things to love about fall

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Dinners This Week

October is imminent!!!!!!! Alert, alert! 

October plus the gloomy weather we’ve been having has me in full Fall Food Mode. I made some bread yesterday! Today I hope to make a bit ol’ pot of butternut squash soup in which to dip my bread! Yum! I feel very exclamation pointy about October for unknown reasons! 

Surely my October excitement is in part because Elisabeth’s CBBC Walking Club begins tomorrow?! I have recommitted to walking daily and this will be such a big motivator. 

It’s been quite rainy here lately, and humid, but that’s the extent of our weather issues. I hope you and your loved ones are doing okay in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

Well. Excitement aside, I still need to make dinner. (Although it’s a birthday week around here, so there will be some meals out that I do not have to plan or prepare, AND I am not in charge of the cake!) 

Dinners for the Week of September 30-October 6

  • Sheet Pan Sausages with Acorn Squash and Onions: I needed a last-minute ingredient on Friday and asked my husband to swing by the grocery store on his way home. He impulse bought an acorn squash, which is pretty much the most adorable thing I can think of to impulse buy. Anyway, that was the inspiration for this meal. I am hopeful that Carla will eat the sausage. She has eaten sausage in the past, I’m pretty sure. Although, as we all know, past performance is no prediction of future behavior.
  • Broccoli Beef Stir Fry: I’m in the mood for another stir fry. As per usual, I will add red bell pepper to the pot for color and extra crunch.
  • Autumn Chicken and Roasted Veggies: I just came across this recipe and it sounds fun. I’m also intrigued by the addition of the cheese tortellini. 
  • Chili Two Ways! My parents are coming for dinner and football this weekend, and I’m planning on making chili. My favorite chili has ground beef and dark red kidney beans, but I don’t think everyone is a fan of beans, so I want to try a bean-free version as well. (I NEED my beans.) I am leaning toward this green pork chili, which my husband would LOVE (although I’m a little concerned about finding fresh tomatillos at this time of year?) or this Texas chili, which my dad would enjoy. (By the way, I make my own chili powder and have been doing so for YEARS, but recently I lost the recipe! I had it written down on a slip of paper, and I thought it was stowed carefully away in our recipes binder. But it is not there! And, worse, I cannot find a bookmarked recipe for chili powder among my copious online recipe folders, nor can I find a link to it on my blog. Argh! I think this may be it, or very close, but we will have to see. Yet again I am kicking myself for never having posted my very easy recipe for chili on the blog, which surely would have linked to the original recipe for the chili powder!) If we were having more people over for dinner, I might try a third version: a white chicken chili. If I were making it purely for my husband, I might attempt this chili verde with sausage and pumpkin. This is making me want to have a neighborhood chili potluck. Is that a thing? Could that be a thing?
  • Creamy Chickpea and Sweet Potato Stew: This is one of the rare vegetarian meals my husband is on board for, so I am taking FULL advantage. In fact, I’m going to add green peppers to my portion as well. (I’m not a huge sweet-potatoes-in-stew fan, plus I love green peppers.) 
From Bon Appetit

Have you ever been to a chili-centric potluck? Would you attend one at my house, if you were my neighbor? If you wanted to come, which chili would you bring? Or which dessert or salad, I suppose; probably at least half of the guests at this imaginary potluck should bring a dessert or a salad instead of chili.

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Six for Sunday

Have you been affected by the hurricane? I hope you and your loved ones are safe and sound. 

It’s a dreary, wet day and I think my family and I might curl up in front of some Stranger Things this afternoon instead of doing anything productive. Before we do that, here are some random bullets.

