Soup

Last night I made enchiladas suiza for dinner after our pumpkin carving. Cousin GJ has been coming over to carve pumpkins with us since Sam was a baby—26 years. We had nights when it was just the three of us, nights with Grace, a crowd carving with the kitchen fireplace ablaze, new friends, old friends...a tradition that like all traditions adjusts with life’s changes. But on a night close to Halloween, pumpkins will be carved and autumnal food will be eaten!

When autumn—my favorite season—arrives, I think soup. Even living alone on Bleecker Street in NYC, I always had a pot of soup on the stove come autumn. I like to eat soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner, which is what Annabelle and I do whenever I make tortellini en broda. The thing about soup, beside the obvious comfort factor, is its versatility. For example, this week I made black bean soup from a NYT recipe titles The Best Black Bean Soup. It is too. I think what elevates this soup is the step of pushing the softened carrots and onions to the side and toasting cumin and coriander for a minute before combining them with the veggies. It’s even better with Ranch Gorda beans, but I didn’t have any so used supermarket ones and it was still delicious.

All week my soup sat on my stove. I ate it with tortillas. I ate it with sour cream and grated cheddar. I ate it with avocados. By week’s end, the pot was low. So I cooked up some rice, made my enchiladas, and served the last of my soup (which was thicker and less brothy) on top of that rice. By the way, I used rotisserie chicken for the enchiladas and made my brilliant husband’s overnight broth. So it will be a weekend of that tortellini soup, enough to fill a thermos for Annabelle’s lunch on Monday.

Sam is coming home for a visit and requested I make lentil soup. So next week’s soup pot already has a plan.

Emily Post wrote about the power of soup in early twentieth century etiquette book. Bring a grieving person broth, she told us. I say let soup comfort and nourish you through the first chill of autumn and snowy days of winter. Stay in your jammies. Eat soup. Knit. Read. Feed your soul.

On knitting: I was happily finishing my mistake rib cowl in orange cashmere on the train to NYC  Thursday, almost at the eleven inches end point, when I looked down and realized I was almost out of yarn! So I’m tnik-ing like crazy to have enough yarn to bind off, all the while hoping my cowl will still be big enough. I finished my ferryman fingerless mitts from Churchmouse Yarns in denim Donegal Tweed and they are gorgeous! I love this pattern. It was just the right amount of difficulty, speed, and oh I can do that. Next up is a hat from Mason Dixon knitting that requires reading one of those pattern grid things. Wish me luck.

If you haven’t already, you must read THE HELP by Helen Philips. I could not put this book down! Last night I started the second Caz Frear crime fiction novel, STONE COLD HEART. I’m so in love with her detective, Cat Kinsella. There’s nothing like British crime novels in bed after your soup and knitting.

By the way, my husband has a podcast! I’m so proud of him, he is always on the cutting edge of stuff. It’s called From Scratch, which is also the name of his new cookbook. The photos alone in it will send you straight into the kitchen. I hope you check them both out. And more news: my own KITCHEN YARNS is coming out in paperback first of December. The recipe for that tortellini soup is in there!

The leaves are showing off here, and I’m in deep nesting mode. I hope you are taking care of yourself. Put a pot of soup on your stove. Comfort.

Autumn!

Some people like the sultry weather of summer, others come alive when daffodils poke their heads out and trees fill with blossoms, and surprising to me there are even those who love the cold and snow of winter (people who like things like skiing and snowshoeing!) Me, I love autumn. The leaves of course. The crisp chill at night and the particular blue of an autumn sky. The food—sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts. Oatmeal with dates and gigs and nuts. Apples! But I think why I love autumn most is the A student in me still starts the year on the first day of school. Sharpen your pencils, line up your books, get started. For one so long out of school—me!—that means getting back to my 2 2 2 schedule: write two hours, read two hours, knit two hours. Then I head to the store and buy stuff for dinner—stews and soups and braised things. Since the weather finally changed,  Annabelle and I have has pasta fagiola, tortellini soup, pork chops. I’ve been eating roasted sweet potatoes (a little butter and salt) and pumpkin seed bread smeared with avocado for breakfast. I’ve lined up my knitting projects: orange mistake rib cashmere cowl from Purl Soho, Ferrymen fingerless mitts from Churchmouse Yarns in blue Donegal tweed, striped hats from Mason Dixon’s new field guide, socks and even a skirt! After dinner Annabelle and I cozy up on the couch and I knit while we watch The Gilmore Girls, an endless pleasure before book and bed. One of us has a wee dram of whiskey.

Some may be reading this and wondering where the husband is. Another delight of autumn is that NYC comes alive on stage, and we’ve been going to plays every chance we get. Mostly we have long weekends together as he launches his podcast From Scratch (subscribe!) and his new cookbook of the same name (a glorious gorgeous book, the only cookbook you’ll need said The Barefoot Contessa). The recipes are terrific and the pictures are stunning, all taken right in my loft. Plus he’s writing a new cookbook with the chef Gabriel Kreuther and the next French Laundry cookbook...the guy can barely come up for air. When he does, we get Chines food delivered and hide out in our Greenwich Village pad, emerging for shows and friends and drinks and movies. We just saw Pain and Glory and were gobsmacked. Tonight, after I teach, we are going to see Parasite, advance tickets in hand as it sells out every show.

I’m fulfilling my love of British crime novels by reading Caz Frear—Sweet Little Lies and now Stone Cold Heart. My stack of books to read this fall is a beautiful thing that includes Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, The Child Finder, Mr. Fox, and more. Also, Annabelle has started a book club with her aunt, me, and our dear friend. We read the fantastic We Were Liars and next up Turtles All the Way Down.

This weekend my beloved and I will be at the Brattleboro Literary Festival in Vermont, where the leaves should be putting on quite the show. Tonight it’s dinner with friends at Gene’s, a favorite old school Italian place of ours before I teach, movie after. Tomorrow I’ll be writing, getting in my two hours, while Michael interviews a chef in the Bronx for his podcast, lunch with the chef, then onward to Brattleboro. En route we will keep reading the masterpiece Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates out loud. Hopefully I’ll get some stitches done on that cashmere cowl. And there it is: 2 2 2.

I hope your autumn is full of soups and yarn and good books.