The Wonder Years and the Power of Dreams

I was always taught two things about dreams: 1.) If you die in your dream you die in real life, and 2.) Your dreams are just your mind trying to make sense of the things that happened to you over the course of the day. Or something like that.

I think that both of these things are bunk.



If the second statement is true then how do you explain the fact that I had a dream about the final episode of The Wonder Years last night after not having seen it since 1993? I haven't even thought about it at all since then. I've thought about the show in general, sure, but the final episode has been out of my mind for a while.

The dream moved me so much that I spent much of today thinking about that episode, and the show in general. In fact, I woke up at 5:00 AM and couldn't get back to sleep. Did it just take 18 years for the gravity of that episode to sink in? I was tempted to watch the episode all day but I thought that would be cheating. The right thing to do would be to start watching the show again from episode one and allow the episodes to sink in one-by-one until I reach the final episode.



After about eleven hours I started to shake the Wonder Years haze I was in and went to pick up the bi-weekly fruit share. This week we got Golden Delicious Apples, Fuji Apples, Bosc Pears, Cameo Apples, and a jug of cider.

There was one problem . . .



. . . this is how much apples we still had left from two weeks ago.



I quickly got to work making a giant pot of apple sauce. Now there was another problem . . .



. . . there was still this many apples left.

Perhaps, along with the pears, Jen can make some huge array of apple and pear desserts over the weekend to use them up. I'm running out of ideas.



The other day we were bored so we drove to the local farmer's market just to see what they had where we picked up these cool-looking Jiló (Brazilian Eggplant). At first Jen selected some that were green which I quickly rejected and replaced with red ones after lecturing her about how the red ones were the best ones.

I got into a bit of trouble for that.



We also picked up some little pumpkins so I roasted them in the oven along with the eggplant and filled them both with a farro risotto I made with butter, garlic, onion, bacon, and roasted brussel sprouts.

I call it a "risotto" just to drive purists crazy with rage.



For beer I cracked open this Bière Du Boucanier Dark Brouwerij Van Steenberge in East Flanders, Belgium. I figured the pirate went well with the theme of this meal since pirates love pumpkins so much.

Oh, and Winnie Cooper loved pirates! I just love it when a theme comes together!



As dessert I served up some of the warm apple sauce with a scoop of leftover Greek yogurt, some melted down caramel sauce from the apples, and a drizzle of chocolate sauce.

I also managed to convince Jen to watch the first episode of The Wonder Years which was quite a feat considering her hatred for watching pilot episodes. Jen's payment in return was that I review both our companies' medical plans for 2012 so we could make an informed decision for our future.



I challenge you to watch that opening credits sequence and tell me you aren't moved more than the last time you are when you compared deductibles.