  • Tropical Weather < Fall Weather: The hurricane has furnished my part of the country with days of rain and humidity. While I’m a huge fan of (occasional) gloomy, rainy fall days, I am not enjoying the sticky damp. I’m assuming this is how it feels to live inside a rain forest, based purely on visiting Rain Forest exhibits at the zoo. No thank you. Humidity and I do not get along. I have not bothered to dry or style my hair in a week. I tame the mass of wavy frizz with water, then wrangle it into a ponytail or bun and hope for the best. I use Aveda Smooth Infusion cream on my hair every time I wash it, and it smells good, but who honestly knows if it helps keep the frizz down. I mean, I for one am not willing to face the humidity without it, but there might be a better option out there?
  • Fall Colors: Despite the faux-Florida weather we’ve been having, the leaves are beginning to change. I especially love the trees that are steadily green except for a patch or two of vibrant yellow or orange – like there are a few flamboyant trendsetters who cannot wait a second longer to don their autumn regalia. Because the weather has been so temperate, flowers continue to bloom. In fact, a few of my neighbors’ hydrangeas seem to be flourishing. I love seeing bright pink flowers against a backdrop of red and orange foliage. It’s weird but beautiful.
  • Spoons Update: Surely you have been waiting on tenterhooks for me to follow up on the spoons situation. Here it is: Filled with confidence from your comments, I approached my husband with the bold suggestion that we replace our flatware. He was all for it. (Aside from the spoons issue, he hates our knives.) So we started researching replacement sets and immediately hit two walls. First, we agreed that we would want to touch and hold any flatware before we buy it, and second, my goodness, flatware sets are PRICEY.  Because we continue to have New House expenses, I am reluctant to drop $600 on a set of flatware we love. So what I did was buy a $10 set of six spoons from Target, on a whim. They are perfect. Now we have plenty of spoons, and a source of inexpensive spoons should any of them disappear. My husband likes them so much we added a set of Target knives to the mix as well. 
  • Dwarf Spruces: Well, I guess I am really in Mundane Updates mode! If you’ll recall, the last time I talked to you about my dwarf spruces, one had died. My only recourse was to find a replacement, but all the replacement spruces were… what is a tactful way to say this… more robust than my surviving spruce. I found it surprisingly difficult to ascertain this at the garden center, and only discovered it once I returned home, spruce in tow. Fortunately, the good people at the garden center took pity on me and allowed me to exchange my new spruce for a smaller one. They are still unbalanced, size wise, but less so. So far, the new guy seems to be staying alive. 
  • Ghost Update: As long as I’m updating you on things, I might as well give you the status of the ghost situation. I went back to the garden center where I’d seen the ghosts of my heart; they were both gone. Sigh. I had some found time one morning last week (I took my kid to the dentist, ran into a friend who was taking her kid to the same dentist, and said friend took both kids to school, freeing up a glorious half hour of driving time for me.), so I made a little tour of Michael’s, Target, and the dollar store to see what kinds of ghosts I could rustle up. The first thing I have to tell you is that all the stores are already selling Christmas décor, which I understand from a retail perspective but which is BONKERS to me from an it-is-not-yet-October perspective. The second thing I have to tell you is that the fall décor was limited, due to making room for Christmas stuff. Fortunately, Michael’s and Target had a decent selection of Halloween stuff, and I walked away from Michael’s with two ghosts. Target had quite a few ghosty options, and I came home with a stand-up ghost (or I could hang it somewhere; it has a little twine loop at the top), and with several pictures of outdoor ghost options for my husband to consider. Target also had some tiny orange battery operated twinkle lights that I can add to my dwarf spruces on the porch. As you can see, my found half-hour was well-spent and my purchases are quite satisfying. 
I do realize that I was originally on the hunt for OUTDOOR ghosties, and these are all ghosts of the indoor variety. OH WELL.
  • Fall Décor: While I feel pretty set, now, on Halloween décor, I do wish I had more in the way of generic fall decorations. (Apparently I have been making this same wish since at least 2016.) I would love to be able to have something to bridge the gap between Halloween and Thanksgiving. Not that I have any super specific ideas about what I’m looking for. Maybe some pumpkin throw pillows? Oooh, these autumn trees are so pretty! But… I have a pair of white light-up trees, on a recommendation from Swistle, and I like them; but now I’m wondering if I need two separate sets of light-up trees. Jenny’s post about 100 pumpkins has me convinced that I could probably make do with real pumpkins and squash as my sole decorations. I really wanted to find some white craft pumpkins that Carla and I could decorate a la the dipping technique we have used before. But I could not find what I was picturing ANYWHERE. (The pumpkins at Michael’s were cream, not white.) Even Amazon has low white-craft-pumpkin supply, and I am reluctant to buy anything from Temu. This grouping of seven pumpkins has promise… but do I really want to spend $18 on seven pumpkins? I like these pumpkins, too, but again… a bit pricey, no? I am still on the fence, pumpkin-wuse. Crate and Barrel does have quite a collection of white ceramic turkeys – which I resisted mightily a few weeks ago (say it with me, friends: I will not spend $60 on a white ceramic turkey.) – but perhaps I will have to revisit them. 
Yes, I see the white pumpkins… but I don’t like these pumpkins as much as I love the turkeys. But would I prefer one giant turkey or a flock of tiny turkeys to use at each place setting? I am not buying a turkey.

What’s new with you this weekend? How do you keep your hair frizz-free? What kind of fall décor do you have in your house?

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Dinners This Week

I made a second batch of pumpkin bread this morning. Second batch in a week, I should specify. The first batch went wrong somehow and resulted in a very stodgy, goopy mess that I threw away after exchanging multiple Paul Hollywood quips with my husband.

Today’s batch is better. I mean, it’s not going to win any beauty pageants. (Why doesn’t it ever RISE?) And it was still slightly stodgy, which I don’t understand. (Okay, I didn’t leave it in for the full 65 to 75 minutes the recipe suggests, but when I checked at sixty minutes, the toothpicks came out clean! That should mean DONE and NO STODGE!)

Stodginess aside, it tastes wonderful. Bonus, my house smells wonderfully of cinnamon and cloves and pumpkin.

Speaking of pumpkin… It’s making its way into the menu again this week. You should be aware that I don’t really like pumpkin. Pumpkin bread – okay, and maybe a smattering of other pumpkin desserts – is the lone exception. But my husband suggested it, and then he suggested another pumpkin recipe when I wasn’t properly enthusiastic about the first one, and a) I try to accept his dinner suggestions because I want to encourage him to help me with the Sisyphean task of coming up with meals to eat day in, day out, every day, day after day, until death, and b) he clearly is in a pumpkin frame of mind, so why not feed that craving?

My range of expressions as I go through the Pumpkin Stages of Acceptance. P.S. I look nothing at all like Kristen Wiig.

This week is supposed to be damp and cooler if not cool, so I am going all out with the hearty meals. 

Dinners for the Week of September 23-30

  • Chicken Shawarma with Steamed Broccoli: We haven’t had this old favorite in awhile; it will be good this week.
  • Beef with Sugar Snap Peas: I’m just in the mood for this?? Feels like it bridges the gap between “fresh and summery” and “nourishing and warm” pretty well. I might throw in a red bell pepper if I’m feeling fancy.
  • Apple Cider Glazed Pork Chops with Green Beans: This is a recipe that I used to make ALL the time… and yet I can find no record of it on my blog! Has it really been THAT long since I’ve made it? Well. Time to fix that. 
  • Ground Beef Tacos: My daughter is having a friend sleep over this weekend; the last time she slept over, she was deeply disappointed that we didn’t have tacos for dinner, which was what I’d served the previous time she’d been over. This time, I will make tacos once again. It’s really a gift for all of us.

What’s on your menu plan for this week?