Because tomorrow is a holiday, I worked on my sermon today. It did not go well. The sermon remains unfinished. It was a gray, gloomy day, with spatters of rain now and then, and by the time the sun went down I was feeling pretty gray and gloomy myself. Carol got home at a quarter to seven, bringing groceries. I gave up on the sermon for today, and we began cooking for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.

We had been assigned to cook squash, turnips, and pumpkin pie. I cut three butternut squash in half, took out the seeds, and put them in the oven to bake for an hour and a quarter. Then I peeled some more squash for the pumpkin pie (if you don’t tell anybody about it, squash makes a better pumpkin pie than does pumpkin). Carol cut it up and steamed it. When it was soft, I ran it through the food mill and turned the resulting mush over to Carol, who did whatever magic she does to turn it into a pumpkin custard. While she was doing that, I peeled and chopped up two huge Westport turnips, the really mild variety of turnip that’s grown around here, boiled them, and put them through the food mill. By then it was time for the squash in the oven to come out and get run through the food mill, and the pumpkin pies went into the oven. While the pumpkin pies were cooking, I cleaned up the kitchen while Carol finished writing the article that’s due in a couple of days.

We both work more than full time, so usually we cook on the run, making a quick stir fry or some pasta. It’s easy to forget how satisfying it can be to cook “slow food,” something that takes longer than fifteen minutes from preparing it to eating it. I’m not feeling at all gloomy any more. Yet by the time Friday evening comes around, after I have spent the day finishing that sermon, dinner will be another quick stir fry with some buckwheat noodles. Even though some slow food would probably help restore my soul to balance.