This is the final countdown to Thanksgiving. Six days to go! I went to the grocery store yesterday, just to get some milk, and was practically trampled by stressed-out shoppers with carts full of turkeys, aluminum pans and stacks of canned green beans and pumpkin purée. Here are a couple of things to remember:

Make your pie dough now. Melissa Clark’s All-butter Pie Crust recipe keeps in the freezer for three months; defrost it in the fridge overnight before you need to bake.

After writing out your Thanksgiving menu, divide your grocery list into perishables and non-perishables. Get those non-perishables this weekend, if you can! Join the stressed-out folks at your grocery store!

This is one of my favorite cautionary tales of Thanksgiving. I have since learned to keep it simple. Don’t promise to deliver a dish to the feast if you haven’t made it before. It is perfectly fine to buy items to bring – time is short and we have enough demands on our already-fraying nerves. We are not Martha, and we do not have a staff. And not everything is made to be photographed, Instagrammed or put on Threads. Life is messy. Got it?

I lived in London the year after I was graduated from Washington College, with another WC alum and one of her childhood chums. We were sight-seeing by day, and waitressing in Covent Garden restaurants by night. It was the end of the 70s, and there were Mohawks galore, and cute punky girls wearing Doc Martens, sporting safety pin jewels.

We had been invited to a posh Thanksgiving dinner and were responsible for bringing a dish to share. Our assignment, as the token Americans, was to bring scalloped potatoes. That seemed simple enough. But we were kitchen novices. Our spaghetti sauce had sent boys with potential scurrying from our flat – because we thought chopped onions were an excellent thickener for the runny tomato sauce. Fully aware of our limitations, and these being the olden days before the Internet and smart phones, we set off to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s library, in search of a helpful cookbook. At least we were smart enough to have library cards.

We hauled the weighty Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Cookery and Household Management back to our flat to do our research. Mrs. Beeton’s book, unlike many of Nigella’s or Ina Garten’s friendly and photo-heavy volumes today, was complicated and bewildering to us. Illustrations? Few and far between. Breadcrumbs? Bechamel sauce? Grams instead of cups? And the cooking times were distressingly vague, too. 1 1/2 to 2 hours? That could make the difference between half raw potatoes and a dishful of burnt glue!

After thumbing through the book we finally realized that Mrs. Beeton did not have an easy-to-follow recipe for scalloped potatoes. We were left to our own devices; young women who thought chopped onions were the salvation for watery spaghetti sauce have no business trying to invent scalloped potatoes. We didn’t even have a potato peeler! We hacked the raw potatoes into hunks, covered them with ropes of processed gloopy cheese, and too much milk, and shoved them in our tiny oven. Our scalloped potatoes were a lumpy, sloshing mess.

We somehow transported the now-cooled baking dish (where did we ever find one?) on our knees on the Tube ride to Chiswick. Once we had arrived and said our hellos, we warmed the potatoes up it an intimidating Aga range, which did nothing to improve the potatoes’ appearance. Those sad-looking, gray potatoes were inedible. We were not sure of the etiquette for this situation. Our dish remained untouched by the discerning Brits who were already suspicious of anything American: particularly loud young American women who perhaps drank a bit too much of the Beaujolais Nouveau… Our hearts were in the right place, though, and we helped with the washing up, before retiring to drink port and smoke cigars with the former RAF pilots, who were telling the best stories we had ever heard.

The lesson here: if asked to bring something specific and complicated for Thanksgiving, and you are pressed for time, see what your grocery store or bakery has to offer. You might be surprised. Otherwise keep it simple. Or avail yourself of internet videos. Scalloped Potatoes It is amazing what you can find these days. “Dear Mrs. Butler, I hope it is not too late to apologize for the scalloped potatoes we brought to your very nice dinner party. Thanks again for inviting us.”

The garlic is a lovely, unexpected flavor with the creamy potatoes. And the layers of grated Gruyere melt in a divine fashion; the cheese was evident in every bite. The RAF chaps would have enjoyed these potatoes.

Good luck with your Thanksgiving planning, lists, travel and cooking. We will be having old-fashioned, lumpy mashed potatoes once again this year, but we will be enjoying a very fancy, store-bought chocolate pie. I can’t wait!

