Tag Archives: Comfort food

Seasonal Trade-Off

Image by Tikovka1355 from Pixabay.

As a kid, did you ever trade your lunchbox Hostess cupcake for a classmate’s homemade cookies?

Then realized the chocolate chips were sneaky raisins. That your classmate’s mother considered sugar the devil’s invention.

Some of us seem destined for the short straw.

This month, though, we Hoosiers trade summer for autumn.

This flower child will miss petunias’ glorious, subtle fragrance. Hummingbirds and butterflies mooching off zinnias and cosmos. Hubby won’t miss mowing grass, but if the scent could be bottled, I’d buy 10.

If frost must clear out my flowers, fall’s show-off foliage more than makes up for the loss. Especially as I’ll be done with endless watering, weeding and feeding my gardens.

Instead, I’ll be raking, right? Seasonal trade-off.

And I gladly give up a hog farm’s stench on a 95-degree afternoon for fall’s clean crispness.

During summer, we don’t mess with coats or matching gloves. Also, we don’t lose them in three different places. During autumn, though, my old friend, last year’s parka, welcomes me warmly on chilly days.

Foodwise, I already miss sweet corn. I also miss potato salad, made with my mother’s recipe. She kept her signature dish in the same summer-only category as white shoes. I’ll probably do likewise.

During summer, I buy six kinds of fruit. To continue that during cold-weather months, however, requires a second mortgage. Weekly.

Still, who can reject fall’s trade-off? Apple crisp and caramel apples, or pumpkin pie and other yummy pumpkin spice foods? Plus, comfort food abounds.

Other seasonal trade-offs:

  • I’ll miss: nightly cicada concerts and fireflies’ light shows. Welcome: mosquitoes’ demise.
  • I’ll miss: sitting on restaurant patios. Welcome: sitting beside fireplaces.
  • I’ll miss: barbecue fragrances pervading my neighborhood. Welcome: woodsmoke that says, “I’m keeping someone warm.”
  • I’ll miss: our ceiling fan’s breezes at night. Welcome: quilts and flannel jammies.
  • I’ll miss: flip-flop freedom. Welcome: favorite boots.

I will happily exchange:

  • Flab-revealing tops for flannel shirts.
  • Fruit processing at 10:30 p.m. versus consuming it in a cobbler at 10:30 p.m.
  • Multiple daily baths to dispel sweat, bug spray and sunblock for single baths whose effects last more than an hour.

Unfortunately, we’ll trade air-conditioning costs for heating bills.

Still, doesn’t the seasonal trade-off seem fair?

Although good-for-us virtues, like those healthy cookies, lurk during both seasons, summer and fall taste good.

Image by Valentin from Pixabay.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What seasonal exchanges will you make?

Spring’s Mixed Signals

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay.
Image by Sergey Gricanov from Pixabay.

If you’re like me, you’re relishing signs of spring that crowd your senses like April customers at a Dairy Queen.

Signs like a dramatic improvement in Mr. Fahrenheit’s and Ms. Celsius’s attitudes. Like the births of tender, green leaves. Like bevies of daffodils flaunting finery like little girls on Easter morning.

We are in love with spring, the only season when even joggers smile.

So do flocks of cyclists and skateboarders. Intoxicated with warm weather, they forget that narrow-minded laws of physics don’t care if it’s spring. They still insist the riders cannot occupy the same space as a car.

However, though Midwestern weather is always iffy, scraping windshields and icy roads are perils of the wintry past, right?

Surprise! Road construction and road closing signs, like the season’s first weeds, have popped up along every highway.

Are we still in love with spring?

Image by 00luvicecream from Pixabay.
Image by julita from Pixabay.

Absolutely. Apple and lilac blossom fragrances mingle with those of lighter fluid, charcoal, and hamburgers, wafting throughout neighborhoods. We have surrendered to the mad urge to clean grills for the first time this season (and the last).

