Well into fall

I'm just trying to soak in all the fall I can while it lasts!

On Monday, I decided to try the new trails in Mueller Park. They are in a pay area, but I'm not sure if you have to pay to hike, or only if you use a pavilion. In any case, the gate is closed for the season, so you don't have to pay now anyway. There was one called Hornet and one called Maple Syrup. They were both relatively easy, so I'll have to go back sometime. But there were lots and lots of mountain bikers.

I have an app called Rockd that shows where you are on a geologic map. Part of this trail is in the Farmington Canyon Complex, which is from the Archean era, in the Precambrian. So it's around 2.5 billion years old. It's amazing to see something so old!

An Archean metamorphic rock

After I got home, I decided to cook colcannon, which is basically mashed potatoes with cabbage and onions. Earlier this year, during the St. Patrick's Day season, I made colcannon for the first time and fell in love with it. Apparently it's a traditional Halloween dish, so I decided to make it again, and I hoped purple cabbage would impart a spooky color. And it did. Unfortunately, I didn't know that purple cabbage is tougher and takes longer to cook, so the cabbage is seriously undercooked. The texture is not great. And the flavor just tastes like potatoes and cabbage instead of tasting like colcannon.

On Tuesday, I went on a short trail run after dark, using my headlamp, and I heard coyotes howling in the distance. So that was cool.

Since I work in scholarly publications, I get paid to attend academic conferences, and Thursday and Friday was the Church History Symposium, which was put on by BYU and the Church History Department. So it was an academic conference with a devotional bent. It was at BYU on Thursday and the Conference Center on Friday. On Thursday they had Emily Belle Freeman, the current Young Women general president, and on Friday they had four previous Young Women general presidents. During that Friday session, someone asked why the current Young Women theme mentions "Heavenly Parents" but the Young Men one doesn't. The former presidents said the asker would have to ask the Young Men presidencies. (I don't care that much about that, but I am annoyed that the Young Men theme talks about becoming a missionary, husband, and father. What message does that send to young men who don't do those things? I'm 1/3 for those things.) Some of the sessions were more devotional than others. In some of the less devotional ones, they talked about how Correlation in the 1970s kind of lessened women's autonomy. Two presenters talked about food, so I asked if they tried cooking the recipes they came across in old records. They said the recipes are vague, like a "good amount" of flour. I have found that myself in old records. It's hard to cook old recipes, because they were written in different ways, and they also used different ingredients. 

They had a display of different artifacts, and I was surprised to see some pig-themed artifacts from 1989. My mom had an old pin/button from the same period with a picture of her and her friends as Young Women leaders wearing pig snouts. But it was apparently unrelated to the pig artifacts I found. (My mom thinks she got rid of the pin; it is missing.) 

Most of the presentations were centered around Young Women, rather than Young Men, because the Church Historian's Press is publishing a history of Young Women this coming spring. I contributed to that book in a very small way. It's wild to me that I was still working for the Church History Department less than a year ago. I miss working there, but I'm also glad I don't work there anymore, and I'm also sad that I don't want to work there.

And I also keep beating myself up for my awkward social interactions at the symposium.

As fall proceeds along, I don't know how much longer I will have for trail season, and I knew I had to go on a long run on the Mueller Park/North Canyon loop. I haven't been able to do that this year, for a variety of reasons. But I am happy that I was able to do a successful fourteen-mile run! It was challenging, but I wasn't even completely exhausted at the end. I was surprised to see new construction of a few other trails. My knee and my stomach cooperated all fourteen miles. Unfortunately, since it was the early afternoon, the sunlight was less pretty than it is in the evening.

I still go on walks to pull up goathead plants, and this week I had two people tell me they have seen me, so they asked me what I'm doing. One said he's noticed fewer goatheads this year. So it's glad to know my efforts aren't entirely unrecognized.

Here are this week's dreams.

the maintenance team removes old drinking fountains from a building, even though they still work

Mark has an appointment with his insurance agent, but the receptionist thinks he's there to eat at the restaurant

Mark visits the visitor center at the North Canyon trailhead

the gift shop sells a toy organ that can scroll through different sheet music

Mark debates whether he wants to run up North Canyon while wearing jeans

Mark carries a lot of things while wearing a bathrobe

David gives Mark an old, blue dinosaur towel to dry off

Mark finds a lost pair of car keys, so he returns them to an old lady in a care facility who likes drinking sweet tea

Mark picks pomegranate arils and pomegranates from a tree in the sunroom

Mark admires his cousins' old penguin bedsheets

Mark goes to Spanky's restaurant, but they are too busy and understaffed to serve him, and yet he lingers in the store

***

Here's this week's pumpkinundation roundup!