“The more we peeled, the more peel there seemed to be left on; by the time we had got all the peel off and all the eyes out, there was no potato left – at least none worth speaking of.”

― Jerome K. Jerome

After this past week of unseasonable warm fall weather it might actually be time to put away the shorts and flip flops, close the windows, find the wool sweaters, and think about a few meals before we get caught up in the confusion and mayhem of planning Thanksgiving cooking. Let’s say farewell to cole slaw, and hello to warm, braised cabbage.

Cabbage is cheap, and packed with nutrition, as well as being versatile. The last cabbage I pulled out from the heap weighed 4 pounds, and was just brimming over with meal potential. You can easily spice up your weekly menu without spending lots of money. And cabbage doesn’t have to be just the stinky accompaniment to corned beef once a year; there are lots of new and enticing ways to prepare it. I’ll bet you that right this minute someone in Brooklyn is experimenting with an artisanal bespoke organic cabbage smoothie cocktail, infused with saffron and CBD.

When winter rolls around we tend to think of oven-baked meals as a way to keep the kitchen cozy and our roll-poly bellies full. Whenever we cook pork chops I reflexively think of cole slaw and apple sauce as good side dishes. Samsin Nosrat (Of Salt Fat Acid Heat fame.) has a better idea than my mother’s 1950’s Hellmann’s mayonnaise-inspired slaw dish. You should try this: Samin Nosrat’s Bright Cabbage Slaw. It incorporates cabbage and apples, without the fat and calories of mayonnaise. It is a bright treat on a dark winter night. You can pretend you are in California.

Nigella’s Sweet and Sour Slaw is a little more time consuming – it might be perfect for a Saturday night meal, and it is quite festive and deelish.

Now you can take your new knife skills and try something fun for Taco Tuesday: Not Your Traditional Korean Tacos. Our friends at Food52 always have a tasty and clever solution for dinner, and these fresh Korean tacos will set you apart from the sodium-laden Old El Paso-recipe dependent households.

A more sophisticated take on cabbage and wraps comes from Bon Appétit: One-Skillet Hot Sausage and Cabbage Stir-Fry with Chives. Mr. Sanders is always buying Italian sausage, and we wind up using it repeatedly for sausage and peppers, or as pizza topping. This adds another meal to our burgeoning repertoire for winter 2024.

And where would we be in the midst of a gelid winter without an easy peasy every-thing-is-in-the-kitchen-already recipe? I love recipes where everything is already on hand; in the fridge, in the pantry, in the larder, ready to roll: Pasta with Cabbage, Winter Squash and Walnuts. We’ve got plenty of walnuts on hand for brownies, and Thanksgiving emergencies. No need to go out.

Cabbage probably won’t ever be the flashy media darling that kale was, but it is dependable. Like an old friend, or an old pair of jeans. You remember it fondly and it soothes your soul. The Washington Post food section has this nice, warming cabbage dish for you: Roasted Cabbage Bowls with Quinoa and Soft-boiled Eggs

Next week we will finally talk about Thanksgiving. Get ready!

“‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
      To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
      Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
      And whether pigs have wings.’”
—Lewis Carroll

We have almost had our first frost of the season. It is barely November, and Mr. Sanders, in anticipation of a predicted frost warning for our area early this morning, turned on the heat last night, to much mocking from this former New Englander. All he needed to do was huddle around the kitchen stove, and he would have warmed up quickly from our afternoon walk with Luke the wonder dog.

It is sweater weather again, finally, but it is still a refreshing novelty; we aren’t battling the elements just yet. It’s fun to rummage around in the closet for some old friends; the best sweaters are the most raggedy, pilled and stretched out. I am wearing a ratty old black wool pullover that I bought deeply discounted from a sales pile at a Gap in West Palm Beach at least 10 years ago. Its elbows are worn and translucent, but if I wear a black turtleneck, no one else notices. It is perfect for work and wearing to the Y. I also just found the Bean cardigan from college that miraculously still fits. I might just be buried in it.

