My appetite has been completely squashed.

Yes. I’ve been reduced to punning. Punning is more fun than pureeing. In case you’ve ever wondered how much puree you can make from a five dollar farmer’s market gourd – a fairly pretty blue “sweet meat,” bought with an eye for its cuttable flatness more than for its shade. There was a simply exquisite slate blue, of a different variety, but it was dangerously egg shaped – the answer is over twelve cups. Ugh. Just the thought of orange makes my over-licked fingers cringe reflectively.*

On the bright side, the bright green side, I now have pumpkin-miso muffins, which I’m sure will taste great once I can face them again. And I have frozen pumpkin custard.

The heart plummets at the thought.

I have also done a more thorough job of cleaning the kitchen than any of my family could ever have expected*, and I have bathed for over an hour with Bram Stoker’s Dracula – which I am earnestly enjoying. Would it be too redundant to say I’m enjoying it with great delight? The prose is hilarious, the meals described do not involve squash, and though only twenty-some pages in, I have already been surprised quite a few times. It’s not at all what I was imagining, and it will be most difficult to pace myself and finish it near halloween.  Especially since I have another squash, already cut, on a plate in my fridge, waiting to be simmered.

___________________ Sock’s Off ____________________

* I’ve never claimed to be some paragon of cleanliness, but more than once today the idea of washing my hands again has nearly made me throw them up in the air in surrender. Hopefully the squash stains will come off the walls.

* As Stoker writes “Despair has its own calm.”