On the brick patio outside my sliding door, red and brown leaves are piling up. Lately as I drive to church, stores and tutoring appointments, I admire the fire of Japanese maples or the more mellow red and yellow of liquid ambers.The change of seasons recalls for me not only Halloween candy and harvest festivals, but (as for others over fifty) dunking for apples—plunging our faces into a tub of cold water,attempting to sink my teeth into an apple dancing. Then afterwards came a cup of hot spicy cider, a quintessential part of fall.
Fall is a season of strong spices - of cinnamon, long red-brown sticks plunged into cider and boiled until they impart into the sweet juice a verve and vigor, a dash or a slap, like cold water on a hot day. Today I introduced my English conversation class to hot spiced apple juice. The Japanese women are married to men working or studying at Stanford University or Hospital for a season. Of the five women, one has been here only a short time, others one, two or three years. In addition to the grammar book and dialogues I bring to an English class, I carried apple juice I'd spiced and boiled the day before. Todays mulled cider was a first for the ladies and they loved it. I taught them how. Iti's easy and quick.
I made the mulled juice with five minutes prep and twenty of cooking, using a mix purchased from Peet's Coffee: tiny round balls of allspice, clove twigs, short sticks of cinnamon bark, dried orange or lemon peel. Put it in a ball for loose tea, immerse and boil it in the juice or cider for 15-30 minutes, and then remove the ball. If you wouldn't drink Sanka (or other powdered coffee), then never sample the the dried instant cider.
Fall's has other spices too, hitting us stronger than summer's. Perhaps the dive into the cold calls out of us a longing for the heat of spice, for pungent smells and hot tongues. I've grown up with a mother who liberally used a few spices, so the tastes I enjoy can bother others. My husband or children have never liked much cloves, those little brown twigs that get ground into dark powder—so I've lessened the clove twigs from six to two in my chile recipe. I've always loved Mother's beef, potato, carrot stew, never thought of the flavor as spicy and my children from a young age have relished too. So I served it in Tokyo to a Japanese friend and her children. What a surprise was her remark it was spicy, and so difficult for her child, unaccustomed to such flavors, to eat. It had no jalapenos, only a pinch of marjoram and a mere single teaspoon of chile powder, just a sixth of the amount I put in my chile and beans dish. That's not spicy, for me that is, but it was for them.
Thanksgiving is a time of sage rubbed on poultry and giving thanks for all the spices of our lives. As I prepare for college-age daughters returnign home, I've reflected on how spices correspond to the mix of family life. The individual strong personalities, pungent habits and hot points in our family are like spices for our stew, making it tasty, a little too hot or spice for some tastes at time.
And a new elements is being thrown into our stew, my 21-year-old's boyfriend. I'm delighted that he's coming here for Thanksgiving, his second visit from New York. What new spices are being added to our combination of meat and vegie stew, heightening flavors—a paprika or chile transforming bland mush to red and savory.
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