Tag: candy apples

TBT: The Joy of Autumn

The Portly Politico6 Comments

It is—to use a Southern expression—hotter than blue blazes here in South Carolina, as it always is in early September.  Lately, the extreme heat and humidity have made any outdoor activities unbearable, at least for yours portly.  The air is thick and muggy.

But there is some relief in sight.  We’ve had some rainy days here and there that have given brief—fleetingly brief!—tastes of autumn.

Autumn is, by far, my favorite season.  After the brutal oppression of summer, autumn is a welcome relief.  Autumn in South Carolina is brief, but lovely—the days are warm, the nights crisp.  The season makes it stately arrival fashionably late, usually late in October or early in November (though Halloween always manages to be hot; just once I want an Indiana Halloween!).

The cooler weather brings with it better smells:  pumpkins and spices replace the persistent smell of cut grass and sweat.  Food tastes better in autumn, too.  There’s a reason candy apples are an autumnal fair food:  that thick, sugary, caramel coating wouldn’t last in the humidity of summer.  There’s also the pies:  pecan and pumpkin, of course, but also sweet potato.

Oh, and there’s college football.  The SEC hasn’t (yet) betrayed fans like the West Coast conferences.

So, here’s hoping autumn returns sooner rather than later to South Carolina this year.  With that hope—and prayer—in mind, whip out the pumpkin spice and enjoy November 2019’s “The Joy of Autumn“:

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Giving Thanks (and a Sales Pitch)

The Portly Politico42 Comments

Thanksgiving Break starts today!  For those of you that don’t work in education, here’s hoping you can enjoy some time off tomorrow and Friday.

I have some exciting, timely news:  my SubscribeStar page hit five subscribers yesterday!  That’s a huge deal, because SubscribeStar requires their “Stars” to have five subscribers before subscriptions automatically renew on a monthly basis.  So, a BIG “Thank You” to my five plucky subscribers.

For those of you interested in subscribing, here’s my Thanksgiving pitch:  each Saturday, I post a fresh post for $1/month and up subscribers.  It’s an insanely good value—the price of a large specialty pizza per year—and I write some juicy stuff that I can’t put on the main site.

If you want to get generous and go for $5/month, I’ve recently launched “Sunday Doodles.”  I throw up a couple of my wacky, absurd, grotesque doodles each Sunday, usually with a brief explanation about when/where I doodled them.  Here’s a sample:

Sunday Doodles III, 24 November 2019 - Thanksgiving!.jpg

The SubscribeStar page includes around thirty-five posts at present, with probably thirty of those being essays.  Like this blog, I use that page to write about all kinds of topics, including:

…and, of course, candy apples.

Also, every Fourth of July week is MAGAWeek, which is a week of exclusives only for subscribers.

Now that I’ve turned giving thanks into a lurid bid for your hard-earned cash, let me close by saying that I am, indeed, truly thankful to all of my readers.  Blogging daily this past year has been a challenge at times, but it’s also been a blast.  I’m incredibly thankful for those of you who read the site, and for the great new blogosphere buddies I’ve met along the way.

Thank you for your support, and have a Happy Thanksgiving!

—TPP

Lazy Sunday XXXII: Festivals

The Portly Politico48 Comments

This fall, I’ve been hitting up a number of small-town festivals in an attempt to get out more to see the forgotten by-ways of rural South Carolina.  I work pretty hard during the week (indeed, most of today will dedicated to finalizing first quarter report grades), so I’m making a point of enjoying my weekends more.

To that end, this week’s Lazy Sunday will look back at some recent festival-going.  I should note that the full versions of these pieces are Subscribe Star exclusives; to read them in full requires a subscription of $1 a month or more to my Subscribe Star page.

  • “Aiken Amblings” – This piece detailed my trip to my hometown for Aiken’s Makin’, a sprawling, two-day crafts festival that brings vendors from all over the Southeast to ply their wares.  I have fond memories of this festival from my childhood, and it’s still a major fall event.
  • “Yemassee Shrimp Festival 2019” – This post is all about a long day trip to tiny Yemassee, South Carolina, for the Yemassee Shrimp Festival.  The trip also included stops at the historic Old Sheldon Church ruins and St. James the Greater Catholic Church in Ritter, South Carolina.
  • “Candy Apples” – My paean to a typically autumnal fair food, the sticky, tart candy apple.  We had some good ones last weekend.
  • “Festival Circuit: Ridge Spring Harvest Festival and Clinton Scots & Brats” – Yesterday’s post detailed a two-for-one festival day—my trip to the Ridge Spring Harvest Festival and Clinton, South Carolina’s Scots & Brats celebration, the latter of which was the source of the candy apples that inspired the previous Saturday’s post.

Hopefully there will be more festivals to come.  For now, I’ve got to get back to grading.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Candy Apples

The Portly Politico7 Comments

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Today continued the series of autumnal festivals my girlfriend and I are attempting to hit up as the long South Carolina summer turns to fall.  I’ll write a full account of our trip to the Ridge Spring Harvest Festival and Clinton’s “Scots & Brats” next Saturday.

Tonight, I’d like to write briefly about a delicious treat that only exists in the fall:  the candy apple.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.