This is not my typical fare--usually, it's just cookies--but this was too good not to share.

Fall Harvest Soup



Notes: Most of our ingredients for this came from a large container of frozen butternut squash puree, along with root vegetables from the farmers' market and a food-sharing service. But I think it would work just as well, if not even better, with fresh ingredients.

Ingredients:

1 quart chicken broth, or broth of choice
4 lbs butternut squash (we used puree, though feel free to buy one or two squashes, cube them, and cook them down)
2 cups sweet potato, peeled and sliced into ribbons
1 medium onion, diced
2 turnips, diced
1/2 cup diced bacon (cooked; we used turkey bacon, because we're weird, but again, feel free to use real bacon or tempeh)
3 medium carrots, sliced thin
1 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp cayenne
1 tsp paprika
2 tsp coconut oil (or oil of choice)
1 Tblsp granulated garlic
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

Combine butternut squash and chicken broth in a pot over medium heat. Mix thoroughly, then stir once every few minutes. In a separate pot or pan, sauté sweet potato ribbons in a bit of coconut oil, until their color blooms and they're tender. Add to butternut squash mixture and stir.

In the sweet potato pan, add a bit more of the coconut oil, then sauté turnips, chopped bacon, carrots, and onion together until onions are translucent. Add those ingredients to the butternut squash mixture, and stir.

Toss in the oregano, cayenne, paprika, garlic, salt and pepper (if using dried ingredients) at this point, and stir.

Cook until all ingredients are tender, then turn the heat down to low. Continue to cook until the soup is the desired consistency. (If using fresh herbs and fresh minced garlic, toss the garlic in before the final cook phase, then the fresh herbs about five minutes before serving.

For us, this made three big servings for us, then we refilled the 4-lb tub the frozen puree came in with the leftovers. So I'd say it will serve up to six, or even eight, easily, or three to five with leftovers. It was sweet, comforting, slightly spicy (you can leave the cayenne out if you don't favor heat), and the best thing is, the leftovers get better with age. It's really an ideal fall/winter soup.

Enjoy!

Oh, dear. This one sounds so bad I just had to see it in person:

Welcome to SpookyVille where ther is fear an haunt of halloween and ghost crows freddy spiders having 4 scary rides an a haunted house crossing a bridge an having a walk

with fear free give away t shirts an candie

That is a direct quote from their profile. Hoo boy.



Ah, it's a ride. Okay.



I'm deeply unsure as to why all the walls are moving. It does create an unsettling effect, but also, a confusing one. There's really no need for the walls to move, especially if the floors and ceilings don't.



There's a lot of commercial properties used here, unsurprisingly. Though the same can be said of many RL spook rides as well, that doesn't make it acceptable here. Still, they're generally used not only as enhancements to the scene, but clearly as props, not the movie monsters themselves.



There are things that don't make sense, like this passage, where the ride car carries us a third of the way through the cabin wall, for no discernable reason. It's best to just go with these moments.



There's a space segment, of course. It's very clearly another set, but you know, there's a charm in that. The planets are nicely presented, the 'ship' the car moves through is creepily atmospheric, and overall, it still works.



Basically, the ride car moves through different 'sets', or modules, or skyboxes--pick your term--but it's fairly smoothly scripted, nothing sending the riders off into the next sim, or dropping them out of the sky jaggedly before picking them up again. Good, basic scripting shows, and lasts.



And then, the ride dumped me off at the end in a damage-enabled patch of fire, I died, and was sent home. Abrupt, but amusing.

Thing is, it feels very old-school at this point, to the point that I'm fairly sure I've ridden it--and reviewed it--before, but...even with that, it's not terrible. They could do a better job on concealing the 'exteriors' of the ride sets (considering everything is boxes within boxes, I get why that's sometimes difficult), but overall, it was fun and worth the time.

If you have some time to kill, and aren't looking for anything deeply disturbing, check it out.

Apparently, Starbucks is introducing a Zombie Frappuccino for the holiday. I don't know about you, but zombies are not good drink ingredients. Just sayin'.

In the meantime...



You find yourself waking up, the shore of an unfamiliar island ahead of you.

It's no longer surprising how often this happens.



The boat you are on has a hole and has taken on water. You get off by now and take a look at your surroundings.

