It Starts

The season of my favorite things.

Only this year it started early.

It began just the other day.

My little family and I are reading our way through the Little House on The Prairie series. (As a side note: we took a break from the Ingalls this summer with a book called Caddie Woodlawn. If you haven't ever read it you should...it was good. The best part being the ending...where I cried while trying to read out loud to my children.)

But back to Little House. We are currently in the 6th book entitled The Long Winter. In it there is a chapter on how Ma and the girls decided to surprise Pa with a pumpkin pie.

Then The Girl and I read a book yesterday about a pumpkin patch...and I just couldn't handle the pressure...

My baking wheels went bus-a-louie.

I have a tendency toward baking in the winter months that borders a bit on obsession...but it is one of my favorite things. I had the day off today and I had way too many things to accomplish in the 6 measly hours between drop-off and pick-up line at the kids school, but I couldn't go one more day without making some pumpkin bread. So I quick made some.

As I was reaching into my cupboard that holds my cookbooks I remembered one of my favorite ones that was given to me by an Aunt years ago (as in like, 25 years ago). I love this cookbook because it has some really great recipes in it...most specifically the recipe for vegetable soup that I live on during the cold months. Over the years this recipe has been opened so many times that the book falls open to the right page. In all honestly I don't even need the recipe anymore. But I love taking it out and seeing the old brown and orange bowl in the photo, that I swear to you, I think my mother actually owned. Now a days we call that vintage. Meaning, not so old that it's an antique, but old enough to still be hip.

This cookbook has seen some years as is marked by the message on the inside cover. My Mom owned a real estate business for much of my childhood. The boys and I were forever taking messages (by penalty of a slow and painful death. We had a pretty poor track record on keeping telephone messages) on any piece of paper we could find. (picture below) All this to say, the Betty Crocker Junior Cookbook is definitely a fall-time favorite.

Today, in celebration of cooler weather I made some soup. With a glass of my new favorite: Tazo Passion tea.

So begins the baking season and my love for all things "autumn". This is the time before I hunker down with my blue fuzzy heating blanket...the time before I spend three months in a perpetual state of varying coldness.

I have so many fall fave's that I will have to write about them as the days go by. But I will conclude with my most favoritest of favorite things (in any season): A visit from a "vintage" Texas friend. She arrives Saturday morning at the airport where I will pick her up and promptly drive east to the beach for some girlie bonding over Diet Coke and certainly chocolate of one form or another. Probably both.

And keeping our fingers crossed that another fall time activity (hurricanes) don't stop by to say hello!

Until then La Vida Dulce!