Monthly Archives: November 2012

How cute is his speckled little face?

Right after the shearing party came Rhinebeck.  Oh Rhinebeck, how do I love thee?  Kay over at Mason Dixon Knitting described Rhinebeck, saying “[It] is right up there with Passover and Thanksgiving on my list of favorite ritual observances of a seasonal, spiritual nature. “   It has become that for me too, a ritual of marking the last gasp of fall before we descend into winter.

The group I have gone with for the past few years  has fractured, and the only one of the group that wanted to go was my dear Carrie.  She missed last year, what with the whole just-gave-birth-to-twins thing, and she was determined to not miss out this year.  Since it was just going to be us going, we decided that this year, we would bring the kids – Miss H and her oldest daughter K, who is 6.  Her mom came along, and our merry band of 5 drove out Friday night to the lovely little house we had rented in Saugerties.  We had driven out in a terrific storm, but Saturday morning the weather was beautiful, the perfect New England fall day of your dreams.

Bringing Hannah to the fair was awesome.  She’s old enough to be great company, and we had a really fun time wandering around meeting animals and petting yarn.   (It helped that she’s old enough that I could say “If we get separated in the barn, we’ll meet up at the end”, and know that she was going to be fine by herself for a few minutes.)  I had promised her that we would pick out yarn for a sweater for her, and she spent the first hours of Saturday carefully pondering her many options for yarn, finally settling on a lovely blue green Philosopher’s Wool from the Noni booth.  That was (gasp) the only yarn or fiber that I bought this year.  Never fear, though – I did my part supporting our crafting economy, buying a new spindle from the Bosworth booth, some delicious sheepskin slippers that I’ve been pondering for three years running, and a charming sheepy nightlight from Paws and Reflect.  Hannah used her spending money to buy a fairy necklace, sheepskin earmuffs and the most ridiculously fluffy alpaca teddy bear I have ever seen.

Because Hannah wanted to see them, I finally made it to see both the Leaping Llamas and the herding dog demonstrations on Sunday.  Both were entertaining, and my favorite by far were the llamas who would run for the hurdle and then just plant right in front of it, refusing to make their jump.   I had great fun introducing her to my favorite fair treats – pierogies and kielbasa on Saturday and artichokes on Sunday.  She was highly skeptical on the artichokes, but I promised her we could stand in another line if she hated them.  No one will be surprised that she ended up wanting the entire bowl to herself.

By Sunday, we were all exhausted, and we poured ourselves back into the car for the long drive home.  One more weekend, wonderfully spent.

For many of our recent summers, we’ve participated in CSAs.   I haven’t for the last few summers, for a few reasons – mainly the repetitive nature of the boxes (which is a natural outcome of eating what grows in X season, in your climate) and that I hate to cook in the summer, meaning all those veggies requiring cooking just made me sad instead of happy.  Now, I just go to the farmer’s market and buy what I want in the moment, which generally means a lot of tomatoes and cucumbers and not much else when it’s really hot.

We have replaced the overflowing summer boxes with weekly deliveries from South Shore Organics.  We’ve been getting their boxes since the early spring, and I’ve been really happy with them.  There’s more variety, and generally, the quantities are better sized for our family of three.  That said, three weekends in a row of being away with very busy weeks in between and forgetting to cancel / downsize our box for the duration left us completely overwhelmed with produce.

I finally settled in to deal with it yesterday morning, and it was not pretty.  One of our vegetable drawers in the fridge probably should have been nuked from orbit, it was so, so full of grossness, I can’t even tell you.  I threw out a staggering amount of produce yesterday, and that just kills me.  I hate wasting food, even more than I hate wasting money.  Wasting both sends me right into a rage spiral.  All the fragile veggies and fruit dealt with, I was left with this week’s greens and the hardy vegetables that were good from the previous weeks.

Determined not to waste what I had left, I spent this evening cooking up as much as I could.  Roasted a spaghetti squash for my dinner, and four weeks worth of sweet potatoes for lunches this week and cleaning and chopping the greens to use for quick lunchtime salads.  The final project was to make a giant pot of butternut squash and apple soup for dinner tomorrow night.  Chopping those squash took forever, but I know tomorrow-me will thank tonight-me when I have almost no dinner to deal with after work.

My inspiration for the soup was this recipe – but despite the warning not to tamper with the recipe, you know I had to tinker, right?  For me, the recipe as written actually comes out too spicy (I am a MASSIVE spiciness wimp, so don’t judge the spice level  based on my say-so) and I generally tend to treat soup recipes as suggestions, anyway.  Changes for tonight’s batch were that I started with bacon – crisped some up in the pan, spooned it out to add back in later and cooked the onions in the bacon fat.  I added a bunch of fresh sage and left out most of the other spices – I may add more in when I heat it tomorrow night.

The best addition to this recipe, though, comes from a co-worker.  When he made a similar soup for a company potluck, instead of adding a little sour cream at the end, he made a mixture of marscarpone cheese and honey, whipped together with a little black pepper.  Stir a generous spoonful of that into your bowl of soup, and you will be in heaven, it is so, so delicious.

I love the onset of late fall, when the weather finally gets cold enough to indulge in recipes that need to cook all day on the stove to be delicious.

What are your favorite recipes for fall?