It is autumn cool this morning as it should be. Like those warm spring days that tantalize you and then comes a dumping of snow. Heat will come again. Fall is my favorite time of year. I love the colors of changing leaves and the smell of rotting cornfields. I love donning a jacket when I go out and feeling the cold air brush my face. A few birds sing but not so many as in the spring when they are “on the make”.
Harvest is abundant and we will be making salsa any day. We already have carrots blanched and frozen for soups and stews. Chard has been lazy this year. Too hot, I guess. Maybe if we have some cool weather it will move along. Chard can be frozen. Blanch it and it collapses. Squeeze out the excess water. Pack it in a small snack bag and freeze it. I throw it in soups and eggs or cream it like spinach. We have lots of squash coming: butternut, buttercup and acorn. While we can use these into the fall, we will need to freeze some. I bake a few, scrape out the meat, mash like potatoes, then freeze in bags that I can flatten and stack – 2 cup portions. We love to eat this like we would mash potatoes as a side dish. Acorn we usually bake the traditional way, cut in half, seeds scooped out, load with butter, salt and pepper, and brown sugar and bake until tender. Yum.
Soon we will be browsing cookbooks for soup and stew recipes. My daughter Kate made a tortilla soup last week that was…as the new expression goes…to die for. That will be one of the first we will make. I also have a recipe for Italian vegetable soup that I figured out as only one Weight Watcher’s point per cup. And Chili! Bernie and I, since retirement, started the tradition of making large batches of soup and chili and freezing it in small portions for suppers and lunches all winter. For a while we were doing a new recipe each week.
For now, we will enjoy sliced fresh tomatoes and corn on the cob with lots of butter. Oh…and BLT’s. It is not even 8 am and I am thinking about food.