness.” I don’t begrudge my friends their participation in these observances, and I actually enjoy reading them sometimes. But I have to say they usually make me feel just a teensy bit guilty for not joining in.

So I have been thinking a bit about gratitude lately, and trying to pay attention to things for which I am grateful, even while not actually sharing them publicly. It’s not that I’m making any sort of statement by not sharing–more that I know if I promise to share daily, I will inevitably falter. So I am not setting myself up for failure or a broken promise.

That said, there are a few reasons why I truly am feeling grateful.

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I love my public library, and I’m not alone

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I grew up going to the library every week. My mom would load my sister and me into the car, drive us into town, and we would read and search there to our delight. I’ve no memory of what my mother did while we were there – whether she came in with us and went off hunting for her own selection of borrowed treasure, or (probably more likely) took the opportunity of an hour or so without any kids to do shopping or other errands that would be easier without the pair of us than with us.

cardcatalog1But for me, there was an hour or so of exploration and quiet discovery, and I’d leave with a stack of books, and then I’d be back again for more the next week. Continue reading →

Pecan pie – and a lesson in making pie crust

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pecan-pieThis post is for my friend Al, who asked me months ago for my pecan pie recipe and has waited ever so patiently even though it’s now less than a week before Thanksgiving. Not only have you earned the pie recipe; you’ve also earned the pie crust recipe and secret. In the spirit of the upcoming holiday, this also is for all my friends who think pie crust is hard to make and are amazed that I make mine from scratch.

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Surprised by Fall color: What makes me thankful

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treeslandscape

I traveled to Cleveland from my home near Chicago this weekend and had my eyes opened and my spirit lifted. Cleveland is a city that I like a lot, and my trip was planned around a reunion that was guaranteed to make me happy. But somehow – perhaps because I was so looking forward to the reunion – it didn’t occur to me in advance that we might be traveling at the peak of the Fall color season. Continue reading →