Devon and Will lifted off the mild Arizona mountainside and touched down as Philly, et al., settles into the rusty hues and tart air of the beloved season of breathtaking decadence and...well I suppose I've already mentioned my feelings on autumn. Long story short, it's fall here on the East Coast, where we have flamboyantly distinct seasons with their own layers and flavors. Family at Philadelphia International means family at the dinner table, which, to me anymore, means a captive audience for dessert-time concoctions.

Enter pumpkin cookies with brown sugar glaze - a twist on my grandmom's recipe (who even gave me the can of pumpkin I used to make these - big ups to Mom-Mom.)


Ingredients:
1 cup butter
1 cup granulated sugar (I super-stealthily substituted 1/2 cup Splenda, but do your thing.)
1 cup canned pumpkin (Libby's, for sure)
1 egg
1 t. baking soda
3/4 t. baking powder
3/4 t. ground cinnamon (blah blah blah toss some cinnamon in there)
1/2 t. ground nutmeg (didn't have, went with a pinch of allspice - Macgyver Stewart)
1/2 t. salt
2 cups all-purpose flour

(Glaze:)
3 T. butter
4 T. milk
1 cup confectioners' sugar
3/4 t. vanilla extract
1/2 cup packed brown sugar

Preheat oven to 350 and grease cookie sheet.

Cream 1 cup butter, granulated sugar, and pumpkin.
Add egg and mix well.
Add baking soda, baking powder, ground cinnamon, nutmeg/allspice/what have you, salt, and flour - Mix well.

Scoop batter into lumps on cookie sheet, and, using a wet finger, smooth peaks down on tops.
Bake 14-16 minutes or so, until you get a clean toothpick test.
Transfer to cooling rack.*
Let cool about 15 minutes before icing. (With what? you ask? We-heh-helll...)

Cook rest of butter with milk, and brown sugar until dissolved.
Cool and add confectioners' sugar and vanilla.
Place the cooled cookies on a piece of wax paper (or put wax paper under cooling rack, if it's not tucked under a cabinet) and go to town drizzling those suckers with your glaze. It seemed to make a whole lot, but that was a good thing; I ended up double-layering to give them a nice even sugar stratum.

I opted to let them cool on the wax paper and keeping them in the fridge overnight in a big Tupperware container for easy after-work transport. Well, minus three I ate with milk and about six Paul ate in two handfuls. Those didn't stand half a chance for making it to outdoor transport. Paul's family all seemed to enjoy the soft, cakey, almost doughnut-like treats - in fact, I have yet to get my Tupperware container back since no one seems willing to part with the final scribblins. Great success!

* Macgyver Stewart strikes again. One woman's under-desk storage tray is the same woman's cooling rack, when hot cookies enter the picture. Perhaps your kitchen cabinets also have tension rod-friendly sections of underhang, in which case you can simply rig a basic balancing act of sorts.

I remember going to a screening of an animated short set to Danse Macabre, composed by Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns, around Halloween time with a group of fellow students from Seabrook or Moore School, between first and fifth grades. What class or group, what purpose, I have no idea, nor do I remember it being much anything else in detail but mind-bogglingly awesome.

Brilliant. Stunning. Epic.

A phenomenal auditory takeover.

I see through the notes a vaguely lit auditorium, captured under a petroleum jelly film over my mind's eye. The cadence hangs taut over the blurred gaps, strung sequentially by a phantom orchestra playing, or not playing, through speakers or for salaries that my assumed group rate ticket may never have funded; the piece dances full and familiar in my memory despite of this floating context.

Hazy now as it may be, from then on this arrangement has been my favorite instrumental piece. I listened to it in looping sessions while I outlined my senior thesis that fall semester; the fall before that, while studying abroad in Madrid, I jogged to it on my iPod a couple times for the sheer grandiosity of it. Once again during this time of this year, it delivers a haunting experience laid subconsciously over dry and drying leaves crunching and creaky wooden doors swinging from telltale rusty hinges.

Although darling, this video is not the creepy, enthralling version lodged in my mind (that I have yet to find, dammit! I'm considering contacting elementary school teachers at this point.) In any case, hearing this wonderful, eerie piece is an aural pleasure to enjoy with abandon.

To October!



"Delicious autumn!
My very soul is wedded to it,
and if I were a bird
I would fly about the earth
seeking the successive autumns."
George Eliot

Autumn and dessert with a "fruit has nutritional value" component = two of my favorite things in the world. Apple crisp, then, is a no brainer
come late
September.
However, I could not for the life of me remember the last time I had apple crisp; in fact, if I had to place a wager it'd be on 7th grade home ec. Pathetic.

