In this month’s blog:

Way More Than Our Senses Can Handle: So Much Beauty, So Many Extremes

Bounty from Our October Kitchen

More Exploration in Amish Country

Celebration of Dia de Los Muertos

The October 2024 Photo/Video Gallery: Fall Beauty Amid Deepening Drought

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A Month of Extremes: So Much Beauty, So Much Suffering

Chris:

I struggled to find a theme for this month’s blog entry, because so many conflicting emotions have been inspired this October. On the one hand, there is the astounding visual beauty of the fall colors–more intense than we’ve seen in years–and the astonishing surprise of seeing the Aurora borealis this far south; on the other, there is the utter devastation resulting from the unprecedented back-to-back hurricanes Helene and Milton, as well as the ongoing destruction taking place daily in Gaza, Lebanon, and Ukraine.

Bringing us daily joy is the love of our family members, our pride in their achievements, and our opportunities to make and enjoy good food and to make visits to new and familiar places. But tempering our joy is our anxiety over the upcoming elections, with so much at stake for our democracy. And even our pleasure in the fall colors is muted by seeing from day to day how intensifying drought across almost the entire U.S.  has hastened the loss of greenness, the stunting of crops, the dropping of the colorful leaves, and the early migration of local bird species. (Here in Northern Virginia it has not rained for more than month, a new record.)

So, as this entry proclaims in its photography and stories, we take immense pleasure in all the beauty we are so blessed to see, hear, taste, feel, and imagine. We want our entries to share some of that joy. But our joy is not unreflective. It is not a joy that ignores the suffering that goes on in the world, or that fails to ask how life can be made better for other humans and for all the species that are harmed by human actions. When we show photos and videos of the animals and plants where we live, that is  pure and beautiful joy, but it is beauty that we know is fragile, under threat, and so needing our attention and respect in order to keep it beautiful.

In particular, readers of this blog know that we call out the day-by-day degradation of our environment, as Mother Earth steadily heats up through the carbon pollution produced by the selfish greed of the fossil fuel cartels and of the politicians who promote them through their lies, crude insults, disinformation, and fear mongering. 

But we do not call out these harmful actions in order to rob people of joy. Indeed, one of the joys we try to express in these entries is that the fate of the Earth is not hopeless, but hopeful. Indeed, any person is capable of doing small things, day by day, to heal their own tiny bit of the environment. It is joyful to say that the degradation of the Earth is reversible, and so we celebrate acts and arts, large and small, through which people try to lead more nurturing lives and build a healthier future for our children and our fellow creatures. These small actions are beauty in themselves.

So this month’s entry relates three stories that show people trying to make life better in environmentally responsible ways: Jean’s description of her delicious pumpkin dessert, farmers in Pennsylvania living simply and producing nutritious foods of many kinds, and indigenous performers in Mexico creating art that honors the lives of their forebears who struggled against oppression.

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A Pumpkin Treat from Our October Kitchen

Jean:

It’s pumpkin time of year.  Time to get a big pumpkin for your porch and maybe carve it for Halloween.  Time for a pumpkin drink from your favorite coffee shop.  And time for pumpkin pie–my favorite dessert other than tiramisu.  I need to work on a way to combine those, but I can’t figure out what the mashup name for the dish should be.

Meanwhile, because I was not yet seeing pumpkin pie in my favorite grocery store(s), but I really wanted to eat one, I thought it would be a good time to try out some other variations on the traditional recipe.  For years I have made it from the recipe on the Libby’s pumpkin puree can, with a can of sweetened condensed milk and a homemade pie crust from a simple Crisco recipe.  I thought all that was perfect.

But this week I didn’t feel like making pie crust.  I have always disliked rolling it out.  I’m not strong enough, I guess.  It just wants to sit there in a cold clump, resisting my efforts to move it far enough in any direction to get it rolled out as thin as it should be.  The most successful technique I have come up with is to put the right amount of dough for one crust on a 10-inch plate and press down on it with a similar plate.  When the dough is room temperature, this works to give me a round of the right size, which I can then cover and chill until ready to invert it onto the pie pan, fill, and bake. But sometimes I don’t even feel like struggling with that.  Of course I could have bought a frozen, pre-shaped crust, but I find those break very easily while I am trying to get them into the pan.

So I looked for crustless pumpkin pie recipes, and sure enough, they exist.  You’re essentially making a pumpkin custard or mousse.  Easy enough.  Who needs pie crust unless you really want to be able to cut out picture perfect pieces that stand up properly?  I just want to scoop the filling into my mouth, with loads of whipped cream.

One other wrinkle.  I didn’t have a can of condensed milk and just wanted to get started on my pie in the morning because the baking, cooling, and chilling all take hours.  I didn’t want to go to the store for canned milk any more than for a frozen pie crust.  I wondered if I could make a pumpkin pie with either buttermilk or coconut milk, both of which I happened to have.  Take a look at these great examples I found:

https://www.southernliving.com/recipes/easy-pumpkin-pie

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/buttermilk-pumpkin-pie-3363760

https://www.dishbydish.net/crustless-pumpkin-pie-gluten-free-dairy-free/

The last recipe above touts the benefit of a dairy-free, gluten-free pumpkin pie!

I’m not going to tell you what to do.  This is the sort of thing I love; look over the recipes and decide on the combination you want to try.  You probably can’t go wrong.

One other point, though. In place of the contrasting texture provided by a pie crust, I decided to try this streusel topping from ZoeBakes, since I also happened to have pepitas and a little buckwheat flour:

https://zoebakes.com/2018/10/21/buttermilk-pumpkin-streusel-pie/

I like a more pronounced ginger flavor, so I also crumbled some Trader Joes’ Triple Ginger Cookie Thins on top.  I belatedly realized I could also have used these to make a cookie crumb crust underneath, easier than dealing with pie dough.  Maybe next time.

