Yep - you can tell that the school year has begun as NEITHER of us has had a spare moment to breathe, let alone blog! And you know, another sad thing, our last several blogs delt with WORK and END OF SUMMER! Now, granted, I suppose this is a mental outlet, a place to vent, a place to get out of your mind what is on your mind, but come on! Can't we write about something OTHER than work now? After a frantic Monday getting a classroom put together, a boring Tuesday of staff development, and a Wednesday through Friday of beginning the arduous task of "retraining" a new set of younguns, I need SOMETHING ELSE!

So, how about this topic...Fall and food.

I am obsessed, as my profile divulges, with food, FoodTV, cooking etc. Actually, I suppose it is less an obsession and more a surrender to food. I know that in my current mom status I am required, by motherhood law, to plan for and prepare 3 meals a day 7 days a week for my two little ones and I suppose for my husband as well, so the way I look at it, I may as well enjoy it. My spouse is a good cook, and takes up the chef's hat regularly, but the overall responsibillity for family feedings falls to me. Certainly, I am not whipping up gourmet meals nightly. I work full time for goodness sake! I am a lover of takeout pizza, which is a good thing, as that is pretty much the only fast food one can get in the little rural haven I happen to reside in. Also, frighteningly, my daughter's new found love of corn dogs of all things has become a part of our occational dining repertoire, but I digress. Fall is really the season I LOVE for food. No kidding, really? Well how contrived of you, the season of the harvest? What an original concept! But really, what is better than the first day you feel that fall nip in the air? It comes as a surprise, and don't you just LOVE a surprise? It gets the senses tingling, and sets the mind in a new direction. This time of year, this time of new beginnings (oh no, ALMOST slipping into school talk here, I had better watch how I navigate!) I always get a metaphysical boost. When that comes, along with it I get a craving for soup. Soup - goodness in a bowl. Connections with health and wellness, as well as a complete meal in one pot. Complexity and simplicity, inherent to one recipe. Soup is the real deal.

There is a wonderful children's book by Sharon Creech, adolescent author extraordinaire, called Granny Torelli Makes Soup. It is all about a girl and a boy who are best friends, and the girl's Italian grandmother who teaches them life lessons as she makes her "zuppa." And what myriad of life lessons do come from soup! Ingredients go together sometimes with the randomness of immediate availability, sometimes with specificity of care and thought. Things simmer, combine and recombine, finally, usually successfully, creating something new altogether. Edible fortitude, new and different, comes from things ordinary. Things allowed to simmer emerge anew.

Now I am REALLY disturbed. I have brought school in the form of a children's book into my anti school post! What is wrong with me? Can I not compartmentalize? Can I not pull away and put away?

Maybe though, this is the key, the common thread. Why the love of fall? The harvest, the new beginnings of all sorts, brings back all of my "ingredients." School, Family, Work, Friends, Self, Responsibilites, Activities. These all come back to the forefront and go into this crazy soup called my Life. Ingredients need to be added now and then. Seasonings add spice, sometimes too much, sometimes too little. Creative modifictions need to be made, and can be made through the joy and freedom that is cooking and that is life. My zuppa needs the attention of an occational stirring. My soup needs to simmer, be tasted, allowed time and granted patience. It is at times altered, and changed, and in the end comes a new combination. Forever different, somehow the same, often hard to say how or when, and often too intricate to recreate. Basic and complex all at once. Fresh, and alive. Fall is new beginnings of a different sort, fall is a new start to life.

-Cheryl (as a dear friend suggested we sign our posts:)