Fall

Sometimes lettuce is just not good enough. With its peppery spiciness, arugula has a refreshing bite. In Southern California, even though it gets cold in the Winter, arugula thrives in the year-round sunshine, so we're able to buy fat bunches any time of the year for $1.00/bunch.

Persimmons and pomegranates are more seasonal. When they're all available, our favorite salad is a simple combination of all three. <Suzanne Goin created a complex salad with all these ingredients.  I used her recipe as a starting point, choosing to simplify the ingredients and directions.

The combination of tastes is near perfect: peppery arugula, sweet persimmon, tart pomegranate seeds, and crunchy hazelnuts, all held together by the emulsion of olive oil and reduced balsamic vinegar.

My mother had a way of inventing traditions.  “It’s Lizzie’s birthday!” she’d proclaim periodically and everyone in the family would don a party hat and sing happy birthday to one of our English Springer Spaniels.  The announcement of the dog’s birth and subsequent celebration of it could occur at any time – on April 5, say, or December 12.  It could happen twice a year or once every few years.  But however haphazard, it became a tradition. 

Every so often, we’d gather in the living room; my father on the bongo drums someone had given him for a birthday present, my sister on her recorder, me banging the big copper-bottomed soup pot with a wooden spoon, and my mother on piano, playing from our “American Folk Songs For Piano” songbook.  “Love oh love oh careless love,” she’d sing, entirely off-key, “Love oh love oh careless love, love oh love oh careless love, see what love has done to me.”

Synonymous with autumn is the color orange. Pumpkin, salmon, persimmon, and rust abound throughout the garden and nature. From leaves to blooms to the fruits of the season, autumnal orange hues find favor with this Farmer. All I have to do is peruse around the garden and landscape and gather orange colored blossoms and fruit for an arrangement that celebrates the bounty of the season.

Planting snapdragons in the fall ensures mountains of this fun flower the following spring for the Deep South. Bronze Liberty Classic snaps are simply stunning, for they start out salmon and then are throated with golden/orangey/terra cotta tints as the blossoms mature.

This range of terra cotta to coral punctuates pansy and viola beds and spikes through glossy green parsley mounds for lovely fall color and spring delight. Since I’ve been planting them in the garden, I had a few stems to spare for an arrangement.

Great Aunt Irene’s orange, gold, and white bowl from the Far East (different family lore places it in different regions of Asia, so the Far East shall suffice) just spoke for itself as the vessel of choice for a festival of flowers, paying homage to a splendid color.

The snaps were a must and, thus, a pilgrimage through the garden commenced – the pilgrimage was now a hunt for orange flowers, fruit, and foliage.

Did you know the "Whoopie pie" is the State Treat of Maine? I had no idea states had designated treats. I'm dying to know what the state treat is here...it better be candy bacon.

While making these I started thinking about why these tasty little cakes have such a silly name. I did a little research and found Whoopie pies to be a Pennsylvania Amish and New England phenomenon. I suppose this is why I never had them as a child.

Apparently the Amish women would bake up these little desserts (likely with leftover cake batter) and put them in their husband's lunches. The men would pull out these treats and yell, "whoopie".

So...this is where I laughed out loud. I just don't see a bunch of guys yelling out, "whoopie" for cake. Do you?

Oh well, maybe they did. It was a different time. It just sounds funny. There are also three states that claim to be the birthplace of the Whoopie pie; Maine, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. This little dessert has quite a history!