Equally serviceable, and just as humble, is a sheet pan dinner. Rummage in the fridge and see what you have got. Or better yet, make a plan at the beginning of the week, for tasty items that can roast themselves for your warming dinner. No fuss and easy to clean up, sheet pan meals will keep you nice and warm until it it time to bring out the big guns: the roasts, the casseroles, the pot pies, the stews and the slow cooker meals.

I love parchment paper, which is a life saver for me for almost every meal. I keep a box of pre-cut sheet-pan-sized sheets in the cookie sheet, cutting board cabinet, right next to the stove. Some sheet pan recipes call for preheating the oven, and the pan, to 500°F or 450°F. Read your recipes carefully, so you don’t start a home fire. Thanks to an excellent liberal arts education, and Ray Bradbury, I will forever be mindful that paper ignites at 451°. And everyone’s oven is different – so be careful! (The Spy and I do NOT receive any compensation from Amazon, but this is a miraculous cooking item that I love: Parchment Paper Sheets )

Our household gods at Food52 have some practical advice for making sure your sheet pan chicken is extra tasty and browned attractively – baking powder. They suggest rubbing a “mixture of baking powder, salt, and other seasonings all over the chicken to promote browning and crispier skin.” Good to know. Sheet Pan Chicken with Broccoli, Chickpeas and Parmesan.

Food52 also has an excellent way to prepare pork chops. Sheet-Pan Pork Chops & Vegetables With Parsley Vinaigrette These tasty pork chops will make you appreciate the changing seasons.

Dorie Greenspan proves my point that you can never have too many chicken recipes: Balsamic Chicken Sheet Pan Supper And she understands that some of us prefer breasts to the ever-popular chicken legs or thighs.

We cook a lot of Italian sausage with onions and peppers on the stove top, which inevitable creates a huge delicious mess with all the splattering and sputtering. Maybe this will be an easier way to go, since the inside of our over is already coated with scorched corn meal and charred cheese drips from our weekly pizza creations. Sheet Pan Sausage and Peppers Add a salad, some focaccia, and a little red wine. Yumsters!

Sometimes we like eggs for dinner. Or for a hearty, holiday breadfast, one that will keep you going until the Thanksgiving dinner is finally on the table. Easy Sheet Pan Baked Eggs And Vegetables Eggs and Veggies

Enjoy the transition into the cooler weather. And be sure to turn your clocks back on Saturday night!

“I ate them like salad, books were my sandwich for lunch, my tiffin and dinner and midnight munch. I tore out the pages, ate them with salt, doused them with relish, gnawed on the bindings, turned the chapters with my tongue! Books by the dozen, the score and the billion. I carried so many home I was hunchbacked for years. Philosophy, art history, politics, social science, the poem, the essay, the grandiose play, you name ’em, I ate ’em.”
― Ray Bradbury

Happy Halloween! Almost. All the ghoulies and ghosties and denizens of Hogwarts are getting ready to celebrate the annual rite of the All Hallows’ Eve, which should include candy, skeletons and pumpkins. Here’s hoping there is good weather on Tuesday night, so the youngsters can enjoy a little creative time away from their helicopter parents, raking in oodles of treats.

Back in the day we carried paper shopping bags with handles for our modest haul of treats. It was a bumper crop year if the handles tore away beneath of the weight of the Butterfingers, Milky Ways, Three Musketeers, Hershey bars, wax teeth, candy apples, nonpareils, and Tootsie Pops. I remember thinking my older brother and his tall friends were so ingenious with their ambitious use of pillowcases. Now, as I understand from extensive internet posts, that reusable Baggu bags are all the rage – because they can hold up to 40 pounds. Can you imagine if 40 pounds of chocolate, sugar, cocoa butter, skim milk, lactose, milk fat, soy lecithin, peanuts, corn syrup, palm oil, salt, egg whites and artificial flavor waddled home through your front door? And that is just in Snickers bars. Throw in some palm oil from Twix bars, the red dye from Twizzlers, Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Blue 1 from Starbursts, citric acid, tapioca dextrin, modified corn starch in Skittles, or corn starch in peppermint patties. Ye gods! Peppermint Patties (YouTube link)

