Wow, it’s just barely above 50 degrees this evening and I left the upstairs window open all day, so the house feels cold and breezy. I worked on-site today, and planned a simple dinner of pasta with pesto from the freezer and a nice green salad. The salad greens froze in my crisper drawer (not the kind of crisp I had in mind) and my feet are cold, so I’m craving something comforting in my tummy. I set the idea of salad aside, and just sliced up a few of the leftover pickling cucumbers from yesterday’s mad, final pickling extravaganza, then moved on to one of our six volunteer butternut squashes instead.
Roasted. With butter and brown sugar. Hello, almost October!
I can’t believe how the weather changed today from sticky and warm and thunder-stormy to windy and cold. Driving home, wet leaves were blowing all over the road and I had to dodge rogue branches pinwheeling out of the sky. The clouds scudded across the landscape and plunged me into darkness, then bathed me in blinding white light ten times in the course of a second. The constant shifting of shadows made me feel haunted by ideas, and the racing matched my flying thoughts. Oh, how I love the voice-recording app on my iPhone. So fun to capture all of that gobbledygook.
So yeah, the sugar maples are starting to turn circus tent yellow-pink-orange and blanket the browning lawns with their curled edges. Inflatable pumpkins pop up on porches all over town, and trees sprout those bizarre witch crashes. Fall is upon us and winter is breathing down her neck with icy fingers reaching for her soft tissue.
Did I mention my cold feet? It’s time to dig out my socks and my beautiful Maxcine-Made fingerless gloves. I washed the flannel sheets today, but I’ll wait a bit to put them on because we’ll get another heat wave in October, and night sweats are not pleasant. Flannel makes them worse. I will, however, throw an extra blanket on the bed tonight.
I don’t know, you guys. Is there anything more delicious than the first winter squash of the season? You know the kind: roasted for an hour, cut side down, then flipped over and popped back into the oven for another ten minutes with the cavities dotted with butter, dark brown sugar and a sprinkling of sea salt?
I didn’t think so.
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