First missed Harvest Dinner

Tonight is the annual Harvest Dinner at Epworth. I'm not there. I guess this is perhaps the first big fall/winter event that I'm missing. My Oct-Dec in MN, like most people's I suppose, is usually choc full of events. Birthdays, church events, holidays. It's a really busy time of year. By the time the first week of January rolls around I'm usually fairly exhausted. It's kind of like when a planet has one of those orbits that is elliptical and the gravitational pull of the larger celestial body kind sling-shots the planet around the short side of the orbit. That's how I feel about the end of the year. The rest of the year moves by at a consistent rate of speed, but as I enter the gravitational pull of Oct-Dec I feel like time accelerates and I am hurdled through the 90 days.

My mom makes peanut brittle for the Mini Boutique that accompanies the Harvest Dinner, as I've covered before. This year I wasn't there to help. Also, mom was working on a class action lawsuit at work which had a deadline of Oct 1. This made her almost too busy to make any peanut brittle at all. I think that might have caused a riot at church. As it is, she wasn't able to make any fruitcakes, another of her major contributions to the Mini Boutique. I think she did get some pumpkin bread and banana breads made. Then she usually makes soup mix too. Seriously, my mom supplies about a fourth or a fifth of the food product on sale there all by herself.

I'm going to take a stab at making peanut brittle here in Hawaii, though I'm not sure how it will turn out. Warm and muggy don't make for good candy-making. Even in MN, if Mom is trying to make it on a 65 degree rainy day it doesn't always turn out well. I might have to crank up the a/c to get it cold enough in here to make it. I'm also a little concerned that the counter tops might not be tough enough to handle the hot liquid peanut brittle when I pour it out.

I do miss not being there with Mom. We had fun making peanut brittle. Part of the tradition is that she has to play Christmas music while we do it. So even though it is the beginning of October, we'll crank up the holiday tunes and bob along as we stir bubbling pots of melting sugar. We laugh a lot, talk a lot. Dad usually makes us lunch. By the end of the day we're sticky and buttery at the same time. Our feet hurt, our backs hurt. We will probably have a few minor burns on our hands or arms. But we'll be satisfied with our output and sleep soundly. And that's just the first installment, for the Mini Boutique. A few weeks later we'd be right back at it for a couple days to satisfy the needs of November and December.

Maybe next fall I can take a vacation home during the sling shot and get swept up in the business of the season again.