Even the first smell of sunblock, now required for outdoor forays, becomes a portent of warmer and better things.

Image by Markku Vuorenmaa from Pixabay.

Spending more time in the yard, though, awakens us to the realization that snow no longer covers fast-food cups, broken pencils and soaked letters from the IRS. That hundreds of small stones, shoveled with snow into the yard, might cause sulky lawnmowers — already reluctant to start — substantial grief.

Are we still in love with spring?

Absolutely, as Hubby and I know the perfect antidote for home improvement commercials: getting away from it all, aka, camping. When the first ray of springtime sun penetrates March gloom, he begins preparations for our escape. Researching new camping gadgets — er, equipment — represses melancholy anticipation of yard work, repairs and remodeling. New purchases bloom on our Visa like dandelions.

Sadly, though, we give up winter’s comfort food to consume odd meals from the ice-encrusted freezer — such as Squash and Smelt Tortellini Surprise — as I make room for summer garden vegetables that, as of now, are only imaginary.

Image by Henryk Niestrój from Pixabay.

The smelt tortellini casserole wasn’t so bad. It beat the rhubarb-succotash dish, covered with ancient turkey gravy.

But we are still in love with spring.

Right, dear?

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What are your favorite/least favorite signs of spring?

That Between-Holidays Feeling

The calendar gap spanning Halloween and Thanksgiving gives me that between-holidays feeling.

Image by Michael Shivili from Pixabay.

Many, craving Christmas, skip it.

Me? I want to slow down. With no more scary skulls, spider webs and zombies, why not continue the fun of pumpkins, cute scarecrows and gorgeous leaves?

Another cause for celebration: colder weather brings comfort food — though the official Comfort Food Day is December 5. Do holiday authorities really think I’ll wait that long for chicken and noodles?

Fortunately, this influx of calorie-rich food is accompanied by baggy sweaters, lifesavers until New Year’s resolutions ruin everything.

Not all between-holiday positives are unhealthy. Though the growing season is finished, carrots, still residing in our garden, will bless our table. Tomatoes and peppers rescued from frost glow in golden and red splendor before patio doors. Why my parents ripened garden produce on paper grocery sacks, I don’t know. But following suit recalls their love of autumn and determination not to let food go to waste.

Rescue efforts during this between season include the migration of shivering, potted plants from porches to places inside. For plant lovers like me — and my longsuffering husband — this can prove challenging:

Image by zbuhdalu from Pixabay.

Me: I can’t let this begonia freeze. It started blooming again. My zinnias. My herbs —

Husband: How many pots have you brought in?

Me: So far, only 37.

Hubby: Where will you put them? What will we do with them at Thanksgiving? You know Tate [our toddler grandson] loves plants.

Me: Let’s hide them in our room.

Hubby: (resignedly) Gives a whole new meaning to “flower bed,” right?

Sadly, this between season doesn’t preclude yardwork. Not only should I trim perennials and compost withered annuals, but thousands of leaves wait to pounce on us. No raking deadlines are etched in stone, but this must be accomplished by Thanksgiving, right?

As should major indoor cleaning. My chaotic office — drafted as a “spare bedroom” during the holidays — couldn’t provide overnight accommodations for a visiting chihuahua. Our neglected home dictates a major cleanup. However, we have six grandsons, ages 3 to 15. Given Thanksgiving and Christmas family gatherings, why would anyone possessing a brain cell perform such an exercise in futility?

Wait.

I, too, have shifted to pondering the holiday season. Thoughts of cooking, shopping and wrapping cram my mind like too many ornaments on a gaudy Christmas tree.

Friends who are aliens already have completed shopping and wrapping. They’ve designed and frozen perfect cookies for Santa — plus enough for the entire state of Indiana.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay.

But I still sip pumpkin spice lattes when I can find them. Savor that rare, soon-to-vanish feeling of having some money.

Let’s enjoy between-holidays feelings while we can.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Are you in a hurry for Christmas?