Fall

If you could only smell these...wow. It's apple pie without all the fuss. It's comfort food. It's home.

What an easy little recipe that gives so much flavor and taste. The cinnamon-laced juices are just incredible. Heaven on a plate.

Apples also made the top 20 in a USDA list of foods with the highest antioxidant scores. The richest concentration of antioxidants is found in the fruit's skin, how perfect since this recipe calls for unpeeled apples.

Halving the apples before baking them also saves cooking time and lets the fruit soak up all the amazing maple-ness and cinnamony goodness.

You are going to love these.

Fall produce isn't just about pumpkins and squash, which is what most people assume. Other vegetables, too, reach their prime in the fall. Right now you'll find a host of cabbages in season, including the entire family—cauliflower, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts, which are my personal favorite. These mini cabbages are so adorable—I just wish more people liked them.

When it comes down to it, you either know how to cook Brussels sprouts or you don't. Those that don't know how to cook them ruin it for everyone else. A pot of over-boiled sprouts never could make anyone like the vegetable (kids liken the smell to stinky feet). The correct cooking method is key to coaxing out the natural sweet flavor of sprouts. No other method can do that better than roasting.

The simplest way to prepare sprouts for roasting is to toss them with oil, salt, and pepper. Then just roast until tender, about 25 minutes. You can customize the basic recipe to suit your own tastes, e.g. add some herbs or vinegar or even lemon juice. For this recipe I utilize preserved lemons I made earlier in the year. Thin slices of the lemon rind along with some of the briny juice give this dish a noteworthy zip. You will love sprouts prepared this way.

How in this sweet
aftermath of everything the mind
should settle on plums

Geri Doran
“Blue Plums”

If poetry is all about the image, then it’s understandable why so many poets have written about food. Writing about food is like writing about a lover. The poet can—and does, joyously—explore all the senses. In “I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey’s Version of ‘Three Blind Mice,’” Billy Collins raises dicing herbs and vegetables while listening to jazz to a whole new level of food prep. Last semester, a student’s poem about warm pita and honey inspired my class to have a party where we drank tea and prepared and ate the subject of her poem.

Of all the food groups, however, it is fruit that has inspired the greatest outpouring. What better object to evoke sensations of sweetness and succulence? What better metaphor for the body? What better metaphor for the pleasures of poetry itself? Diane Wakoski’s “Ode to a Lebanese Crock of Olives,” one of her many food poems and a veritable cornucopia of shimmering ingredients, spills over to include “the gold of lemons” and “the still life of grapes.” In “A Step Away From Them,’ Frank O’Hara’s lunch includes “a glass of papaya juice.” That’s the “lunch poem” that ends with the lines “My heart is in my / pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy,”

Is there anything more disappointing in October than biting into what you think will be a crisp, snappy apple only to have your teeth sink into mushy flesh? What do you do? Continue to eat it not to be wasteful, or toss it aside for something else?

Neither. Don't eat something you don't enjoy. You'll only be unsatisfied and crave something more. If you can, don't toss it either. Use it in something where the texture of the apple isn't critical, like applesauce. Or add it diced and cooked to oatmeal, quinoa, or barley for a delicious hot breakfast.

This Apple-Maple Walnut Breakfast Quinoa is a protein-rich, filling breakfast alternative to oatmeal. Plus, when you bake the apples on the stovetop, the scent of freshly baked apple pie will float in the air. How can a day not be good when you start it off with warm, soothing, spiced apples?