A Kitchen Kind Of Day

When the weather gets cool (particularly if it is also rainy) and the Japanese maple trees in my neighborhood start looking like this:

I cook.

This afternoon, I made meatballs, soft pumpkin spice cookies, and two big jars of pickled jalapenos.  And then, later, two pizzas for dinner.  The house is full of light and warmth and good smells, my bulwark against the chill and dampness and mustiness of the descending autumn outside.    

I need to pick apples at the orchard, pounds and pounds of them.  It is time to fire up the food mill and the canning kettle for cinnamon applesauce and sweet apple butter.  To chop yet more apples for pie filling and chutneys.   To buy a big pumpkin,  let the kids turn it into a jack o'lantern, and then roast the seeds with spices.  The last of the summer's garden is gone: withered black casualties of the first hard frost a few days ago.  Time to embrace fall and its blessings and begin hunkering down for the winter to come.


“Of course, fall isn't just about preparing for winter. It's also about sitting on the patio in a worn wool sweater and warming your hands over the swirl of steam rising from a coffee cup. It's about walking across a darkened yard and seeing a flight of geese cross the face of a full moon. It's about settling in, relishing sights and sensations of a world slowing down.” 
--Brent Olson