Harvest Soup and Stock

Alright, so I finally got a day off to work on this lovely soup! Not only that, but before making the soup it's self, I made a lovely vegetable stock to use in future soups and stews. The soup turned out fantastic with all the flavors of autumn, and talk about healthy! Sweet potato, carrot, pumpkin, apple....This is a great soup to have for lunch with some bread, or as the first course to a large dinner.

Then there's the stock. The stock used the peels from the apples, sweet potatoes, potatoes, and other veggies I used in the soup, plus some extra veggies for favor. I'm keeping huge containers of it in the freezers to pull out whenever I need some stock, plus a little in the fridge to use for the week.

So here it is, my Autumn Harvest Soup

Stuffed Acorn Squash with Chevre

I came home today ravenous, no dinner waiting for me, and then remembered I had an acorn squash I bought just to roast into a suitable meal! However, since I had no sausages on hand, I had to figure out what else I could fill it with. There's no shortage of recipes, so I just mixed a little of different recipes and added chevre (creamy goat cheese) to make this!

Food of the Month; Pumpkin

OK, this is another obvious one, but you can't really argue. Now, I'm a pumpkin lover. It's one of my favorite foods, and something I consume in copious amounts around Autumn, much like apples. Not only are they very much seasonal and festive, but they are delicious and versatile, just like any other cold weather squash. Not only the flesh, but the seeds, leaves, and flowers too!

Chicken Bangers with Sweet Potato and Carrot Mash

Bangers and Mash are one of my favorite meals, but it's a fairly high calorie dish, and I saw these lovely chicken sausages at a local deli. Now, I'm not going to lie to you and say chicken sausages are just as good as your average, super fatty pork sausages. After all, the fat is what makes sausage nice and juicy. I also wanted to make a nice sweet potato mash since, well, sweet potato is wonderful, then, to add some extra nutrition, some carrots. Since my parents were out of town for the Celtic Classic, I had to make dinner for just myself. Obviously, just double or triple or quadruple the recipe if need be (Though I made a fairly generous amount of mash, so use your own judgement)

Apple Butter

You remember my food of the month post, where I mentioned that I needed a lot of apples for something? Well this is it!

Yes, apple butter! Now, the recipe I used came from Ball's Blue Book, and it was supposed to make 3 pints worth, but it actually only wound up filling 2 pint jars, plus enough for this small one, just to keep in the fridge, having only sealed the pints. I suspect I ended up loosing too much apple when I cored it. The recipe I followed went:

Pumpkin Oatmeal with Craisins and Pecans

Two posts in one day? What a shocker!

Well, ok, this I made several days ago, but it really fits in to autumn, so here it is! I would think this could work with acorn squash, which would make for an interesting twist. As it is, I was debating on whether I wanted to post this today or not, but I figured, why not?

This is what I made myself for breakfast on the Equinox, to celebrate the shortening of days and lengthening of nights. Personally, I like the colder months better, so this is a great time of year for me. However, I feel that it's important for me to really take time to observe the change of seasons, as they did in the olden days where everyone relied on farming to survive, instead of today where food might as well come from factories.

Lovely!

Pear, Apple, and Pomegranate Salad

Well, since this is my first REAL post, I should probably mention that I adore autumn. It's my favorite season by far, between Halloween, Thanksgiving, all the foods that are in season, the weather, the changing leaves, that you can get pumpkin flavored anything, it's just a magical time of year. It helps that I don't like hot weather, so the cooler weather is a nice change.

So, here's a salad I made using some delicious autumn fruits. I actually made this salad twice, however the first time I used fresh figs (One of my favorite foods, even if it's expensive and hard to find), and didn't use fennel. I don't think figs really added much in terms of texture, but if you choose to add it, you can.

Today I had it paired with a Ham, Pear, and Brie sandwich.

Picture perfect!

It's a very simple, and very quick, autumn lunch.