I love fall. I’m glad Chris is leaving this season because fall has so much momentum to carry us through the first stretch of deployment. My first Farm Table box after the Autumnal Equinox included sweet potatoes, beets, and apples. Roasted root vegetables = FALL!
Beet Chèvre Crudités:
Peel four beets, thickly slice them and smear with olive oil, salt, pepper; bake them on parchment paper at 425 for a half hour, then top them with goat cheese and bacon.
We also welcomed fall by celebrating Friendsgiving. Most Thanksgivings we have a problem: it’s not enough time to sortie to Texas, but most of our friends have family in town. Or Chris is absent.
So this year I got wise and solved all these problems by hosting Friendsgiving in September! Isaac helped me decorate the house for autumn and set the table.
The neighbors brought pies, popovers, green beans and wine, and we filled up our whole dining room table with both extensions and the coffee table. THAT is a certain form of satisfaction. Turkey, stuffing, salad, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes—we had it all. Many of the dishes (gravy, stuffing, salad, spiced apple cider iced tea) had an apple theme as a nod to the early nature of the season!
Friendsgiving Salad
Wash and dry a lettuce mix with wild arugula from Farm Table. Add chopped Asian pears, crumbled blue cheese and toasted pine nuts. Dress with apple cider vinegar, olive oil and a drizzle of Portsmouth honey.
And OF COURSE the first day the weather cooled off we had a front porch tea party with Spiced Apple Cider Tea (iced) and Pumpkin Spice Brûlée Oolong Tea (hot). With Fresh Market seasonal yogurt pretzels of course.
Anything to cheer up poor Isaac after having his cavities filled. Apparently he chipped his front tooth at some point—I’m pretty sure I know when, just didn’t know it was that bad—and a cavity formed. He was so brave during the whole thing even though he hated it. At first the laughing gas made him super chatty and he told the dentist all about Alaska, seeing glaciers from the train, how Chris protects us from bad guys, how Pounce meows at raccoons, and where the trains are at the Children’s Museum.
But afterwards he wouldn’t get out of the chair: “I want them to take off my mustache! Please! I don’t like this mustache!!” His lip was numb from the novocain and he HATED it. Can’t blame him.
Outside he ran to some bushes and sobbed. I employed the same guilt tactic I used after his cardiology appointments in Florida: we scooped jellybeans out of the bins at Fresh Market. After watching a train come out of the depot. He later reported: “My mustache is fall off. I didn’t like that mustache.”
We can point to this as the beginning of his lifelong fear of dentistry. Hopefully it hasn’t forever ruined fall for him.
A Lazy Saturday in Japan
Current Events
Dive Into a Rainy Day on Enoshima Island
Kakegawa Castle