Passing Seasons

A late November morning at Green Lake

Rosy pink dawn at Green Lake

“Live each season as it passes.”
     — Henry David Thoreau

Another month has passed, and soon autumn will dissolve into winter. The days are so short.  Sometimes you have to get up early to experience the best light before the thick gray clouds take over the day.  This is late fall in Seattle.

 

Turkey Leftovers

Ingredients for Black Bean Soup with leftover turkey

Southwestern Turkey and Black Bean Soup

One of the best things about leftover turkey is the chance to make and enjoy Black Bean Soup.  I found my favorite Black Bean Soup recipe in the Eat, Drink and Be Chinaberry cookbook compiled by the Chinaberry Book Service in 1996, and I have been making this soup ever since.  (I love reading the book recommendations from Chinaberry.  Now that my daughter is grown, I no longer read the reviews of children’s books, but I still get good ideas from the “Good Reads for Adults.”  You can find them at http://chinaberry.com/.)

Southwestern Turkey and Black Bean Soup
(Original recipe submitted to Chinaberry by Barb DeWeerd, Wisconsin)

3 cans (15 oz) black beans
4 c chicken or turkey stock
1 T olive oil
2 medium onions, chopped
1 large red pepper, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
2 tsp cumin
1 can diced tomatoes, drained
2 c diced, cooked turkey
3 small jalapeno peppers, seeded and minced

Puree 1-1/2 cans black beans in food processor with one cup broth.  Set aside.

Heat oil in large pan.  Add onions and pepper.  Saute 10 minutes until tender.  Add garlic and cumin.  Stir one minute.  Add tomatoes, bean mixture and remaining whole beans.  Gradually add 2 cups stock and bring to a boil.  Simmer 20 minutes.

Add turkey, jalapeno and heat through.  Season with salt and pepper.

I serve the soup with corn bread or tortilla chips.  I usually top my soup with a spoonful of sour cream, grated cheese and diced avocado.

 

Thrify Mittens

Wool mittens from shrunken sweater

My new-to-me mittens from a recycled sweater

Warm woolen mittens

I love the thriftiness of my latest project — sewing mittens from old cast-off sweaters.  I found a blue woolen sweater in a box of free stuff on the curb in my neighborhood.  The owner was probably giving it away because it had shrunk.  But the felted wool was perfect for making mittens.  My oldest sister mailed the pattern to me.  I like the mittens so much, that I made a few more pairs from some leftover fleece that I had in my scrap bag.

3-piece mitten pattern

Mittens from leftover polar fleece

Speaking Bliss

Fluttering leaves

Red maple leaves

“Every leaf speaks bliss to me,
Fluttering from the autumn tree.”
     — Emily Bronte

Yellow maple leaf

“Nothing gold can stay.”
     — Robert Frost

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

 

Here is Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation from October 3rd, 1863, establishing Thanksgiving Day:

“The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the everwatchful providence of almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things.  They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people.  I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.   And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

A. Lincoln”

Lessons in Gratitude 8

Our Thanksgiving table

“. . . a thankful heart hath a continual feast.”
     — W. J. Cameron

“Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.”
     — William Shakespeare

Our Thanksgiving Menu

Turkey roasted in convection oven
with Giblet Dressing

Garlic Mashed Potatoes
with Pan Turkey Gravy

Oven-roasted Yams and Sweet Onions
with thyme seasoning

Sautéed Brussels Sprouts

Green Bean Casserole

Cranberry Sauce

Sweet Potato Pie
with French Vanilla Ice Cream

 

 

Thanksgiving Guests

Framed embroidery -- Thanksgiving Day poem

Wishing you a safe journey if you are traveling on this Thanksgiving Day holiday!

Over the River
by Lydia Marie Child, 1844

Over the river, and through the wood,
To Grandfather’s house we go;
The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh
through the white and drifted snow.

Over the river, and through the wood—
Oh, how the wind does blow!
It stings the toes and bites the nose
As over the ground we go.

Over the river, and through the wood,
To have a first-rate play.
Hear the bells ring, “Ting-a-ling-ding”,
Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day!

Over the river, and through the wood
Trot fast, my dapple-gray!
Spring over the ground like a hunting-hound,
For this is Thanksgiving Day.

Over the river, and through the wood—
And straight through the barnyard gate,
We seem to go extremely slow,
It is so hard to wait!

Over the river, and through the wood—
Now Grandmother’s cap I spy!
Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done?
Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!

 

 

Lessons in Gratitude 7

November embroidery -- Give Thanks

“We give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.”
     — Author Unknown

Lessons in Gratitude 6

Prayerful thanks

A Thanksgiving message by my kitchen window

“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.”
     — Meister Eckhart

 

Lessons in Gratitude 5

November mini-wall hanging

“In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.”
     — Author Unknown