My Small Fall Obsessions

I dream of autumn all year long.

It’s my very favorite time of year. The golden quality of the light, the trees changing colors, the crispness of the air. Snappy apples, and warm spice mixes, and hot drinks. Sweaters. Oh, the sweaters. Autumn is the one season where I wake up thrilled about the weather everyday. I talk a lot about seasons on this blog, and it’s at least in some part because it’s easy to get out of touch with the cycle of the year. If you’re not cutting hay or harvesting corn or, I don’t know, patching the thatch on your cottage, it’s easy to ignore the seasons. Life used to be a lot more seasonal.

This fall, I’m predictably very much interested in:

1. Pumpkin bread.  And I’m not the only one. I’ve been baking pumpkin bread approximately every ten days since it cooled off, and the biggest challenge is getting my manfriend to let it cool off before we cut it. Did you know if you don’t wait for your bread to cool, you can enjoy a very tasty pumpkin pudding-like thing? You will require a spoon. I use the Vegan With a Vengeance “Best Pumpkin Muffins” recipe, which you can find here. I bake it in a loaf pan and add chocolate chips a lot of the time. You could add something more sensible, like cranberries, but I really have to recommend the chocolate chips.
2. Fair Isle Sweaters. I’ve been working my way through the archives of By Gum, By Golly and I am deeply covetous of all of the stranded knitting Tasha has done. I’m thinking of trying out this pattern for a winter hat for my first stranded attempt.
3. Knitting in General. I am knitting a lot. I’ve started a sweater and I’ve very excited. It’s a forest green simple cardigan, and I vow I will finish it. And then I will finish that sweater I started seven years ago. Or more likely, frog the whole thing and use the yarn for a different, better sweater. And then I will try a stranded one. Okay, I’m getting a little grandiose here. We shall see.
4. Macaroni and Not-Cheese. Vegan technology has finally caught up with me. For a long time, I was a really healthy eater because I was completely broke, vegan convenience food wasn’t very good, and I lived somewhere without a ton of vegan options. Now I am just a mostly healthy eater, because I live in Chicago, have a teensy bit more cash, and there is vegan macaroni and cheese that tastes good. Frozen, boxed, from restaurants. It’s everywhere, and I want to eat all of it. Every bit. All the time. I will have scurvy by first snowfall, at this rate.
5. Nature. I am much more a city mouse than a country mouse, but lately I’ve started dreaming of weekends in the woods. Perhaps a trip to a forest preserve is order.
6. Acorn Squash. Butternut squash has good PR people, but acorn squash is where it’s at. I roasted one yesterday, just with a little water, not even oil or salt and pepper. It was heavenly. We just keep grabbing slices and devouring them, as is.

What are you drawn to this fall?