Hello, Fall

It feels like fall has come on really hard and fast. We have been having unusually cold weather, and every day I revel in seeing the leaves changing a little bit more. I am particularly enjoying the burning bushes, because they seem especially vibrant this year. I love spotting those bursts of scarlet red everywhere I go, and my drive to and from work has been my favorite part of the day lately. This week has been sunny, and everything has been bathed with golden light. I'm savoring it, because soon the world will be grey and bare.

At the end of the year, I start to feel like time is coming unspooled. For most of the year it seems to come at a measured pace, but in November and December everything seems so hectic and busy that time just seems to slip away. This year that feeling has come early. October has flown--I can't believe it's two-thirds gone already. It's been lovely. My parents and brother came to visit the first weekend, and the next we spent the whole weekend working in the yard. We had perfect, beautiful weather for it. We planted two boxwoods, a hydrangea, a couple of mums, and lots and lots of bulbs. Something to enjoy in every season. We also transplanted a bunch of hostas from various parts of the yard, mulched everything and tore out the stump of a big juniper bush that James chopped down this summer. We were really sore afterward, but it was well worth it. We had a good time doing it, and it's nice making our home a little more ours.


This past weekend was even more fun. We went to Grand Rapids for a special event. I will share more about that later. For now, I will leave you with an autumnal soup recipe that I made up last week to use the odds and ends I had in my refrigerator.

Autumn Leftovers Soup

1/2 cup diced onion
1 Tbs olive oil
3 cups baked winter squash, peeled and cut into 1 inch cubes
4 cups water
Vegetable bouillon concentrate for 1 cup
1 14 oz can diced tomatoes
1 cup cooked brown rice
1/4 tsp dried rubbed sage
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp paprika
1 cup chopped, steamed kale

In a large saucepan, saute the onions until translucent. Add the water, squash and bouillon packet. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium and blend with a stick blender until fairly smooth. Stir in the rice, tomatoes and seasonings, and simmer for 20 minutes or so. Add the kale and serve when it's heated through, about 5 minutes.

You could easily vary this based on the odds and ends in your refrigerator. I think white beans would be a really good addition.

Farewell Summer

I'm a warm weather kind of girl, and I'm not too keen on winter. But I must admit, I enjoy living in a temperate climate with four distinct seasons. I like the changing of gears, the refocusing that occurs at during the seasonal shifts. We start to focus on new pursuits and eat different foods. I like being a little more aware of the passing of time.

That's one of the things I love about the liturgical cycle as well. It establishes a rhythm of life, daily, weekly, and seasonally. I like noting the shift of tones from one week to the next and singing the different Resurrectional troparia. The feasts of the Church mark the passing of the year. While the Nativity of the Theotokos on September 8 still falls firmly into summer to my mind, by the Exaltation of the Cross one week later on the 14th, I can't help but start to think of fall. St. Thekla is the patron of our ladies society, so this week our parish celebrated liturgy on Wednesday evening for the Feast of St. Thekla. On Wednesday evenings our parish has vespers, dinner, and Bible study. We usually take a short break from this during the summer, and this Wednesday also served as sort of a kickoff for the fall inquirer's class and adult Bible study. The Feast of St. Thekla on September 24, falling as it does so close to the autumnal equinox, has become one of the markers of autumn to me.


So we're saying goodbye to summer around here. We got the last box from our farm co-op last week, and we're savoring the last of the warm weather vegetables. We recently enjoyed this "snacky dinner" as we call it at out house. (It doesn't sound quite as sophisticated as calling it tapas or meze, but it tastes just as good.) Snacky dinner is very simple, and we both love it. It feels very relaxed. It involves setting out a variety of snack-like foods. For us, it almost always includes hard-boiled eggs. Often it means cheese and crackers, olives and fruit, and usually something dippable. It tends to be seasonal--in the winter there is often dried fruit and citrus. On this night it was sliced tomatoes with feta and basil, a very delectable local pear or two, and the usual hard-boiled eggs. The unappetizing looking grey stuff was the star of the show. That's baba ganoush. I had a lot of eggplants hanging around. Mmmm, it was yummy. It would have been lovely with some fresh pita, but even with the last of the bag of tortilla chips it was delicious. It was a really good way to say farewell to summer.