October blends natural textures, colors, tastes, and smells into a tapestry of sensory delight. This past week we've spent with our kids, Geoff and Carrie. Usually they visit for Thanksgiving, but we all know what a rat-race the whole travel-during-the-holidays can become, so they made a conscious effort to switch gears and come during my week off at Columbus Day (don't know why CSC offers a week off, but hurray). During the week we picked apples, plucked pumpkins, munched maple products, and walked the mountain golf course -- all in view of the glorious golden leaves in the Vermont fall foliage.
Carrie wanted Thanksgiving Dinner. So, before they arrived, I gathered all the ingredients. Surprisingly, turkey was not available in my usual market, but I found a nice 14 pounder at the "other" market in town. I roamed the aisles, scouting the rest of the traditional eats: stuffing and gravy makings, fresh cranberries, and pie basics. Armed with everything, we proceeded to start the fun visit.
The first day, we picked a bushel of apples. Believe me when I tell you that we'll be eating apples, drying apples, and pressure cooking applesauce until Christmas. Anyway... Carrie made a GREAT apple pie with the crumbly topping!! I think it was her first pie. Pictures below.
We psyched ourselves and laughed into calling our festivities "Thanksgiving" -- even to the point of making sure we ate on Thursday, treating the day exactly as we would if it was "the real" Thanksgiving. Lots of jokes about football and parades being cancelled due to the flu, and shoppers ready to invade the stores on Friday. Yeah, we were silly. But it sort of worked. We began to feel like it was Thanksgiving. Carrie even started to consider Christmas carols on her iPod. By Friday we were surprised, on a trip to Burlington, that more shoppers weren't in the stores, however, the restaurants were doing a brisk business. Nice to know somebody's recovering during this economical downturn, recession, whatever. Stimulus, ahoy!
Early this morning we drove to Dartmouth Hospital for our flu shots (a huge line where usually we had none). This was Carrie's first flu shot. We celebrated with hot soup after standing in the cold for that half hour. Brr... it was 30 degrees. Later we will drive to the Albany, NY airport, as Carrie and Geoff return to California. Boo hoo. We had such a marvelous time and we'll miss them with all our hearts. But we'll figure a way to see them soon.
Now I'm wondering what we'll do for the next Thanksgiving. You know... the one coming up in November.
Site seeing, apple picking, turkey and pie:
