Pumpkin Season Quotes

Autumn is a cunning muse who steals by degrees my warmth and light. So distracted by her glorious painting of colors, I scarcely realize my losses until the last fiery leaf has fallen to the ground and the final pumpkin shrinks. Autumn departs with a cold kiss, leaving me to suffer the frigid grasp of winter in prolonged nightfall.

One sort of optional thing you might do is to realize there are six seasons instead of four. The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are so depressed so much of the time. I mean, Spring doesn’t feel like Spring a lot of the time, and November is all wrong for Fall and so on. Here is the truth about the seasons: Spring is May and June! What could be springier than May and June? Summer is July and August. Really hot, right? Autumn is September and October. See the pumpkins? Smell those burning leaves. Next comes the season called “Locking.” That is when Nature shuts everything down. November and December aren’t Winter. They’re Locking. Next comes Winter, January and February. Boy! Are they ever cold! What comes next? Not Spring. Unlocking comes next. What else could April be?

I am Falling in love again with autumn, The smell of warm cider, The orange color leaves, Pumpkins everywhere and the crisp breeze, People walking or riding their bikes, Folks jogging or going on hikes, I love autumn for many reasons and I'm pleased to admit- this is my favorite season

August 1 The harvest season has finally arrived. Today marks its opening. Our next stop on the wheel of the year will be the autumn equinox. I've always seen the opening of the harvest as a kind of stairway we walk down to reach the dark and magickal part of the year where all the good things await. The cool, comforting energy that feels more like home than any place can. Today is the landing at the top of the stairs. All we have to do is put one foot before the other, and before you know it, we'll be watching The Great Pumpkin again.

I also remember, having been fucked up every day for years, that the world seemed like such a novelty to me during my first few years sober. Like, I remember going through each of the seasons and the magic of rediscovering what it felt like to be in the world: going to a pumpkin patch on Halloween, getting a tree for Christmas, I felt excited by reality in a way that I never had before. I actually wanted to be alive.

Activities will include, pretending to help in the kitchen, watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and saying you're so full you're gonna throw up and then waiting ten minutes and getting more pie. Once the sun has been down for a couple of hours the Christmas season is technically upon us, so it's time for the first Harry Potter marathon of the year. Starting with film number three, because obviously, and ending with film five when the filthy casuals are allowed to go home. The hardcores can sleep at my place and in the morning we'll finish six, seven, and seven but where stuff happens. Pumpkin pie for breakfast.

Pumpkin compote in a masa shell," she says. "It's a new recipe I'm going to try this week." "So, a pumpkin tamale? You know you can just call it a pumpkin tamale. Nobody's going to be impressed because you used some fancy words." Her mouth turns down. "Thank you for the editorial. Just try it." I take a bite. It's good. