Food Mood

Google reminds me that today is the Fall Equinox (I know you do not have to capitalize "fall", but when you put with a higher-intellect word like "equinox" it looks ridiculous in lower case).  It is harder to wrap your mind around here in Arizona where the high will be either 99 or 101 depending on who you consult.  Still, it represents the turning of a corner in the year, and I will honor it.

My thoughts today are on food, in spite of or maybe because of a delicious breakfast I had this morning: 2 half-slices of thick-cut bacon, a sausage and cheese omelette, freshly baked biscuits, and two large tomato slices...good eatin'!  But fall is a time of kind of shifting gears food-wise...more soups, fewer salads; more fall spices like cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg. and (sorry, Jeanne) cloves; and one of my favorites, changing from the cold cereal rotation of rice chex-corn chex-wheat chex to the hot cereal rotation: oatmeal-cream of wheat-cracked wheat.  Sundays is always home-made granola no matter what season.

So this food daydream brings back memories of the foods I associate with fall as I was growing up.  We had chili, but it was not really home-made.  It was usually a large can of Dennison's Chili, mixed with a large can of pork and beans.  You may laugh, but I loved it!  We also had tamales on occasion, but if we did they came out of a can, and were wrapped in paper, not corn husks.  I think Ellis was the company that produced those, and again, I loved them dearly.  Nothin' better than an Ellis tamale smothered in Dennison's Chili, with a little ketchup on top!

My mother did make some amazing soups as well...her vegetable soup was an amazing thing...it was so good I usually had more than one bowl.  She also had a ham and bean soup that is not to be compared with lesser concoctions...and her beef and macaroni with tomatoes could never be called "mung".  Home-made beef stew with the leftovers of a recent pot-roast.  Any of these on a crisp fall Utah evening added a special luster to the season.

Another wonderful thing about fall food is that you can legitimately talk about pumpkin again.  Now I am not as much of a pumpkin nut as some...for example, I do not consider crossing chocolate with pumpkin as a legitimate amalgam, nor will I add pumpkin to my cocoa.  But pumpkin bread, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin bars with cream cheese icing, pumpkin cheese cake, and of course, pumpkin pie...bring 'em on and keep 'em comin'!

Growing up, I do not remember Mom doing much with pumpkin except making amazing pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving...and Dream Whip didn't even exist in those days.  She did, however, make some out-of-this world raisin-spice cookies and spice cakes with black walnuts that just sucked you into the kitchen while they were baking.  It was probably no more interesting to my little brain than watching paint dry, but my nose didn't care.

I guess those smells and flavors of autumns past, both ancient and modern, help make fall such a nostalgic time of year.  Well, I hear lunch calling! 

His Mercy Endureth Forever* 

I promise this will be the last on this theme...just closing the loop.

My sophomore year of high school I was so busy with football and marching band and trying to survive Mr. Berch's advanced algebra class that I don't remember much else...but junior year was another matter.

By that time I had decided I was not going to be a professional football player after all and that I better focus on academics.  That gave me more time for unrequited yearnings, and one came in the form of a young lady I sat by in history. It was a very dry class, and it gave me many opportunities to show off my wit by pretending I was various characters from U.S. History (the subject of the class)...  reincarnated (it isn't very hard...you should try it sometime). I felt like I got some traction, but I never got to the point I could pull the trigger, and ask her out on a date...(sigh).   

Junior year was also the year that I fell in with a group of students from my early morning seminary class, including my best friend,  Matt Chatterley, and three girls, Ruth Welsh, Dale Infanger, and Vickie Scholes (fun fact: Vickie was the sister in law to future BYU President and general authority.  seventy Merrill Bateman...and aunt of St. Louis Mission President Michael Bateman) That somewhat mollified my social needs for much of the rest of that year.

Unfortunately, during the summer between junior and senior years, Matt left with his family to go to Texas, and Dale with hers to Colombia, both of their fathers on sabbatical from BYU,  That sort of splintered our social group a little...Ruth and Vickie and I did a few things, but the dynamics were not the same...so I was free to dream again, and during my senior year there were several attractive subjects.  I learned how important dimples were to me via two of these, one of whom I served with  on the seminary council.  I also learned that difference in age was not all that important, as I admired two of our junior and one of our sophomore debaters.  This would be important later.

Still, I passed through my senior year having had a few more dates, but still mostly unrequited.  

The summer passed, and fall approached, and Matt came to live at my house as we both entered our first years at BYU.  My neighbor, Sister Linton, knew the director of the Stake Play that fall (Suddenly You're Older), and recruited us to try out.  We both got speaking and singing parts, and, another fun fact, I learned how to tie bow-ties (part of our costumes).  I was also cast opposite a raving beauty, long dark tresses, with whom I was in close proximity in each rehearsal for several weeks.  After the program, around the first of the year, I decided to ask her to go to a concert with me (John Denver).  I couldn't believe her lame excuse: she was having her tonsils out!  Well, that was that...if the subject of my affections didn't consider me more important than her tonsils, I saw no future in a relationship.

That was my last real yearning before my mission  and two years of celibacy.  When I returned I was

blessed to find a young lady that combined all the amazing qualities I had yearned for across the years in one lovely package.  And wonder of wonder...she liked me back.  All the past unfulfilled pinings and lame attempts were erased and forgiven.  My dreams became reality.

*1 Chr. 16:34