YES-vember!

Ahhhh autumn. My favourite season. The colours, the smells, the quality in the air. So often people view autumn in a negative way: the end of long, light-filled days, and the beginning of dark, impending cold.

I see more! Autumn ushers in some of the most glorious, fiery foliage; crisp, brisk air; warm, delicious jumpers, and the heartiest food of the year. Mmm! It is also a time of nostalgia, reflection, and change. Autumn summons tremendous positive emotion within me, and I encourage everyone to bask in it's MAJESTY...
...Bask...
....bask, i said....
...um, are you basking....?
Good.

So farewell summer loves. Hello autumn. Hello you!

Autumnal Notes:

1. Find THE jumper to get you through the winter


2. Make chicken stock once a week. It's essential cold battling equipment, and the best nutritoius warmer in the world!


3. Order logs


4. Love your root-veg! (Remember the basic rule of thumb: anything that grows above ground you cook in boiling water, anything below ground you start from cold water).


5. Start planning your winter dinner parties (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hogmany, [Robert] Burn's Night)


6. Dust off the FONDUE SET!


7. Renew your search for the perfect baked potato. Is it King Edward, Maris Piper, or the Mighty RUSSET? (High starch content is apparently the key to a good baker...)


8. Try Grouse or pheasant. Why not?


9. To celebrate autumn, get a chunky jumper on & go and cuddle someone. If you are going to cuddle them for a long time, and they are a work colleague, ask permission first!


10. Make PUMPKIN PIE! And PECAN! And Chicken and Mushroom! In fact, make all the pies!


11. Bye bye Museli, hello porridge!


12. Make the seasonal herb swap. Out with summer herbs (mint, basil, chives) and in with more robust cousins (thyme, rosemary, sage).


13. Bulk up on beta carotene (pumpkin, squash, sweet potato) to set you up for cold!


14. Bring on the baking! Nothing like walking in to a warm kitchen smelling of cake.


15. Make sure you're eating well and your digestion is good, because that's the root of your immune system strength. (Autumn food is hearty: squash, apples, beans, beef, lamb)


16. Nostalgia often reflects the mood of autumn. I know everyone has their own way of exercising nostalgia trips. I like looking through old letters, albums, music, photographs. The other day the light hit a certain way and a wave of nostalgia hit me reminding me it was autumn. A little bit of "retrospection" does the body and soul good.

And finally a word or two from Keats to his friend Reynolds after enjoying a lovely autumn day…

“How beautiful the season is now--How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather--Dian skies--I never lik’d stubble fields so much as now--Aye better than the chilly green of the spring. Somehow a stubble plain looks warm--in the same way that some pictures look warm--this struck me so much in my Sunday’s walk that I composed upon it.”

Have a lovely Autumn...