Fall Favorites
The mornings are chilly and the days are cooler. When fall arrives, my children want to live outdoors, and I am quite happy to let them play outside as much as they possibly can. Our family took a couple of walks on the trail near our house this weekend, threw walnuts into the stream, looked at leaves starting to change color, and found crickets and grasshoppers. I would like to hold on to this time of year…
Today, I am going to share a couple of my favorite things that I enjoy about this time of year.
Knitting
I don’t know what it is about cooler temperatures outside that makes me want to spend lots of time knitting. Of course, I don’t have hours of leisure time to sit and knit, but I have this project right beside my rocking chair and every spare minute that I can, I pick it up and knit. Here is are blog posts that I previously wrote about knitting: Poncho for Ellie, Poncho for Emma, and Knitting Tutorial.
Candles and Books
The soft glow of candlelight adds such warmth to a cool day or dreary day. A friend sent me some candles that she made as party of a happy mail exchange earlier this year. Her candles are inspired by authors, and you can find her website here: https://oldfieldsociety.com/. I am also reading more again. I am working my way through C. S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces. I can’t say that it’s a pleasurable read…
…I would much rather be reading a Jane Austen novel; however, listening to The Literary Life podcast where they are currently discussing the book is motivating me to read C.S. Lewis’s book.
Flowers and Fruit
One of the things that I looked forward to every fall when I was a child was stopping by an apple orchard on the way home from school and getting bags of crisp, fresh apples to enjoy. Sadly, the orchard is now a subdivision, but apples (and pears) are still my favorite fruits for this time of year. I haven’t gone anywhere to get mums and pumpkins for fall decorating, even though Ellie has asked me nearly every day for a couple of weeks about it. I was delighted when Ryan brought home this bouquet when he bought the groceries last week. And this bowl of pears was so pretty…
And last, but not least….
Soup!
Soup is absolutely one of my favorite foods. I could live on soup and salad. In fact, I did live on soup and salad in my single days. Alas, my family doesn’t appreciate those foods as much as I do, but when cool weather starts, I start wanting soup for lunch and dinner. For lunch yesterday, I made pumpkin curry soup and cheese scones, using recipes by Margaret Shifflett, who once owned and operated a tea room locally. I also made salad with pears, goat cheese, and candied pecans. It certainly wasn’t a low calorie meal, but it was delicious! I didn’t follow the soup recipe exactly, but adapted it to be gluten free. And since I didn’t have any evaporated milk on hand, I left that out also and used homemade chicken broth instead of vegetable broth. As you can see, I rarely follow someone else’s recipe. Maybe instead of saying that I adapted a recipe, I should say that I made something inspired by so and so…
If you want to follow Margaret’s pumpkin soup recipe exactly, you can find it in my free resource library. I have also provided my gluten free cheese scone recipe adapted from Margaret’s recipe.
And if you ever want an easy recipe for candied nuts for a delicious addition to a salad, here is a link: http://www.nourishingmeals.com/2009/12/candied-walnuts-edible-holiday-gift.html.
I didn’t use that method this time, I just dumped some maple syrup and pecans in a saucepan and cooked and stirred until they were ready. But if you want a more exact method, follow Alissa’s recipe in the link above.
Thanks to all who participated in my survey last week! I will be changing the day of publishing my posts to Monday, and I will be including more food ideas and recipes since that was the most popular topic! I will continue with writing about all of my interests, but I will be sure to include some recipes more frequently.
What are some of your fall favorites? Please leave a comment below!