Resting, Restorative November and Revolving Doors

  

     November is a vastly changing month here in Virginia. It starts out on the mild side with colorful leaves still on the trees and green grass in the fields. Then it whisks up frosty mornings and wind that blows the trees bare and brings the smell of winter at its back. In between, it fluctuates between days that are bright and mild and others that are bleak and gray with cold rain that seeps into our bones.November prepares us for winter.
     Knowing that snowflakes may fly anytime now, I feel an urgency to prepare the yard for winter. I mowed the lawn for the final time last weekend and emptied the dead flowers from their pots. In unceremonious fashion, I ate the last holdover tomato from the garden. (The poor tomato didn't taste like summer as I expected it might. I think the cold weather shocked all the flavor out of it.) We try and hold onto fall as long as we can but, Steve has begun to feed the wood stove in the basement and we're talking about Christmas dinner menus.
     Our diet has changed to fall harvested foods with an occasional grilled hamburger as the weather allows. There are two recipes that I have particularly enjoyed this season. The first is a Butternut Squash Soup recipe that Chelsea made for us in New Hampshire. It comes out of a Martha Stewart Food magazine and it uses fresh butternut squash and fresh ginger. We topped it with roasted, spicy pumpkin seeds as the recipe recommends. It is outstanding (if you like butternut squash and ginger) and super healthy. I have used other recipes for butternut squash soup that call for apples and chicken stock. While those are equally as good, I love the ginger in this recipe. The second recipe is for Maple Dijon Cream Dressing . It is fabulous on salads of greens with apple slices, crumbled Camembert cheese and toasted walnuts. Click on the recipe names and it will take you to the website with the recipes. Enjoy!
     We enjoyed these Thanksgiving days of rest from the regular routine. Even though the long weekend was busy, busy, it still felt restorative by being off of the usual routine. We have big changes coming up for December and January. There will be a crowd here for Christmas, thus the push to finish the basement project, which I will post about separately. Tess will be moving out of state for college and I will have to end the denial phase in which I currently reside. With her move out, we may have three more bodies moving in, temporarily. Audrey and her little family are selling their home and plan to purchase land and build a new place for themselves. So, we offered them the newly emptying upstairs as a layover instead of them renting a place. It's a regular, revolving door around here. As long as bodies don't mind sleeping on the floor, we have no problem.