16 December 2025 Tuesday

Benji!! Why didn’t you write a witty and enlightening post about your Thanksgiving feast, absolutely none of you have asked me. As it turns out, I did write a very nice little post about my Thanksgiving adventures, some very nice prose, perhaps the best prose ever written, but it got lost somewhere, a plague that has been chasing me for several months. In fact, I’m sure you’ve noticed that I don’t post like I used to and a big part of that has to do with this platform. I have been having trouble saving and editing posts. I am in the midst of looking for some other way to write my little writings and not be so frustrated with disappearing paragraphs. Still, you would have loved it, my gentle and faithful, long suffering readers, you are the ones that ultimately take the hit.

Until I am able to take care of this issue, a couple of workarounds:1. I will type faster, and 2. write less. the posts will be shorter. So, what do I want to say? Yes, thanksgiving was wonderful, but last week, a revelation. I had not made a pumpkin pie at all this year, I mean just straight pumpkin pie, so I decided to make one last Friday for a little Christmas Tree shin-dig. I’d forgotten that one of our favorite shops in town, The Sword and Rose, was celebrating an anniversary and we went to pick up some things and celebrate. It’s a metaphysical shop, specializing in tarot cards and readings, house blended incense, candles, bath salts, you know that kinda thing. The point is, the pie hadn’t finished baking by the time we needed to get out there to the shop and meet friends.

Wait, I should back up a second, because it really was the recipe that was great too. and the most wonderful canned pumpkin. OK, quick recipe. One par-baked pie crust. one can pumpkin, one can evaporated milk, 3 eggs, 3/4 cup brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, nutmeg, clove, you figure out the proportions, that’s my secret. Bake at 450 (!!!) for ten minutes, than dial that baby down to 300 and bake for thirty minutes. After thirty minutes, open the oven door and make sure that the pie is far from finished and get a little worried. Turn off the oven, put on your coat, and go the nearest metaphysical shop and come back in two hours. When you return, you will likely have the best pumpkin pie you’ve ever had. It was so creamy and thick but not curdy.

Thar she blows, and she didn’t blow, she was grand. Anyway, yes. Onto the next thing- I might start thinking about Christmas soon, but whatever, maybe not. Maybe I’m in the mood for pizza this year. There is no reason to be roasting and cooking more meats and beasts and whatever when spaghetti or lasagna or something else a little more whatever, tomatoey, would be fun. I am also going to do a cookbook review for a book I found for free in one of those little wooden “take a book, leave a book” houses. Simca’s Cuisine by Simone Beck. This book is probably fifty years old, depending in part on when you are reading this. I am writing it in 2025, so if I’m correct about it being fifty years old, then you’ll need to add the difference of whatever year you are reading it and 2025 to understand the date of the book, you know, depending on when you are reading it. I wish there were a way to figure out when books were written!

Wait, I just looked in the front cover of the book and find that it was originally published in 1972. So if you take the year it is now, 2025 and subtract from it the year it was first published, 1972, you’ll come DOWN with the number 53. Which is the number of years ago that it was written. So, I was wrong. It is not 50 years old. It is 53 years old. Isn’t that fun that numbers can do that? Numbers is fun!

More to come, maybe