Fall

Salads don't always have to contain green lettuces, like basic iceberg or bibb, other colors, textures, and flavors can make an interesting combination. I love bitter lettuces, such as purple radicchio and white endive. Add pungent cheese, sweet and juicy pears, and crunchy walnuts to the mix, dress it in a Dijon-maple vinaigrette, and it becomes a festive fall salad that can be enjoyed as an elegant appetizer. Roasting the pears with a drizzle of maple syrup creates another level of flavor and intensifies their sweetness. I use Seckel pears, which are a small and quite firm variety of pear. They work extremely well when cooked and don't lose their texture at all, making them ideal in this salad.

Texture is what this salad is all about: the interplay of crunchy, crinkly, smooth, creamy, and crispy. Radicchio, with its deep purple and white leaves, adds color and crinkly texture to the salad. Endive is firm and crunchy in its texture. Both lettuces have a slight bitterness that contrasts well with the sweetness of the pears and of the maple vinaigrette. Further play on texture comes from the creamy Roquefort bleu cheese and crunchy toasted walnuts. Those unfamiliar with such a unique flavor combination might think this salad would be too strong, but it's truly complementary.

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.

German grandmothers mixing up sweet yeast dough to form coffee cakes filled with fresh fruit of the season and rich, creamy custard made with real cream have been passing along the kuchen tradition for generations.

If authentic kuchen, which is a German word for “cake,” has been a common thread weaving through your family for decades, you probably won’t appreciate this recipe. The only kuchen my family eats comes to our table as a gift from an expert peach kuchen-maker who works with my husband.

The simplicity of this Quick Apple Kuchen recipe caught my attention as I browsed through an old cookbook I inherited from my mom’s extensive library. The book is so old, it refers to margarine as oleo. Up until 1952, U.S. law required margarine producers to label their product “oleomargarine.” But, the book is not so old that bakers couldn’t find cake mix in their grocery store.

All I can think about today is soup. This may be because I have too many vegetables crowding up the fridge. After another round of recipe development and a pre-hurricane sweep of the garden, I am left with the clear makings of minestrone—everything from a five-pound bag of carrots to three awkwardly space-hogging baby fennel bulbs. I have a big basket of winter squash I keep stumbling over in the pantry, and I have a little handful of green beans I just plucked off the dying vines this morning. I even have a few cranberry beans that are finally ready to harvest, from plants that miraculously show very little storm damage.

Our storm damage, in fact, was minimal. Had circumstances been different—if Sandy hadn’t taken a left turn when she did—we would likely be facing a very different winter here on the farm. Instead the hoop house is still standing, the animals are all fine, and in fact, we have another flock of laying hens due to arrive here this week (more on that soon). So thankfully, Roy is building—rather than rebuilding. Now, of course, I hear that a big Nor ‘Easter is coming up the coast this week. So maybe we are not out of the woods yet. But still. I can’t stop thinking about Staten Island and the Rockaways and Seaside Heights. All those folks still without power and nights getting really chilly. And lots of friends on the coast of Connecticut with serious flood damage. We did have plenty of coastal erosion up here on the Island and flooding in the lowest harbor areas in the towns, but most homes were safe and dry (and warm).