Let them eat pie.

Welcome to autumn!  We had an unexpected end of summer heatwave.  In fact, the hottest day of the year here was in late September!  Now, though, the days are noticeably getting shorter and cooler.  It's autumn and I have to admit to being a bit excited by it.  I have always loved autumn, and we get some great autumn produce.  We're getting loads of fresh apples, and the girls have settled into their new classes at school and preschool.

Cooler weather means that we can start enjoying all of the autumn food that we haven't eaten in awhile.  Savoury pies are very popular in this house, and make a good warming dinner on a cool, dark evening.  We spent a day making a whole big batch of pies together.  We ate two over the next couple of days, and put the rest in the freezer to pull out later.

We started off by making several batches of pastry.  I have naturally cold hands so I have an advantage at pastry making and am pretty proud of how well it turned out.
For my tips on making perfect pie pastry, click here.

Then we made several types of filling.  We didn't follow any recipes, so I won't give you exact recipes here.  We just made them up based on what we had and what sounded good.

Jared did make one pie with a meaty filling....any guesses what's in it?

The vegetarian pie that we ate first was a mushroom pie.  It had big organic chestnut mushrooms in it along with some other veggies and a home-made gravy.

They were delicious, and the best part is that we still have more pies in the freezer (including a butternut squash pie and a broccoli cheese pie). 

Celebrating Harvest Time

This morning I had the pleasure to go see my daughter's harvest festival at school.  She's been practicing her harvest songs all week, so it was fun to get to go see her perform them with the other children.  Next time, though, I'll get there earlier so I can get either a seat in the front two rows (where you can see) or the back row (where you can stand up to see), as most of the time I could only really see other parents.  The kids sounded great though.  I'm proud of her; she's adjusted really well to school and is loving it.

We've also enjoyed harvest time in our own garden.  We've had apples (and apples and apples) and carrots and potatoes and the last of the tomatoes and pattipans (squash).  I also picked the last of the rhubarb for an apple and rhubarb crumble, and some of the salad things have made a recurrence as we haven't had a frost yet.  The girls have really enjoyed helping to dig through the dirt to find the potatoes and helping to pick apples from our trees.

If, like us, you are overflowing with apples right now, here's my apple recipe suggestion: Spiced Apple Cake.  It's delicious and will make your house smell great.

I love this time of year and enjoying all of the fresh autumn flavors.

Late Season & Autumn Planting

Thanks to the beautiful warm weather that we've been having, I'm enjoying late season crops. The unseasonably mild temperatures mean that I'm still getting food from my summer crops in addition to the things I normally harvest in the autumn! My raspberries and strawberries have had a new crop in October when they would normally be finished for the year in August! I'm also still picking courgettes--the yellow ones seem to be doing especially well, physalis, runner beans, and spinach. So make sure and check your plants to make sure they haven't surprised you with some delicious new fruit and vegetables for you!

Also, we've been enjoying the beautiful weather as we've been clearing out the garden some and planting new crops. Although most plants like being planted in the spring, there are some things that you can over-winter. We just planted two varieties of onion (a red variety and a white spring onion variety), cauliflower (not all varieties are suitable for planting in the autumn, but some are, so check the seed packet), and yellow radishes (I've never had yellow radishes before, so I'm excited to try this out). All of these were planted directly outside in the vegetable patch. Cross your fingers that we'll have lovely crops from them in the spring and summer.