And all these last bits

I'm feeling a little Pilgrim-ish these days. It happens to me in the late fall. I don't mean exactly Plymouth Rock-ish (who likes a witch hunt anyway?)--although I did make this wondrous little frugal treat this weekend with my stale potato rolls:

Sweet Bread Pudding
from "The Minimalist; Pudding, Sweet and Not" by Mark Bittman

Time: 1 hour, largely unattended

4 tablespoons butter
6 cups white bread, cut or torn into 1-inch chunks (wide, inexpensive loaves, usually called "Italian bread," work best)
2 cups half-and-half
4 eggs
3/4 cup maple syrup or sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch salt

1. Butter an 8-inch baking dish, and add bread. Cut remaining butter into bits, and combine with all other ingredients; pour over bread. Submerge bread with weighted plate, and turn oven to 350 degrees.

2. When oven is hot, remove the plate and bake until pudding is just set, 30-40 minutes. Serve with or without whipped cream. (I served mine warm with unwhipped whipping cream. Yum.)

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This yearning to go on a pilgrimage, or to retreat to some kind of temporary ascetism, is in my blood, I think. It's fall and the dewy richness of summer has faded. This season's changing is most distinct to me. Sure, everyone loves a new spring bud blossoming, but what do we do with all the fading and dying, the diminishing of light, the last bits of everything? I've been thinking of this phrase a lot lately, "If nothing else, I rise to the occasion." It is a good motto, a congenial one, and I'd say it's been one way I characterize myself. But fall makes me want to fade away on my own for awhile, not answer to anyone else for a spell.

Many years I go on retreat. My mother used to say, "Hell, I used to envy my Catholic friends. They always got away 'on retreat.' I coulda used a retreat like that now and then."

I've spent many a fall retreat at St. John's or St. Ben's or even nearby at the St. Paul Monastery. I taste a little of the monastic life as I sleep alone in a clean and simple bedroom and take my meals in silence among the sweet sisters or the hulking monks (or, as it turns out, the relocated pedophiles). Is it a bucking-up for winter, or, a taking stock at summer's end? Is it loneliness, or, the need to be alone? Is it emotional or physical? Is there any difference? It is a yearning I have yet to figure out.

I don't know if bread pudding helps. It IS minimalist: nothing more than dry bread mixed with milk and eggs. And it makes me feel a little like an Andrew Wyeth painting: me preparing my simple dish. A white apron, a few brown eggs, a hot rich custard more or less the same as that of the 18th century.