Sadly, Mr. Sanders and I live in a dead zone. Our neighborhood is shunned by the trick-or-treaters. We’ve only had a sidewalk for a couple of years, so few kids have made their way over the lawns in search of goodies. And then there were the COVID years, which was even worse. I’m not sure if our neighbors are trying to lure Hansel and Gretel, or if they are just bouncing with exuberance for the Halloween season, but they have a veritable monster mash display of life-sized skeletons, posed in a variety of activities, that draws the few venturing kids away from us. Sigh. I fear the legacy my mother’s humorless, eat-these-because-they-are-good-for-you boxes of raisins has followed me – although I have to state clearly, and for the record, that I have never once handed out raisins. I am firmly in the liberal candy camp that believes in distributing full-size candy bars, in case any trick-or-treaters who live in my neighborhood are reading this. The little white house, next to the house with the back-lit, fire-breathing dragon skeleton on the roof, and the frolicking skeletons playing football on the lawn. Stop by. We don’t disappoint. Ecco-friendly Baggu bags are welcome. Childhood is fleeting – enjoy it while you can.

I’ll have my dozen Martha-approved paper gift bags ready to hand out on Tuesday night, each containing a couple peanut butter cups or Starbursts – trying to be mindful of allergies and braces. Skittish Luke the wonder dog will not be happy. He hears stormtroopers pounding with every little ghostly tap on the door. He’ll be safe in the back bedroom, watching The Morning Show on his iPad. I’ll be baking a quick, all-pretty-much-natural ingredients pumpkin bread, because this is the time of the year to practice for Thanksgiving. There’s only a month to go! I want to bake pumpkin bread just ahead of time, and toss it into my bag of tricks when we drive away to the mountains for our annual Thanksgiving-in-a-Rental-House. It will smell divine! We might have to sample some along the way.

Food52 Pumpkin Bread Please note – no artificial flavors or colors!

Fancy Bon Appétit Pumpkin Bread with Salted Maple Butter, because we can.

Best Damn Pumpkin Bread

“From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!”
– Scottish traditional

I spend a lot of time engaged in wishful thinking. Here we are, just around the corner from Halloween, and I am already starting to scribble lists for Thanksgiving. I’ve even got a dedicated (albeit dusty) corner of the kitchen for a growing stack of items to toss into the car before we head off to the rental house in the mountains for the Thanksgiving holiday. So far I have the turkey-shaped glass candleholders, and a box of candles. The pile will grow. (Corkscrew, electric carving knife, grease separator, canister of Wondra flour…)

There is no frost on the pumpkin as yet, the one bought a couple of weeks ago on our field trip to the farm stand, and yet I am mulling the finer points of transitioning from traditional pumpkin pie to a TikTok chic chocolate olive oil cake for Thanksgiving dessert. (Chocolate Olive Oil Cake) And what should we do for potatoes? Peel pounds of russets and hope the mountain of bland, buttery goodness appeals to the 9-year-old and his younger brother? Or should we experiment with Lyonnaise potatoes? Or maybe risk our fingertips and pull out the deadly guillotine and try Crispy Cheesy Garlic Potato Stacks? With the world in turmoil, it is probably just as well that I focussed on an annual family meal that is still weeks away.

Most sensible people would channel their energies toward getting prepared for Halloween, the more immediate holiday. As I have said, we have decorated the front porch with a pumpkin, and now hanging from the hook on the front door is a colorful bunch of dried corn, tied with a jaunty burgundy bow; surely, Martha-approved. She might look askance at the black, skeletal plastic flamingos, but we are fond of them.

More preparation will include buying the candy to distribute on Halloween itself. I still remember the year I bought Tootsie Rolls a week before Halloween, because I don’t like Tootsie Rolls, and yet, maybe because I was pregnant, I found them irresistibly delicious that year. And subsequently gained five pounds. In a week. I cannot abide Tootsie Rolls now, but I bet if I were alone in a house with a bag of them, I might change my mind, again. The only will power that I can muster comes from keeping the Halloween candy out of the house until the last possible minute.

