I think every fall I adopt a favorite soup recipe and make it over and over until it’s perfect and everyone else is tired of it. I’ve been making this soup practically weekly since it started getting cold and I’m certainly not bored yet. It’s a crowd pleaser, what my inlaws call “friendly food” – warming and hearty. It’s so loaded with vegetables that it’s also very healthy without sacrificing any flavor. A pot of this soup is enough to feed me lunch all week.

This blog post brought to you by U.S., D.L., and M.B. Thanks for a great three years!

After a long hiatus, here I am again – on a new computer, in a new house, in a new city, with a new husband. I also got a new job and bangs. It’s been a crazy year my friends. With all that going on, who has the time to blog? So I let it slide for longer and longer, let my blog sit in its own corner of the internet, sad and lonely.

Whole wheat apple muffins - they look unassuming, but they taste so good…

I think I may have mentioned recently how much I love fall. Well, fall and baking go together like you wouldn’t believe! Ever since the air started getting crisper, I’ve been baking every weekend and an alarming number of weekdays. As a rule, I don’t love baking as much as I love cooking, mostly because I’m terrifically lazy. Baking requires precision measurements and exact times. I prefer throwing things together and letting them stew for hours. But it’s fall and my kitchen is cold so I need a hot oven and warm spices to keep me toasty!

Fig & olive oil challah

I woke up this weekend and turned my face to look out my bedroom window. It’s finally fall.

I love fall. I love that I get to wear sweaters and jackets during fall. I love that my hair whips around in the wind during fall. I love that when I wrap a scarf around my neck, it keeps getting pushed farther by the fall wind, until my face is finally obscured and I can’t see where I’m going. The fall chill has a vitality to it that isn’t the same in the winter. It’s crisper - I feel like I can hear it and feel it around me. Or is it just the crunching leaves that I can hear? Fall is alive and it makes me feel alive too.

Fig & olive oil challah

I woke up this weekend and turned my face to look out my bedroom window. It’s finally fall.

I love fall. I love that I get to wear sweaters and jackets during fall. I love that my hair whips around in the wind during fall. I love that when I wrap a scarf around my neck, it keeps getting pushed farther by the fall wind, until my face is finally obscured and I can’t see where I’m going. The fall chill has a vitality to it that isn’t the same in the winter. It’s crisper - I feel like I can hear it and feel it around me. Or is it just the crunching leaves that I can hear? Fall is alive and it makes me feel alive too.

Herbed Tomato Sauce

It took a year and a half of dating and one massive fight before Daniel admitted he could cook anything other than ramen and Kraft macaroni and cheese. Though his stir fry totally ended up being worth forgiving him for, his kitchen repertoire pretty much stops there. This is a man who had to ask me how to cook the pre-made turkey burger patty from the freezer (hint: take the waxed paper off of it FIRST).