You could also make this taste something like a pecan pie by using chopped pecans instead of pumpkin seeds in the streusel.

I’m not into making caramel sauce as Zoe does here, but I’m sure it would be great, especially if you want more of the pecan pie taste.  All I needed to do after cooling the pie was whip up some heavy cream with sugar (or sugar substitute), a little bourbon and vanilla and then garnish with a nice pecan half.  Enjoy!  We certainly are.

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Our Latest Exploration in Amish Country

Chris:

Following our June visit to rural New York and Pennsylvania, as recorded in our June entry, we wanted to go back to Amish country in southeast Pennsylvania, because we enjoyed our two days there so much.  This time we visited the towns of Ronks, Lititz, and Ephrata and the city of Lancaster. Our 3 days total left us wanting still more.

One of our objectives was to actually ride in one of the horse-drawn buggies that move at leisurely pace along the highways and byways through Amish country; buggies and teams that brave the roar and fumes of the cars and monstrous trucks that sweep by just a few feet away.  This we did on our first afternoon, in Ronks, on a two-horse buggy driven by our patient guide, Henry, and accompanied by a young couple visiting the U.S. from Holland. We’d actually been hoping that our trip would only be on the quiet back-country roads, far from the traffic, but both getting to farm country and then getting back required us to be buffeted and shaken by the speeding vehicles.

It was as if we were in two worlds at once: Henry, our horses, and we visitors were clopping slowly in the 18th century, while the traffic just an arms-length to our left had their own 21st century gas-powered agendas. Clearly, Henry and the team were calmly at home in their world and we picked up their vibe.

Short video of the start of our horses-and-buggy ride on Rt. 340 in Ronks, PA, October 23 

Our destination on the buggy tour was the Organic Valley Dairy Farm owned by the Esh family. Here are a few pics and videos of our hour-long visit with the residents.

The huge Belgian horses who work on the farm eat their afternoon meal in the barn

The 7 of us clop down the road with the traffic back to our starting point in Ronks.

The Ephrata Cloister. A spur-of-the-moment destination for us was the historic Ephrata Cloister, founded in 1732 by Conrad Beissel, one of many religious fugitives from Europe who came, like the Amish, to the Pennsylvania colony because of its toleration of many religions. Very different from the Amish religion, Ephrata was a monastic community of men and women who practiced a celibate lifestyle, and who eagerly anticipated the second coming of Christ predicted in the Christian Bible. Though the last monastic resident died in 1813, the impressive and unique buildings remained and were restored beginning in the 1940s–a project that continues today.

Known for both the composition and performing of religious music, with over 1000 hymns, the Cloister men and women also became famous for their calligraphy and printing.

Lancaster’s Central Market, thriving today. Our final destination of the three days was the Central Market in Downtown Lancaster. Founded in 1730, the Market is the longest-running truly public market–not privately owned–in the U.S.  It’s 64 standholders come from throughout Lancaster County, and offer a wide variety of produce, dairy, meats and fish, ready-to-eat foods, baked goods, specialty food items, health and wellness products, and flowers.

Begun as just an open piece of ground in colonial Lancaster, the market’s growing number of vendors took more and more space on local streets as the Market’s fame spread. To house them, the beautiful building it now occupies was built in 1889. Open 3 days each week, it is truly a mecca for the region, and we gathered fresh produce and breads to carry home with us to Virginia, as well as the intention to visit again.

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Dia de Los Muertos at the NMAI, Washington, DC

We traveled to nearby Washington for the first of two days of celebration of the Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) at the Smithsonian Institution’s NMAI on Saturday, October 26, just after our return from Pennsylvania. The National Museum, both here in DC and in its branch in New York City, honors the indigenous cultures of the Americas with exhibits and performances throughout the year. The annual Dia exhibition is one of its largest.

Through dance, music, and visual arts, the performances show how, unlike our Halloween’s fixation on scaring people, particularly children, through terrifying costumes and stories, the Day of the Dead celebrates those who have gone before us and the community’s mutual bravery in facing mortality and the ongoing threats to the community’s existence.

The following video excerpts record the first performances of the day, as described on the program’s website:

“Dance Performances by Grupo los Tecuanes: The name of the Danza de los Tecuanes (Dance of the Jaguar) is rooted in the Mixtec understanding of the duality of life and death and the fight of good against evil. The Danza de los Viejitos (Dance of the Old Men) is a humorous dance featuring dancers colorfully dressed as old men.”

Part of the Dance of the Old Men (Danza de los Viejitos) performed by Grupo los Tecuanes at the NMAI Washington, October 26

Part of the Dance of the Jaguar (Tecuanes) at the NMAI, October 26

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The October Photo/Video Gallery: Missing the Music

As every month, the gallery features the residents and visitors to our small lake community in Northern Virginia, with perhaps a few pics and videos from other places. Overall, we are aware that the number of birds in the community this month is down significantly from one year ago, because of the drought. We miss the variety of waterfowl we had last year, and the sheer numbers of birds, who create a tuneful, harmonic chorus each day. We miss the music, and we hope the drought does not linger and that our residents return soon.

But still we have an amazing, colorful, creative, varied, enterprising community, well represented here in these photos and videos.

I stalk the Blue Heron, who is stalking along the west shore of the lake, October 28. Watch patiently

On a visit to nearby Lake Newport, we listen to Carolina Wren calling, October 19

Our last Monarch of the year feeds on Asters, accompanied by Bees, as a jet flies overhead, south shore, afternoon, October 4

On to November in joy and hope! Happy Halloween, Happy Dia de Los Muertos, and Happy Diwali!