Potatoes, on the other hand, take a little more prep work than just clawing open a plastic bag and tearing into the tiny, crinkly packages. First, you have to consider the merits of the many varieties of potato. There are more than 200 types of potatoes sold in the United States. Amazing. Simply, there are seven categories: russet, red, white, yellow, blue/purple, fingerling, and petite. Don’t take my word for it: Potato Varieties

After a summer full of potato salads (red bliss), garlic smashed potatoes (yellow), and grilled potatoes (white), it will be a nice change of pace to turn on the oven and bake some warm fluffy Russet potatoes. Time in a warm kitchen while potatoes are baking is well spent: while puttering, writing lists, setting the table, reading the paper. Time slows to a manageable crawl.

A baked potato is the easiest way to enjoy a warm, though solitary, meal. But a big part of Thanksgiving is passing dishes around the family dinner table. Baked potatoes aren’t as communal as heaving a weighty bowl of steaming hot, mashed, or scalloped, potatoes to the person on your right. So now is the time to practice.

This Thanksgiving we will be using a strange kitchen in a rented house – who knows what equipment there might be on hand. Some years we have stayed in houses where the kitchen was college common room basic: flatware that might have been filched from a cheap diner, mismatched melamine plates, cobwebby wine glasses, paper towels for napkins. Other years Williams Sonoma had been well patronized, and we could spatchcock the turkey with abandon. The unknown is part of our family lore, and our Thanksgiving traditions. (Although I prefer not to dwell on the year I peeled 5 pounds of potatoes with a dull paring knife, feeling like a sad Beetle Bailey character…)

I will be trying these new potato dishes out on Mr. Sanders and Luke the wonder dog in the coming weeks. Join us!

Crispy Cheesy Garlic Potato Stacks

Lyonnaise Potatoes

We might enjoy some new potatoes and desserts this Thanksgiving, along with the same old time-tested family squabbles, turkey hats, sausage balls, and endearing idiosyncrasies. As always, there will be leftovers for turkey sandwiches and too many dishes to wash. I can’t wait.

“In the end, I always want potatoes. Mashed potatoes. Nothing like mashed potatoes when you’re feeling blue…The problem with mashed potatoes, though, is that they require almost as much hard work as crisp potatoes, and when you’re feeling blue the last thing you feel like is hard work. Of course, you can always get someone to make the mashed potatoes for you, but let’s face it: the reason you’re blue is that there isn’t anyone to make them for you. As a result, most people do not have nearly enough mashed potatoes in their lives, and when they do, it’s almost always at the wrong time.”

― Nora Ephron

Last weekend we packed up the dog, the house, our suitcases, and the car, and scampered out of town for a few days. We were flying to the big city to attend a wedding, and were giddy at the prospect of seeing dear old friends, and their children, and their other old friends, and their colorful relatives. We were going to get gussied up to watch the young folk pledge their troth in the golden light of the afternoon, while we tossed rose petals. Then there would be dancing, Champagne drinking, and cake.

The evening before the wedding festivities began we walked the short way from our hotel to a neighborhood bistro, something we do not normally do in our small town. The idea of proximity to a local brasserie was giddy-making; as if we were suddenly as chic as Nick and Nora Charles, out for the evening, full of witty repartee and gin martinis. Obviously, we need to get out more often. One would not acquires the air of a sophisticated Parisian in the time it takes to walk one city block, but it seemed that between the revolving doors of the hotel, to the black and white tiled foyer of the bistro, we suddenly oozed experience and savoir faire. Maybe I have watched too many movies. I’m sure the young finance bros gathered at the bar, who were loudly celebrating the Friday of a three-day-weekend, were not nonplussed when we slid into our cozy booth. I’m pretty sure we just looked like their parents. Never mind that I had remembered lipstick. For the evening I was a glamorous city slicker, out for the evening with William Powell.

And William Powell wisely did not order gin martinis, because this Myrna Loy would have fallen asleep before the appetizers were served. Instead we drank some nice, pricey Chardonnay, and shouted to each other over the noise. Bistros are loud. Very loud. William Powell ordered garlicky fruit de mer, and I entered the Way Back Machine and asked for a Croque Monsieur, avec frites, to remember my post-grad week in Paris: one stop on my whirlwind backpacking trip through Europe. The classic bistro sandwich arrived at the table, and was all that I had hoped for: hot, carmelized Gruyere cheese, sweet, thin slices of ham, rich béchamel sauce, good toasted bread, with a smackeral of moutarde.

