Soup Weather

Ahhh, fall... my favorite time of the year, and not just because my birthday is coming up! I've always loved fall, and sweaters, and new beginnings, and... soup. Yes, I'm serious. I am a soup lover. My husband might even go so far as to say I have a slight problem with soup. In his meat-and-potatoes view, I'm possibly a soup-a-holic.

There is something about the way fall arrives just after the hottest time of the year, which also happens to be my least favorite season. I'm a sweaty mess for most of August, and it is always a relief to have to dig out a sweatshirt instead of contemplating how much naked flesh I am willing to inflict on my poor defenseless neighbors.

Yesterday was a beautiful day down here on Cape Cod. The temperature hovered around 60 degrees outside, and I decided it was just cold enough to justify making soup. Lately, I've been on a potato-leek kick, so I decided to mix it up a little and make some cheddar broccoli instead. I had picked up a ginormous bag o' frozen organic broccoli florets at B.J.'s on my last trip, so I trundled out to the garage and grabbed a some from the freezer.

I covered them with chicken broth and shook in a bunch of minced dried onions, and left it to simmer. It started smelling good, and pretty quickly the broccoli had thawed and cooked and was falling apart, ready for the next step. I was just about to start dumping in the cheese, when I looked into the pot to give it another stir. Something caught my eye - at least a dozen somethings, actually.

BUGS! Little tiny fruit flies or something, apparently frozen in with the broccoli. Bleah! The more I looked, the more I saw. I scooped out a couple and looked under a toy magnifying glass I dug out of the toy chest to make sure I wasn't looking at discolored broccoli buds. Nope, BUGS.

No soup for me, people. Luckily, it is time for another one of my fall favorites to appear in the store again - Honeycrisp apples. One of the very first blog posts I ever wrote was an ode to the Honeycrisp apple, and my ardent passion for this particular variety has not waned in the last two years. I have been known to (gulp) order them on-line from an orchard in NY state, and they get delivered in their own little individual foam cradles.

The funniest thing about these odd passions for certain foods is how they get passed down to the kids. The soup thing is apparently skipping a generation, because I can't get either kid to willing eat any kind of soup. The Honeycrisp thing, however, has become just as much of a passion for my daughter as it is for me. When I brought home the groceries last week and was putting them away, I said to her, "Guess what time of the year it is?" Not even a heartbeat passed before she yelped, "HONEYCRISP! WHERE ARE THEY?!?" and came storming into the kitchen to search them out.

Sigh. I'm so proud.

Sukkot: The Festival of Booths

Have you seen some strange booth-like shacks in people's backyards and driveways in the past few days? Seen people having lunch and dinner in these little shacks? Entertaining their friends and family with big dinners and then singing until late into the night? Want to know what these people are doing, and why the little shacks appear and then disappear a few days later?


This is the festival of Sukkot, literally translated as the festival of booths. It is a period when your Jewish neighbors fullful the mitzvah of building and then 'living' in the sukkah for 8 days. In modern times, most people don't actually live in the sukkah anymore, but they do eat in them, and occasionally sleep in them.



When I was a child, nobody had a sukkah that we knew, and we grew up in a very observant Jewish community. To fulfil the mitzvah you ate in the synagogue's sukkah but building and decorating your own backyard sukkah wasn't done. Or if it was, it wasn't common. But that changed in the past 20 or so years. Every year more and more Jewish families purchase or build a sukkah, until these days when it's common to see them sprout up all over our town during sukkot. In fact, one of the things we like to do as a family is drive around the Centre and check out all the different sukkahs that are up, especially those in driveways. There's one in town that has an actual door and windows in it. Tres fancy!



The lumberyard/handware store nearby actually sells sukkah kits every year. Our first family sukkah was one of these, but we only used it for about 3 years and then we graduated to the extreme sukkah, which is easy to put up, works well in rain and cold weather to block the wind, and is very easy to decorate. It is a canvas sukkah, hung on steel poles that screw together easily. It takes about an hour to put up, and about 3 hours to decorate!



