If Summer is Ice Cream for Breakfast, What is Fall?

Chers Amis,

Fall is just now making her golden entrance in the south. Like most southern ladies, she isn't in a hurry. The skies are a crisp and cloudless blue and the leaves on our sweet gums, tulip poplars and redbuds are just starting to rattle. The dogwood berries are turning crimson and nuthatches are all over the native persimmon. The woodland gardens are bursting with periwinkle blues whose blossoms announce the arrival of fall almost to the day and hour. They are Caddie's birthday flower and she knows her special day is right around the corner when the first purplish-blue fire-cracker flower bursts into bloom. My dh insisted on taking a picture of a me (in active labor no less) in front of the blues before he would drive me to the hospital!

The North Georgia State fair opened this week, so last Saturday meant funnel cakes, elephant ears and cotton candy, caramel apples and too much popcorn. Isn't it funny how often we define the seasons with food? Summer in our Georgia is ice cream for breakfast. It is curried chicken salad and fresh grilled corn with spicy mayo and a squeeze of lime. It is vinegary barbecue on paper plates with sliced peaches and an uninvited party of yellow jackets.

"So what is fall?" I asked the family. Fall is rhubarb pie and apple crumble - heavy on the cinnamon and don't forget the ice cream (Dad). It is pumpkin and chocolate-chip muffins (Scarlett and Caddie). It is pears and cheeses, figs, nuts and dates (Mom). It is herb butter bread (Pippin) and bowls and bowls of soup. It is lunch and dinner eaten a la fresco on our back deck, festooned with the silvery orbs of enormous brown weavers. It is the rush of the wind through our woods and the accompanying song of the windchime. It is the pizzicato rain of the scarlet and amber leaves.

Autumn is my favorite time of year - gilded and rich, ripe for the picking - and cooking! I love to cook, especially this time of year. My sil gave me the perfect seasonal cookbook a few years ago called The Cook and the Gardner: A year of Recipes and Writings from the French Countryside. It is both a cookbook and the story of the year the author spent as a cook in a seventeenth-century chateau in Burgundy during which she came to know the "sly peasant caretaker" of the chateau's kitchen garden. The recipes are arranged by season and month and are interspersed with impressions and experiences. She provides a section on seasonal "basics" that aren't all practical, but make you want to try your hand in your autumn kitchen. It is delightful read whether or not you ever try the autumn stock, Pear-and-Almond tart or Carmelized Chestnuts. April in Paris, maybe someday. Today it is October in Georgia and Autumn has arrived. How lovely she is!

-- Marjorie