Harvest time!

Pumpkins, squash, kale, apples, the thought of these things makes me want to bake a pie and burn a cinnamon scented candle, start a fire and wear a cozy sweater. My tomatoes have rotted thanks to the kiss of frost (I can't say that I'm too upset about this, now my guilt from not picking every last tomato on my 12 plants isn't looming over me - note to self - plant fewer tomato plants next year!) so I can clean up the garden, compost all that has rotten and start to enjoy the autumn bounty. I really love butternut squash soup, that is what I am craving right now. It is very simple too, I dice up a large onion and a few cloves of garlic, sweat them in some olive oil in a big soup pot. Peel, seed and dice a large butternut squash (my garden only produced one beautiful squash, not sure what happened there, but I will treasure it :), add it to the pot with a couple of big pinches of kosher salt. Add about 4 cups of good chicken broth and a few sprigs of any herbs you want (thyme is good), bring to a boil and simmer until the squash is tender. Remove the thyme and buzz the soup with an immersion blender, add about a cup of cream if you wish (also good without it) and there you go! If the flavor is a bit flat I would add a spritz of lemon juice. You can fancy it up and add a dollop of creme fraiche and swirl it with a spoon and top it with homemade croutons, great for company.
The next dinner I'm craving is a thick pork chop, stuffed with apple stuffing, served with roasted maple glazed squash. Dessert would definitely be a thick apple pie a la mode, maybe with maple ice cream to echo the flavors from dinner.
Kale is extremely healthy but not something everyone likes. It is a bit bitter and on it's own may be the vegetable on the plate everyone shoves to the side. One way I like to prepare it is in a Portuguese style soup. Start with some spicy sausage, to make this healthy I simply use lowfat turkey kielbasa. Add to the oiled soup pot with a large diced onion, large diced carrot, a couple of cloves of garlic, a couple of large pinches of kosher salt and a pinch of crushed red pepper. Sweat these ingredients for a few minutes then add a large peeled diced potato and about 4 cups of good chicken broth. Bring to a boil and add about 4 cups of diced kale, stuff it into the soup pot (it will cook down) and simmer, stirring often, for about 1/2 hour. Really simple, warming and comforting.
The carrots, lettuces and leeks are doing well, they will be great in a couple of months, made sweeter by the cold weather to come. I can't wait to have a fresh salad from the garden in the middle of winter!

Nigella Lawson

I want to be Nigella Lawson.
She is sort of everything I'm not: brunette, beautifully voluptuous and happy about it (I'm not voluptuous when I'm chubby, I'm just chubby and not in the right spots, and I am definitely not happy about it).
If you don't know who Nigella Lawson is, she is a cookbook author and has a show on Food Network called "Nigella Feasts". I would not say that she is the best chef by any means, her knife skills seem very poor and sometimes the recipes aren't very enticing. What I love about her is how she loves food. She talks about it as if it is a lover, she waxes poetic about the simplest of ingredients and makes you want it too. Her English accent is gorgeous and she can make the word liver sound great. I love the way she dresses also, the way that her tiny jacket is pinned to her shirt right under her breasts to accentuate her curves. She is unapologetic about eating the most fattening foods there are. I love that! She made croissant pudding for her dinner on one show and after licking the spoon from making a chocolate cake said "You know you would". Yes, I would love to but I'm always on a damn diet! The best part of her show is at the end, when she goes to the refrigerator in her nightgown and takes out some sort of leftover and devours it. I want to be her friend, I want us to cook for each other and enjoy butter and cream and cheese and sausage and not feel bad about it. Sometimes on her show she goes to her "store cupboard" (pantry) and I'm overwhelmed with jealousy. She has beautiful jars and cans of food that she says she purchases while she is traveling. I imagine I have that stuffed store cupboard, and I go to it on a weekend morning, as I'm planning the menu for the party I'm going to give for my friends that night, I grab the jar of spices I picked up on a trip to Spain and the evening meal just comes to me, I'm inspired to create an amazing meal for all to enjoy.
I look forward to her show each week. I record it and watch it on a lazy morning (which means sometimes I don't get to it for a couple of weeks) with a cup of coffee as I sit down to prepare my grocery list and meals for the week. As I'm including several servings of vegetables and whole grains in each day's menu, I live vicariously through Nigella, as she goes to the refrigerator and grabs a chicken leg, squeezes on a spicy brown mustard and devours it without removing the skin. Then she grabs a pint of chocolate ice cream from the freezer and heads off to bed. Oh, I want to be Nigella Lawson.