To right this wrong, I made the above and below to stunning results:

-5 apples - peeled and sliced
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1/2 T all-purpose flour
- 1/2 t ground cinnamon
- 1/4 cup water

1/2 cup quick-cooking or old-fashioned oats
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/8 t baking powder
1/8 t baking soda
1/4 cup butter, melted (<- This is where I forgot to portion the recipe in half - the original calls for 10 apples - and I used 1/2 cup butter, Paula Dean style. Still awesome, probably a crisper apple crisp with the correct amount.)

Preheat oven to 350.
Place sliced apples in a glass dish.
Mix the white sugar, 1/2 T flour, and cinnamon together and sprinkle over apples.
Pour water evenly over all.
Combine the oats, 1 cup flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and melted butter together. Crumble evenly over the apple mixture.
Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes.
(I turned it up to 375, moved it to the top rack, and left the door open a crack for the last 5-7 minutes to brown it a bit more.)

Paul and I enjoyed it with vanilla Häagen-Dazs and a sprinkle of cinnamon. And by "enjoyed it" I mean inhaled it and then relished in second helpings with singed tongues. Many thanks once more to Whitney and Kathy for providing the apples and inspiration. Happy Crisping!

While at home in Upper Deerfield over the weekend, I was offered homegrown string beans, Japanese eggplant, potatoes, peppers, and South Jersey orchard apples, all for free from a generous amateur farmer (who happens to also be my mother) and my best friend, who visited Mood's Market and bought mums, gourds, 24 lbs. of apples, and overall stock in fall on Saturday with her mother, her genetic donor of a love for autumn and a lack of purchasing control. As I collected my fresh-off-the-stem apples and vegetables, I found myself relishing in the dust settled into the creases of my hands, coating the inside of my brown bag. Even your yuppiest Trader Joe's or Whole Foods lacks that dirty assurance that your food definitely, positively did not come from a factory, and there's something chest-beatingly satisfying about knowing your hands are among the first to handle your little packages of flavor and nutrients. When arranging these pieces in my produce basket, I rubbed the potatoes, each uniquely tapered, about the size of a large lemon, one by one sideways into the curved palm of my hand over the kitchen sink to loosen and let fall the dirt and fringed root tendrils; little Gulliver craned his neck from the floor, fascinated by the patting and dirt misting sounds coming from above.

As I drove to what already feels like home, even after leaving home, stopping just short of the bridge to urbanity, I thought of apple crisp with brown sugar and rolled oats, soy hamburger with sauteed onions over rice and grilled Japanese eggplant with miso paste, mashed sweet potatoes with cinnamon butter, string beans breaded in panko with egg and pan-fried in olive oil with a soy sauce drizzle, non-Lean Cuisine meals to enjoy and share proudly, lovingly. Brushing my home turf off of produce pulled minutes ago rejuvenated the excitement for real food that I so often bury by accident with my post-workday penchant for Foreman-friendly frozen bits like plastic-packed veggie burgers and "Maryland-style crabcakes" packaged in Maine months ago. Call me biased - born, raised, and residing in the Garden State - but I'm hard-pressed to treasure something more genuinely than weighing the possibilities of homegrown produce in my dirt-laden, rootingly enriched hands.

While in Bisbee, 20 minutes from Sierra Vista, Arizona, Paul and I picked up a sampler pack of four 1/2-lb. bags of "freshly roasted specialty coffee" grown and prepared by Seth Appell and Old Bisbee Roasters. After preparing a pot of make-your-Saturday-morning coffee today, I felt apt to recommend and challenged to classify (smell? taste?) the pleasure of this awesome treat. Let me tell you, he exhibits impressive self control in labeling the Honduras FT Organic Marcala as merely having a "deep clean body," "Sassafras essence," and "spicy sweet finish;" the flavor of this coffee is effing delightful as it lies playfully on the tongue in a bold, definitive palette. The freshness of grinding these beans moments prior to the pot is the difference of an original to a Xerox put in contest with drug store tins, and now my emergency Folgers cowers, shamed to the baking soda region of the fridge. Before the Honduras Marcala, we tried the Costa Rican Pulp Natural CoopePalmares , a surprisingly richly fruited blend I really liked chilled with half and half. We have two bags left - Brazilian FT Organic CooperVitae ("creamy velvet body," "aromas of maple, honey, and tropical fruit") and Guatemalan Huehuetanango San Juan Pixcaya ("an exceptionally sweet, delightful coffee, flavorful without being overpowering") and after that I plan on capitalizing upon Seth's offers of free shipping and coupons in our package. Very nice for drinking or gifting - a hearty, natural replacement to gas station coffee char.