A Croque Monsieur had been a Parisian splurge for me, having the budget for just one nighttime meal in a fashionable bistro. Otherwise I ate street food, or bought bread from fragrant neighborhood bakeries as I crammed in all the sights and smells walking for a few days through winding streets, past all the art one could hope for, deciphering French newspapers, and trying to draw unobtrusively in Paris of all places! All while trudging up steep Metro staircases, visiting cathedrals, watching people, reading maps, trying and rejecting the dark tobacco of Gauloises cigarettes. That’s a lot nostalgia to cram into one meal. There were no leftovers. And then there were the profiteroles! Délicieux!

Back home, where there are few glittering lights, and no brasseries, I have decided that I don’t need to restrict my consumption of Croque Monsieurs (messieurs?) to Paris, or to someone else’s neighborhood bistro. I can make them at here. Although I do like to travel and have someone else do the cooking, if I want a quick trip down memory lane, perhaps I can take the short walk to the kitchen. Paris will always beckon.

Food & Wine Croque Monsieur

Ina Garten’s Croque Monsieur

Eric Kayser’s Croque Monsieur

“I guess it goes to show that you just never know where life will take you. You search for answers. You wonder what it all means. You stumble, and you soar. And, if you’re lucky, you make it to Paris for a while.”
― Amy Thomas

One of our household gods, Anthony Bourdain, said: “Everyone should know how to roast a chicken. It’s a life skill that should be taught to small children at school.”

I have always loved chicken. It’s not fancy. It does not need to be complex. It is steady and reliable. It is a blank canvas, ready to take on your vision. It is ready to nurture your fragile soul. It is adaptable, versatile and eager to please.

I knew growing up that my favorite birthday dinner of baked chicken and rice would be reliably crisp, juicy and delicious. I knew the summertime chicken legs, that my father always nearly incinerated on the back yard hibachi grill, were going to be blackened and juicy and scalding hot, but I happily gnawed away at them anyway, gingerly, with newly seared fingertips. On family summer vacations I would eat all the Howard Johnson’s crunchy fried chicken I could get. In college I was a reliably cheap date, because I would always order the chicken dish. Old reliable, that’s me!

I did not entice Mr. Sanders to marry me with the viral chicken recipe currently running rampant on TikTok, though we are rather fond of roasted chicken, grilled chicken, chicken Schnitzel, fried chicken, stir-fried chicken and barbecued chicken. Not to mention chicken Marsala, chicken piccata, chicken kabobs, chicken salad, chicken tacos, chicken and waffles, and chicken pot pie. And we will certainly give the flashy TikTok Marry Me Chicken a whirl – even though it is based on an old, reliable recipe from 2016 in Delish.

Marry Me Chicken 2023 TikTok

Marry Me Chicken 2016

There is a chicken dish for every season, every mood, every whim, every budget. As we move from summer into fall, it’s time to take the chicken off the grill, and bring it back inside. Sheet pan chicken meals are an efficient method for preparing chicken, a veg and a starch. Make a salad, light the candles and pour a little wine; ease your way into dinner.

Roasted Chicken Legs with Potatoes and Kale

Chicken, Sausage, Peppers and Potatoes

Lemon Chicken Drumsticks with Potatoes and Kale

Sheet Pan Garlic Herb Butter Chicken & Potatoes

If you are hard-pressed for time, but want to bring comfort home, stop and pick up a rotisserie chicken. With just a little imagination and a modicum of effort, you can have a comforting meal tonight, and can be clever with leftovers: Rotisserie Chicken Ideas from Food52

Since I work from home, I have plenty of opportunities to get the jump on dinner. I think we will prepare Bourdain’s roast chicken, and reap the benefits over the weekend. Maybe we should video the dinner prep and give Marry Me Chicken some competition. It will a nice way to remind Mr. Sanders that he is still adorable.