Seems...pretty bleak. And with warning signs. That's never good.

What was once unfamiliar has now reminded you of a terrible tale:



It all happened one night when the circus arrived on an island. Every child was thrilled by the visiting show and all had gone to partake in merriment they hadn't yet known. During a performance, the troupe of clowns had thrown candy into the stalls. Delighted, each and every child had devoured the sweets.



But the next night, the adults were dead. Every one of them slain by the children.



Welcome to the very island where that awful massacre occurred.

Welcome to Drurem Hills.

I should mention, if you decide to go? I have altered these five pictures severely. The entire sim is nearly pitch-black normally, it's hard to see anything.

Tonight I went to the theatre again. It had been some time, and the night was dark when I crept through the ruined back wall. There were shadows, and in the shadows there were shadows, but I still had to go.



It had been a long time coming. Talks had broken down, vanished into mist, evaporated like condensation on glass. It had been so long I lost the location of where I needed to go, more than once. But tonight, tonight I found it.



It did disturb me, a bit, seeing the soulless husks clustered near the backstage door. Had they once been living, breathing dolls, or were they always just constructs, momentary whims of imagination? Had I been a whim to begin with?



Some of them had the ability to move, to intercept, some did not, but to their credit, no one tried. Or perhaps, their instructions prevented them from moving against another of his creations. I didn't stay long enough to ask; I needed access to the backstage area, where dolls and dancers changed. Or...were changed.



Strangely, the back door led out to moss underfoot, the lapping of waves at a dark shore, and a half-ruined temple, with a portal gate. That seemed unnecessary, but he always loved embellishment. Holding my breath, I went through the swirling violet, hoping to find what I sought on the other side.



And there it was. Mine at last. The key he'd given me originally, the key I'd given back to him when I still had hope. There is no hope now, and I'm taking it back. The source of the doll's power will be under his control no longer, and she will fade into the mists, never to be seen again. I may still be a shifter, but I have no more need for shifting into porcelain and piano wire, powered by the key and attention.

No more keys. No more dolls. No more strings.

No more.

(Pictures taken in The Arpeggio abandoned theatre and the Hum and Shiver haunt in Picklemoon. I can highly reccommend both.)

Nearly a month since the last entry. A month which would typically have been filled by haunted house entries, reviews of shopping events or hunts with a dark, spooky, or pagan bent, and casual links found in my travels around the net. Last October I managed one haunt review per day, and some days, I pulled off two. I wasn't planning to work that hard this year, but I did want to cover the new ones I found, at least.

Instead, I've mostly been off the grid. For the first year since I started going through Octoberville, I may not make it on the board for this year's title. I may not finish looking through the Decennial Market in the roof garden above the Fallen Gods store. I haven't even started the Timeless hunt, nor gone through We RP for the month. I haven't done a lot of things.

Instead, I got sick. With...something still unknown. Could have been food poisoning, could have been a mutant strain of flu...no one seems to know yet, and I'm not going to spend much time breaking it down here. All I know is, I'm getting better very slowly, and it's grueling. The lack of energy is killing me most. There are days where I get up, toast a piece of bread, take twenty minutes to eat it, and go right back to bed.

This kind of thing, it doesn't pair well with running around the grid snapping pics of haunted houses, let alone working and maintaining a social life.

I miss the decorations. I miss the haunts. I miss the autumn leaves and the pumpkins on the doorsteps. But most of all, I just miss the grid. It's bothering me greatly that I don't have the energy to even log in some days.

But for anyone I haven't managed to catch on the brief times I've made it in, that's why I've been mostly absent. Exactly the wrong month for this to happen, but I don't seem to have much choice in the matter. I may even miss the Sakura Halloween Ball. I've already missed Mr. Peccable's wedding--belated congratulations to him and his lady wife, I was sadly unable to log in because of the...whatever. Annoying thing that it is.

Any well wishes will be most humbly accepted, but mostly, I just want things to return to--well, not normal, because we are talking about me--my life wasn't normal to start with. But return to at least the sort of stability I had before. That would be nice.

And if it returns with enough coffee to coat my internal organs and enough gin to float away on, I'll be doubly grateful, because I live with cruel, cruel women who won't buy me gin. And who only allot me four cups of coffee per day. A tragedy.

Update more when I can.