Making Applesauce, Making Poems

I ended up doing a lot of cooking on Saturday, which was both restorative and necessary.  I needed to make bread for communion and to make applesauce to use up the apples that were past their prime.  I also made a wonderful seafood-fennel soup, which requires lots of chopping (the recipe is in this blog post, if you scroll down; I usually make it with canned clams, frozen shrimp, and frozen white fish of some bland variety).

I had forgotten how much effort it is to make applesauce, but it was worth the effort.  I left it lumpy, because some of the apples just refused to cook down.  A little texture is fine, right?

I had a bit of the applesauce in my oatmeal this morning--the most superb way to have apples in oatmeal!

I also returned to the beginning of a poem that I started on Saturday.  I had a first line:  At the end of the season, we make applesauce.  I made a poem out of all the apple-related cooking we thought we would do.  On Saturday, I thought it was rather blah, not saying anything of any importance at all.  This morning, I thought it was a great way of talking about all the plans that we have that collapse for any number of reasons.

I'm still working on it.  I'm in that phase where I wonder if it needs more, but I want to be careful, because I know that I tend to write poems that explain too much.

This week is my last week of going to campus every week day for this semester.  Next week, we have two class days, and then we're off for Thanksgiving.  After that, students have final exams, and we're allowed to work remotely.  I am ready for a schedule that involves a bit less driving.