Hello September!

54°f/12°C, mostly clear. 

Rabbit, rabbit rabbit! Time to say the magic words that will make us all rich and/or lucky this month! You can see how well it has worked for me, saying it all these years. As to where the saying originated, apparently no one knows for sure, but some link it to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. The first written record of the saying was in 1908, when someone reported a young girl saying it.

Did you ever carry a lucky rabbit's foot? I know I had one as a child, and I bought one for a program on superstitions I presented a while back. But did you know that this seems to have come from an African tradition,  probably brought to the US by slaves. History.com reports that one advertisement for rabbit's feet said that "A 1908 British account reports rabbits’ feet imported from America being advertised as ‘the left hind foot of a rabbit killed in a country churchyard at midnight, during the dark of the moon, on Friday the 13th of the month, by a cross-eyed, left-handed, red-headed bow-legged Negro riding a white horse,’” he writes. “While other collected versions disagree about exactly when the rabbit must be killed, all indicate that the rabbit's foot historicizes an especially uncanny or evil time: the dark of the moon; a Friday; a rainy Friday; a Friday the Thirteenth.”

Whew. I don't think I will ever carry one again! Although, Franklin D. Roosevelt was never without one, and he also said 'rabbit, rabbit, rabbit' on the first of the month. 

Also, did you know that September used to be the seventh month? That was back under the old Roman calender and the name stems from the Latin word for seven, septem. When the change to the Gregorian calender was made, a couple months were added, shifting September from seventh to ninth place. The same happened with October,  November,  and December. 

So, there's that, and not at all what I meant to write about this morning. But down the proverbial internet rabbit hole I went!

We got the apples done yesterday. It took 4 hours, and we ended up with 40 quarts; more than enough, added to what we already have, to make our apple butter. 

Most people start with sliced apples, but my neighbor Belva taught me to make the sauce the day before, because that greatly reduces the cooking time needed. And today, with the Victorio strainer, it is even easier. When our son Derek was deployed overseas, we struck on the idea of canning the applesauce so that we could make apple butter when he came home. That year, we cooked it down in February, in a blinding snow! His daughter's were making a snowman while we stirred, using what Larry calls a "blow George" (a sheet of metal leaned against the kettle) to protect the fire. What a fun day that was. 

Time to get out of here and take that table to Haley. Happy Labor/Labour Day, all!

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.