All posts tagged: fall

a fool-proof plum cake, a new audiobook, and my falcon’s shawl

I love Marin in September. The mornings slowly get darker and the air crisper, but the afternoons are still warm. Late summer fruits and vegetables are also at their peak and their fall successors are getting ready to be harvested — just look at the grapes I spotted in my neighbor’s front yard on a recent walk! (It was so hard not to take one and try it. I didn’t. I couldn’t.) After admiring my neighbor’s gorgeous grapes, a couple more minutes into my walk, I saw a plum tree growing on the side of the road. This is the main road that leads to downtown. The tree was full of plums, and this time I couldn’t resist the urge to taste one. The tree was so full of fruit that the branches were hanging a bit low. This tree wasn’t planted in anyone’s yard, it was planted outside a fence on a hill that seemed like public land, at least that’s what I hoped! So I ignored the cars driving past me and what …

overhead shot of mashed potatoes, stuffing and cranberry sauce

Thanksgiving at Our House for the Very First Time

I hadn’t realized I was stressed out about Thanksgiving dinner this year until around three in the morning on Thursday when thoughts of all the different recipes we would have to prepare to pull off the meal interrupted my sleep abruptly. In 20-plus years, Patrick and I had yet to cook a whole Thanksgiving feast on our own. Can you believe our kids (14 and 16) had never had Thanksgiving at home? This year was going to be “a first,” and I wanted it to be super special. I still had to go to the store in the morning to get the apples for the pie and the ingredients for the salad I would be making. (They wouldn’t run out of apples in the middle of autumn, would they?) I had followed Samin Nosrat’s recipe for her famous buttermilk turkey to a T and was crossing my fingers that we’d all love it. To get my mind off of dinner, I grabbed some yarn and needles. I decided to learn how to knit a miniature …