Vertigo

I do not really have a fear of heights... But I do seem to experience a variety of motion sicknesses. Not even motion sickness--motions throw me off kilter:
elevator rides..
boat mooring....
swings..
spiral staircases--ascending and descending...

On the terrace, accessible by the oh-so-minimal Sky View floor of the museum, I am reminded of the first time I experienced vertigo. I was climbing hills around Gold Hill, an old mining area outside Boulder, with T. D. who knew the area well enough to bushwack. Only the bushwacking meant walking on a trail-less hillside. I recall, in my full sobriety, how the wold in my eyes turned in to a tilt-a-whirl ride. I leaned in to and sat awkwardly in the hillside to avoid sliding or tilting into the emptiness .

Looking over the edge of the New Museum brought back a similar vertiginous feeling. And why, at that moment, I thought of the young women trapped in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, I cannot tell you.

The Acorn Squash

What an ornamentally ribbed green orb!! For a vegetable, I find it rather pleasing to the eye.

I like the idea of cooking seasonally, but sometimes the season passes with papers instead of roots and squash.

As we were driving up to Cape Cod over my birthday weekend, we passed a sign that announced the November Wellfleet Turnip Festival. A turnip festival?! There would be a Turnip Queen! Sounded like something out of a Louise Erdrich novel with a Provincetown twist. (Sidebar: I was re-reading Erdrich's The Beet Queen in which the Queen of the Beet Festival, Dot Adare, was selected fraudulently.)

So we started talking about mashed turnips...parsnip fries.... But I often feel shy with parsnips, turnips, rutabega, and some varieties of squash. And I realized that I had yet to cook the inaugural fall squash.

So it is several weeks later when the culinary muse pays a visit. And I make a fabulous acorn squash soup. Once the ingredients below have been cooked, I carefully pureed them to give the soup a bisque like texture.

1 acorn squash,
1 sweet potato, chopped
2 peeled russet, chopped
about 6 cups of stock
some olive oil
some curry
some ginger, grated fresh
salt to taste