I think I first had Caramel Apple Pops in 1997. They're better than a regular lollipop, but also lollipops aren't that interesting. I always worry I'm damaging my teeth when I eat them. 7/10.

I added too much water to Trader Joe's Pecan Pumpkin Instant Oatmeal. It's fine; I don't love oatmeal. 6/10.

Sweet Rolled Tacos is a fancy ice cream shop at the Gateway, and I was happy they had the Sweet Rolled Tacos Pumpkin Party, which is pumpkin ice cream covered in chocolate chips and chocolate sauce. I think the pumpkin flavor got washed out by the chocolate sauce. And I am very annoyed when dessert places put plastic on their food. It's so wasteful! At least this one was a ring I could wear, but then I could feel my finger falling asleep. 8/10. 

I don't even like gummi bears that much, but Apple Crisp Gummi Bears sounded so unusual I had to try them. (The bag was Red Button brand, but I don't think they actually made them.) They are an apple flavor with a cinnamon flavor. They're OK. 6/10.

The Caramel Apple Cinnamon Kind Thins have a noticeable apple flavor, like dried apples. I don't love the flavor of dried apples. These are fine. 6/10.

Brooker's Founding Flavors is a quirky ice cream shop in Utah County that is themed around the Founding Fathers, and the employees wear colonial garb. The Brooker's Founding Flavors Salem Witch's Candy Corn Brew doesn't taste like much, because candy corn doesn't taste like much. But I'm glad they did something creative besides pumpkin. (The other ice cream I tried is made with Halloween Oreos, which is beyond the scope of pumpkinundation roundup.) 6/10.

BYU has a store called Milk & Cookies, leaning into their reputation of chocolate milk. They were advertising Milk & Cookies Pumpkin Spice Milk. But I was disappointed it was just whole milk with Monin syrup. It wasn't even their own proprietary flavor. And the syrup wasn't really that great. 3/10.

I have reduced my consumption of Trader Joe's products, but I wanted to try Trader Joe's Pumpkin Blondie Brownies, because brownies and blondies are great! Unfortunately, these were more like pumpkin bread than blondies. They didn't have the chewy texture I hoped for. 6/10.

Chocolate Pumpkin Spice Kind Thins are made with pumpkin powder, but the spices are more prominent. And chocolate is always great. 7/10.

Fall-bulous

The fall is the most spectacular time of the year, and I feel like I have to savor every wonderful thing before it all goes away for the winter.

We have one sole pumpkin growing in our garden, and it is very slowly orange-ing. Will we make it into a jack-o'-lantern? Make it into a pie for Thanksgiving? I don't know. (Can I say that I don't like typing the word "jack-o'-lantern"? The hyphens and the apostrophe just make it a challenge.)

On Monday, I made apple cobbler from the apple tree that hangs into our yard and baked rice with our own tomatoes and mint leaves.

Since I've been so busy on weekends lately, it occurred to me that I would have to adjust my schedule to go up North Canyon on a weekday if I wanted to see it in its prime. Luckily, since I mostly work from home, I can do that. I went on evening North Canyon runs on Tuesday and Wednesday, and evening runs really are much more pleasant than the late morning/early afternoon runs I typically do there. I need to take all the pictures of October so that when it's February, I can remember that the world will be beautiful again.

One of the problems with all this trail running is that I have huge calf muscles, and my pant legs get stuck on them.

I bought my mom a raspberry bush for Mother's Day, and I was surprised to go out this week and see raspberries on it!

Before the cold weather came, I picked all the produce from my mom's garden. 

Who wore it better: This green tomato . . .

. . . or this ugly 1960s toy I found on the internet? (I just Googled "elephant with troll hair.")

(I think I'm hilarious, so I put it on Facebook too so no one would miss it.)

Yesterday I spent a few hours helping to make apple cider. The second counselor in my bishopric makes cider every year, and he invites people to bring their apples to help out. You cut up the apples, and then someone pushes them down a garbage disposal (used just for this purpose). The ground-up apples fall into a bucket that has a mesh bag.

Then he puts the bags into a press, and juice comes out. 

