Delicious Autumn!

Delicious Autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird, I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns!-George Eliot

The quote above speaks to my core. I am an Autumn individual, through and through.
The decorating, the food, the mild weather. I love the approach of the holidays and the end of the year. So many of our festivals and traditions harken back to when our lives revolved around the cycles of the earth. The planting, reaping and harvesting. And in the fall, as the year starts winding down, so do many of the hardest working hours. The daylight is short so people were gathering inside for longer hours and the family connected around the hearth. The community would gather to share their bounty with the neighbors. This is what we carry with us deep in our souls even as we are more technological than agricultural. We are spread and disconnected from each other in different ways. We reap our harvest at publix instead of at the back of a mule. But deep down we feel the approach of autumn and breath a little deeper. We take just a little more time out side in the evening. We feel the ages and eons of the past in our bones, and we look towards smoky fires and hearty dinners and family, and festivals.

    "Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting, and autumn a mosaic of them all."-                                                                                                                                Stanley Horowitz

        "The morns are meeker than they were,
         The nuts are getting brown.
           The berry's cheek is plumper,
           The rose is out of town.
           The maple wears a gayer scarf,
           The field a scarlet gown.
          Lest I should be old fashioned,
                      I'll put a trinket on!"  -Emily Dickinson

The first inkling of Autumn for me is the arrival of winter squash at the markets. Such beautiful speckled goodness. They are snapshots of fall with their green and gold shells, and orange flesh. I bought some sweet dumpling squash this weekend and spent a leisurely afternoon chopping and dicing and caramilizing and then pulling it all together with a smoked sausage. Perfect sunday afternoon, fall meal.

I began with the squash, I wanted to peel and cube it, but its so hard to do when raw. And yet, you don't want it coooked to where it is falling apart in the skillet. So I pricked it with a fork and microwaved it for about 4 mins. This made it just right for peeling and cutting and it held up so well while cooking with the other veg. 

I had two granny smith apples that I wanted to use. I typically would reach for a sweeter apple for this, but I was afraid that with the sweet squash it might be too much. But I didn't want it too tart either, so I peeled and diced the two grannies, and carmelized them on the stove top in some butter a little. 

Now I had onions and potatoes I wanted to bring to the party. The potatoes I wanted crisper, and on the side, so I made smaller pieces and sprinked some garlic powder and parmesan cheese and roasted them   until crisp.  I cookoed the smoked sausage (Turkey) by itself  and left the fond in the bottom of the skillet after removing it to a plate. I added the onion and pre-cooked squash to the skillet now, with a bit of spray oil and salt and pepper. Let that get soft, then stirred in the cooked apple. Once this had all melded, I scooped it on a plate and spooned some sausage on  top, with a side of the taters. That was for David, for me, this dish isn't complete with Saurkraut!!! So I put some in  the empty skillet and sprinkled some caraway seed in. It got nice and brown and I added it to my plate. I didn't add a lot of seasoning to this besides salt and pepper. I felt that as I cooked and then layered the flavors, each item was able to really stand on its own and just didn't need much else.
OH MY YES! Lovely tasty, september dinner. My inaugural tribute to the coming season.

I will add that I made a pumpkin pie pudding (WW friendly) and we finished off the evening with that while we watched some football. Come on OCTOBER!