Anthony Bourdain’s Roast Chicken

“The ability to properly prepare a moist yet thoroughly cooked bird, with nicely crisp skin, should be a hallmark of good citizenry—an obligation to your fellow man. Everyone walking down the street should be reasonably confident that the random person next to them is prepared, if called upon, to roast a chicken.”
-Anthony Bourdain

It’s the end of the line for summer. Today is the last day of what some have said was the hottest summer on record. I believe them. I spent the season scurrying between air conditioned spaces, or dashing around the yard, repositioning the sprinkler to keep the tomatoes hydrated and the new pachysandra bed alive. I did a lot of sweaty running in the heat, while I was dodging the constant clouds of marauding mosquitoes, and avoiding the troop maneuvers of more ants than I have ever seen.

Here, late in September, the pachysandra have taken root, and the tomato plants yielded a modest crop. We were not carried away by the flying monkey-sized mosquitoes, and the ants’ mission remained top secret: they seem to have moved on. With the cooler afternoon temperatures, Luke the wonder dog and I have resumed our afternoon walks, so life is good. We aren’t trapped in the air conditioning, and we can stretch our legs again. The neighbors’ bushes have never smelled so sweet, or so I gather.

While I tend to whine about the summer heat and humidity, I am keenly aware that it is almost the end of the growing season for some of our favorite foods. Soon we won’t be able to hunt and gather our locally grown tomatoes and corn. It is time for all the wretched pumpkin-spice-flavored everything. I am preparing to transition. Last weekend we made a delightfully spicy tomato pasta dish with local cherry tomatoes. I am hoping it will taste as good, and feel as warming as the scorching days of August, in December, when all we have to choose from will be hot house tomatoes, or those trucked in from California for a king’s ransom, and a guilt-inducing carbon footprint. Mr. Sanders said that he preferred it to Martha’s One-Dish Pasta, which is in regular rotation for our Monday night pasta dinners. This is good dish to add to that rotation, albeit one with a more autumnal vibe. Plus you get to use four cloves of garlic. Yumsters!

Pasta with Simple Cherry Tomato Sauce

As usual, I made some changes to this recipe as I went along. Our humble grocery store does not carry orecchiette-shaped pasta. (Their summer-long sale on Woodbridge chardonnay more than compensates for that tiny inconvenience.) So I substituted penne rigate, which seemed to be sturdy enough for the sauce. You might experiment with Dan Pashman’s cascatelli pasta, which is also sturdy and can hold the bold sauce in its nooks and curvy crannies. And I skipped the pine nuts, because I am on a budget, and so are you.

Everything else we had on hand, no extra shopping required. For once, I am proud to say, we had a shallot in the vegetable drawer, because Mr. Sanders cooked a fussy and fancy chicken piccata last week. Chicken Piccata It was deelish, too. One of our back porch basil plants came through the summer magnificently, and is busting out with lush greenery. I have to figure out if we have a bright and sunny corner in the house where so I can keep it happy through the winter, because nothing kick starts a tomato dish like fresh basil.

Ingredients – we halved this because it is only the two of us. Sorry, Luke. You have plenty of kibble.
¼ cup olive oil
1 small shallot, thinly sliced
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
Kosher salt
12 ounces pasta, such as orecchiette,
1/2 to 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 pound small, sweet cherry tomatoes, halved,
1/2 cup grated parmesan
4 ounces small mozzarella balls (I cubed fresh mozzarella, left over from last week’s pizza night)
1/2 cup fresh basil, thinly sliced or more to taste
Black pepper – to taste

Bring a large pot of water to a boil.Pour olive oil into a large skillet, warm, and add shallot and garlic. Add a pinch of salt. Turn the heat to medium high. When the oil begins to shimmer, stir the shallots and garlic, cover, and turn the heat down to low. Cook for roughly 5 minutes, or until the shallots and garlic get soft. Keep an eye on the garlic, which tends to burn to an incinerated cinder the minute you turn your back on the stove.

Be sure to add a handful of kosher salt to the water when it boils. Boil the pasta to al dente. Meanwhile, uncover the lid of the pan with the shallots and garlic. Add the crushed red pepper flakes and stir briefly. Raise the heat to medium, and add the tomatoes. Cook for 5 to 6 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes begin to burst and break down. Add 1 cup of water, and bring the sauce to a gentle simmer.