And the cider tastes amazing! I brought home two and a half gallons.

Those were the main highlights of the week. Here are this week's dreams.

Mark buys white Christmas lights to put outside, but there are already lights, so he puts them in his office instead

Nancy tosses globs of pumpkin spice frosting for Mark to eat

adults tell children they can eat pyrite (I love that it made up a story about it being "a magical golden rock that can grant wishes when eaten")

Mark leaves his bike attached to a fence while he goes on a long run

Rose Art makes special Halloween-themed crayons

Mark drives on a lawn because the road is narrow and curvy, and people have put decorative tombstones on the lawn

Linnea puts up Happy Birthday and heart lights in the LDS conference center

Mark sleeps in a bunk bed outside. There is a beautiful spiderweb next to the bed and frogs in the bed

Mark can't figure out the parking at Lagoon amusement park

Eighteen years later, Mark's family still owns his late grandparents' home

Russ talks about buying the DVD of "Over the Garden Wall"

there is too much liquid in the KitchenAid, so Mark drains some

Mark gives a cake to a bad guy, and it makes the bad guy unconscious (This one cracks me up. I love that it made an entire comic strip with nonsense words, but I can tell it's talking about "ethically ambiguous," and there's a random pumpkin emoji)

a small snake follows Mark into the house

Mark tells Harry that Taylor's tomatoes are red enough to go in the fridge, so Harry puts them in the cooler

LDS general conference has a host interviewing people live during the conference

Mark almost photobombs the gay pop singer's selfie

Sadie cuddles with Ya-ping in Mark's bedroom while Reggie the cat hides in the closet

***

And here's this week's pumpkinundation roundup!

First I'll tell you that I finally finished Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon by Cindy Ott. Since I mostly read academic history books, this book seems tailor made for me. Some of the analysis was a little far fetched for me. But it was so interesting to contemplate the history of this vegetable, and the author analyzes how weird it is that there is no other vegetable that we treat in the same way. It has this quote that really captures the essence of so many pumpkin products: "While manufacturers of pumpkin products make nutritional claims, the food's real value derives from what it represents. The importance of the idea of pumpkin over its substance has completely outweighed the necessity of a food's containing even a trace of the vegetable" (157). 8/10.

I had these Rowley's Red Barn Apple Cider Donuts in a dimly lit room, hence the weird picture. Apple cider donuts are weird to me, because they don't actually taste like apples. But these were really fluffy donuts. 7/10.

Trader Joe's Fall Leaf Corn Tortilla Chips use pumpkin just for coloring, but they are so cute that I feature them here. 7/10.

I like to have the chips with Trader Joe's Fall Harvest Salsa, which has pumpkin, apples, and other things. There are better salsas, but this one is still enjoyable. 7/10.

Brach's Mellowcreme Autumn Leaves are adorable! And I love the texture. Red is caramel apple, and there have been various caramel apple candy corn/apples for a while. I like them best. 8/10. Orange is pumpkin spice, and it's kind of weird. 6/10. Tan is sweet maple. I don't get why maple is considered a fall flavor, because it's collected in the spring. 7/10. Yellow is salted butterscotch, which I don't consider a fall flavor, but it is delightful. 8/10. And green is spiced cider, which is OK. 5/10. All together, this is a fun candy. 8/10.

Sugar Fix is a cookie company owned by a gay couple, and the cookies are sold at Holiday gas stations. The Sugar Fix Brown Sugar Pumpkin Cookie is OK; it's not as good as others of theirs. 6/10.

The IHOP Caramel Apple Lemonade has a nice flavor, but I wouldn't necessarily peg it as caramel apple. Lemonade has been a traditional drink for the Fourth of July and Pioneer Day since the nineteenth century, so it's fun to see the holidays collide like this. 7/10.

IHOP Pumpkin Spice Pancakes are fine and basic. 7/10.

Innkeeper's Pumpkin Spice Bread is like cinnamon raisin bread, but better. I'm glad it does have actual pumpkin. 7/10.

Taco Time Pumpkin Empanadas have been around for a long time, and with good reason. The filling tastes just like pumpkin pie, nice and pumpkiny. 8/10.

My mom took me to get The Smoked Taco Pumpkin Spice Churro Fries. The churro fries are amazing. The pumpkin spice dip was just OK. 7/10.

I believe this is a Kirkland Signature Pumpkin Pie, and they do a great job. 8/10.