Pickles, Pies and Pumpkins

More Precious than Produce

From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newsletter (October 1985)

The homestretch is upon us. The season that draws us closer to the hearth and to each other has begun. Before the year finally crawls into its hollow log and pulls the covers over its ears, there will be the regulation turkeys, fruitcakes and merrymaking, as if to give the waning year something to dream about. But for now, we and the surrounding countryside are wide awake.

If all the world’s indeed a stage, then October in New England is the set designer. Every year when trees exchange their green for red, orange and yellow, and whole hillsides wave greetings in color so vibrant you can almost hear it, we are awestruck.

How can it be that something so predictable always seems like a first-time thing? We know exactly what to expect, and there is, to be sure, a sense of déjà vu when the color comes. But this is pure magic, and so far we have never been able to take it for granted.

Nor will we ever tire of the happifying sight of the piles of pumpkins, squash, apples and gourds that appear at country roadsides every autumn. Breathes there a person who can pass an orchard stand, forsaking the cup of cold cider that usually precedes the purchase of a jug of the sweet, murky pressing that tastes like the whole outdoors?

illustration by my mom, Karyl Bannister

Like squirrels, we have been gathering the harvest, which in our case includes driving up country a few miles for the fall stapes our garden was shy on, as well as gratefully receiving the surplus from our neighbors’ yields. All that remained for our own fall harvesting was a plenitude of tomatoes, which apparently were not on the shopping list of the local deer this year.

Neighbor Plummer from up the hill has kept us in beans and cucumbers all season, all unsolicited. His six-feet-high fence stymied the would-be woodland thieves, who didn’t need his produce anyway, with such an easy mark next door at our place. On the last weekend of September, as if he knew my first gallon of sour pickles was down to four lonely spears in a jar of brine still potent enough to cure another gallon, down he came with another sackful of cukes, which I promptly washed, quartered and packed in the mustardly solution. On October thirteenth, they will be full-fledged pickles unless they’re picked off before their time by the kitchen thieves.

Before this month of pickles, pies and pumpkins is over, cottage owners who have already returned to the city and suburbs to the south will come back one last time to close up for good, just before the summer water is turned off. The annual foliage festival will offer up its baked goods and preserves, homemade sweaters, dried herbs, chowder and cheddar cheese. Gus will close.

Neighbor Plummer will come down with an occasional squash, sit at the dining room table near the woodstove and tell stories of school days years ago on the island. On his way out, we will offer him a quart of frozen blueberries for the missus to fashion a pie from, and he will demur, reconsider, and reluctantly accept. We count his friendship among our blessings and his generosity is a thousand times more precious than his produce.

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CRANBERRY PUMPKIN CORNBREAD

• 1 ½ c. flour

• 1 ¼ c. cornmeal

• ½ c. sugar

• 3 t. baking powder

• 1 ½ t. salt

• 1 t. cinnamon

• ½ t. nutmeg

• ¼ c. melted butter

• 2 eggs

• ¾ c. canned pumpkin

• 2/3 c. milk

• 1 c. fresh cranberries

• ½ c. chopped walnuts

Mix together dry ingredients. In separate bowl, mix butter, eggs, pumpkin and milk well. Stir dry mixture into liquid until thoroughly combined. Fold in berries and nuts.

Spread in greased 8x8-inch pan. Bake 50-60 min at 325 or until toothpick comes out clean. Serve warm in squares. Good sliced and toasted, too.

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a page from Karyl’s sketchbook

Amie’s Endnotes

A few Saturdays back, I shared a batch of warm blueberry scones with my neighbor, Maureen, an original Cook & Tell subscriber. The scones were chewy and did not rise completely, but with a drizzle of lemon glaze they were passable. Fortified with mugs of rugged coffee, we headed out for a walk in the woods behind our houses where the Neighbor Plummer of this essay once lived.

Neighbor Plummer, his house and his garden are no longer around. Maureen purchased his land a while ago and now our properties bound one another. As we meandered through overgrown trails on a cool white October morning that felt more like November, I caught a glimpse of my eight-year-old self running down the banks of the brook, past the moss-covered stone walls built by the colonial settlers of hazy years gone by, toward the distant dream of a future she could not have possibly envisioned: the preservation of island legacies.

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🎃TRICK OR TREAT! 🎃

I’m on the hunt for Halloween recipes for Cook & Tell’s next issue. Reply or leave a comment below with your spooky favorites!

My treat for you: a microstory and recipe for mustard pickles.