Apart from getting to sea,
there is nothing quite like butternut squash for soothing
that feeling of November in the soul, or at least in the
body. Sweet, tender, and hearty ... mm, mmm, mmm. I made
a big pot of butternut squash and corn stew with tofu and
pine nuts yesterday afternoon with plenty left to savor
again tonight. Cozy.
I've composed and deleted a bunch
of entries on such subjects as the one year anniversary
of the Goodridge decision, the pottery sale at the Hermit
Potter's studio, Worcester in general, Franklin Pierce,
snow buntings, and the g*d of my understanding. The g*d
one was quite lengthy but not really well written. I've
been reading Thoreau's letters to HGO Blake, which deal
with spirituality not g*d per se, but gets me thinking
about the g*d-shaped hole that we humans try to fill with
all manner of things we shouldn't even go near let alone
turn our lives and our will over to.
Not that butternut squash is one of
those things. I could do worse than adopt butternut
squash as my higher power. Butternut squash stew is
definitely comfort food. (The recipe
is in Vegetarian Times by
the way, in case you're wondering.) I think next time
I'll make the stew with smoked tofu and maybe some mild
green chiles to give it a little southwest
flavor.
Interestingly, the noun squash is
not related to the verb to squash. The squash we eat
comes from a Massachusett word askoot-asquash,
which described any number of the local
vegetables. The "beat to a pulp" verb to squash comes
from Old French equasser, which means to shake or
shatter and is related to the verb quash, which is what
can happen to dissent when one party gets an overwhelming
mandate... or some thing like that. So if I decided to
make mashed butternut squash, I could squash the squash
and bask in the knowledge that that's not
redundant.
Meanwhile, I can't seem to avoid
Franklin Pierce. I can't say I'd given Franklin Pierce
much thought since the high school history unit on the
Kansas-Nebraska act until I read the chapter on him in
Julie's book (Andover Massachusetts: Historical
Selections from Four Centuries by Juliet Haines
Mofford) and saw
Tom portray him. Now it
seems like he's everywhere. I mean how often do you see
Franklin Pierce in
the news instead of in your
history books? With his 200th
birthday coming up, New
Hampshire is all agog. And then Thoreau mentions him in
one of his letters to HGO Blake, Letters to a
Spiritual Seeker, which I've been reading for a book
discussion with Tom and Ned tomorrow night in front of
Ned's fireplace, hopefully with vegetarian chili. And I
think I only imagined reading about Pierce in somebody or
other's blog ... nobody would blog about Franklin Pierce,
surely? And of course, our current president is related
to Pierce on his mother's side (I heard that on the TV
while having pizza at Minerva's one night). Hmm, I may
have to write a Franklin Pierce entry after all. Or did I
just write one?