Before draining the pasta reserve a cup of the pasta cooking liquid, just in case. Drain the pasta. Do not rinse. Transfer the drained pasta to the tomato sauce pan and stir to combine. Turn heat to low.

Add the parmesan cheese and pepper to the pasta. Add some of the reserved pasta cooking liquid if the sauce has thickened too much, we didn’t need it, but it is always wise to prepare for emergencies. Then add the mozzarella and basil, stir to combine, and serve immediately. Have a big bowl of grated parm on the table. Break out the salad, some still-on-sale wine, candles and some focaccia. Yumsters. And easy peasy.

It’s not greatly different from Martha’s One-Pan Pasta , but the heftier pasta makes it seem like it will be an excellent dish for cooler weather. And maybe we will get some soon. Enjoy the rest of your summer!

(The clever cooks at Food52 have another end-of-season pasta dish you might want to try: Tomato Tonnato From Botanical)

“Our bathing suits, waving like summer flags on the clothesline were begrudgingly packed away, and replaced with long-sleeved sweaters and woolly socks.”
― Arlene Stafford-Wilson

Shanah tovah! A very happy New Year to you! Rosh Hashanah begins tonight at sunset. It is the first of ten high holy days, a time of reflection and celebration. We at the Spy Test Kitchens are always eager to honor cultures and faiths with food, and traditionally Rosh Hashanah is observed with many festive dishes.

You can begin your Rosh Hashanah meal with sliced apples dipped in honey, with the honey symbolizing the sweet possibilities of a new year. You can serve apple slices to dip in honey, or you can incorporate apple cider into a beef brisket. Apple cider brisket

It’s still a little too warm outside for me to think about cooking, let alone eating, brisket, but there is always a place at the table for Apple and Honey Muffins. Or you can bake some challah.

You might think of challah with candlelight, wine, family and blessings on Friday nights. It is a flavorful bread, almost a brioche, and makes divine toast. I baked a test loaf of challah last weekend, because we can never have enough carbs. There is a lot about bread baking that I have to learn, in tiny incremental stages. Like finding a reliable recipe. For my very first, time-consuming loaf of challah I tried the Youtube-famous “Challah in a Bag” which was indeed fun to do – but it produced an awful loaf of bread.

It turns out that kneading is necessary, and so is the correct oven temperature. I measured, weighed, poured and shook the ingredients. I heated water, then dipped and submerged the bag o’dough. I spent a lovely, sunny afternoon glued to my stool in the kitchen, waiting through various proofs and bag flips. Then I dusted with flour, rolled, pinched, and plaited. I let it rise again. I washed the surface with egg. I dutifully set a timer for the 40-minute baking process. I was amazed to peek in the oven and see a nicely shaped, almost-raw, beige pile of dough. The recipe had said to bake at 300°F. (Nothing is going to brown at 300°F. Silly me.) I popped the temp up to 350°F and the loaf finally browned, but the damage was done. It tasted like lightly-singed pile of Play-doh. Read your new recipes closely, she typed sagely. Don’t take anything for granted on the internet. Bon Appétit and Food52 have folks who proof read and test, and re-test, all of the recipes they publish. Careers can be ruined by a typo. Self-published sites are a lot more casual about these details, which can make all the difference in how your time and resources are spent. Challah in a Bag

Thank you, Food52: Honey Challah I wish I had found this recipe first, which also incorporates symbolic honey, before being lured by the siren song of Challah in a Bag. Baking temperature: 375°F.

Thank you, Bon Appétit: Challah Baking temperature: 325°F – 400°F.

La Boite has a very ambitious and beautiful Holiday Challah, which includes niches for bowls of honey and apple slices. Baking temperature: 400°F.

And a kosher recipe from Kosher.com: Best Challah Ever (This recipe is HUGE! It make 6 challahs. This is in case you need to feed the masses this holiday season, or if you want to bake loaves ahead of time and freeze them. Baking temperature: 350°F.

Happy baking, happy new year!

“The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight.”

–M. F. K. Fisher