Fall Cookin’

Autumn brings new menus--no more BLT’s with tomatoes from the garden and no more veggies to pick for lunch.

I’ve bought several bags of local apples. The huge sweet potatoes at Small’s Grocery were so attractive that I couldn’t resist one that I baked in the microwave. Gerald and I ate on that one monster potato for two meals. I have made my first big pot of beef-vegetable soup for the season and the first apple cake I have made in over a decade. The cake is so good, but neither Gerald nor I are supposed to be eating such sweets. I used to make these all fall but doubled this recipe to fill up a large pan twice as big as the 13 by 9 inch I used on Wednesday. Of course, in those days I had a houseful of young adults to feed.

In addition to feeding the two of us, I have been reading and, of course, doing some writing. And have had a good many check-ups and doctor appointments to take up time the last couple of months. I delight in days when I do not have to go anywhere and can stay home to enjoy myself. Yesterday on what would have been my mother’s 105th birthday had she lived, Gerald took me to schedule cataract surgery on December 6th.

When we returned home, with dilated eyes and the flare-up of arthritis that is making it painful for me to walk, I had a good excuse to start reading the first of two huge volumes of translations of Anna Gambold’s diaries from Springplace mission to the Indians in Georgia. The books were ordered months ago, but were delayed so they arrived Tuesday from Amazon, where they were cheaper than at the University of Nebraska Press.

Originally written in a tiny hand script of an ancient variation of German, the diaries are now available to the world in English thanks to the painstaking and remarkable work of Dr. Rowena McClinton, who teaches at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

I have only read McClinton’s introduction so far and have been amazed and enlightened about the Moravian mission movement as it developed in Europe. Since I have had no world history since grade school, all of her explanations were new to me and I was fascinated with the breadth of her knowledge while wishing for more on my part. In fact, I think I will quit this blog and go read more!