The sukkah is supposed to have at least 3 sides, and the roof is made of living material like branches, palm fronds, or bamboo mats. You must be able to see through the roof. The rest of the materials can range from wood to plastic to canvas. Ours is the canvas one seen throughout this post. We like it because it's easy to assemble and warm! On these cold New England nights, you want a sukkah that will protect you from the wind and possibly from rain. The canvas sukkah does both admirably.


This is the Jewish family's time to get down and funky and decorate the sukkah with hanging fruits, fancy lights, cards and pictures, etc. Most have a folding table and chairs that people squish around. In our sukkah we use a fall theme with silk leaves and lots of little fairy lights, fancy fruits we purchase left over after that OTHER holiday where people decorate to the utmost, and lots of fall type decorations. Every year we get a few more things as other stuff breaks or disintegrates from being outside in questionable weather.



When my kids were little, they used to look so forward to sleeping in the sukkah. Now, not so much. It's cold here at night, and they're older and complain about sleeping on the ground, blah blah blah. That's OK. I don't sleep in it either.


But when they were little, and we lived in California, there was nothing more exciting than camping out in the sukkah! Weren't they cute?

Autumn is Coming

I can't believe how fast the leaves are changing color. In fact, many are falling to the ground now, and it just became "Autumn" although it has felt more like summer as of late.

Autumn. I like that word a lot better than Fall. Yes, Autumn. It is my favorite season of the 4 we experience here in New England.

beautiful colors - from the leaves to clothes to food - things look so rich and vibrant.

mums - I enjoy decorating my porch with these pretty fall plants, along with checking out others at homes and stores.

pumpkins - to carve, to bake with. It's all goodness!

sweater weather - I do love to walk barefoot normally, regardless of the season, but I do love to wear my cozy sweaters!

apple picking - there is nothing like going to an orchard and picking and eating apples right off of the tree. Brings me right back to childhood memories, as well.

crisp, misty mornings and cool evenings - where you can see your breath

the fallen leaves - swishing and kicking through them

baking - ah, it's time to bake muffins, pies and all sorts of delicious treats

the smells of the season - candles, baked goods, fireplaces

sounds - not only do leaves make a great sound; acorns falling from the trees behind my house tell me autumn is here

comfort food - not only from baking, but the soups, chilis & chowders fill my soul

the holiday season - once autumn arrives, the holidays come fast and furious. Shopping, decorating, eating, drinking, napping...lol

football season - this means hanging out with my in-laws more often, which is a good thing most of the time! We like to hang out together on many Sundays

kids snuggling up - it's a time to get real close and cozy with your loved ones

And let's not forget cuddling up with a blanket in front of my fireplace! Nothing like a nap there, when I can find the time!


Enjoy this Autumn season, whenever it really gets here in full bloom - it goes by so fast!

Baking in the Sun

Today it will be 85 degrees and sunny in Connecticut.

My children went to school wearing shorts, and my hanging baskets of weeping petunias boast new fuchsia blooms.

Local fruit orchards are bursting with apples, peaches, pears, and plums, and it seems almost criminal not to retire to the kitchen and bake them into pies.

I had every intention of doing just that. Armed with overflowing bags of farm-fresh fruit, I planned to storm my kitchen with a paring knife and get to down to business. Oh, it wouldn't have been pretty with all the peelings and pits strewn about, but the aromas would have made up for all that.

Now that's one attractive pie.

My house would smell like a slice of warm apple pie. Or a bowl of peach cobbler with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream melting on the side. Or irresistibly sweet apple crisp.

Alas, fruit flies buzz around my ripening fruit like vultures circling the dead and dying. I've had to discard entire bowls of moldy peaches and plums, and the apples I proudly displayed on my kitchen table now bear curious little brown pock marks.

Oh autumn you tantalizing tease, for the sake of my fruit and prematurely carved pumpkins throughout the land, come back to us.

Until then, we'll be baking in the sun.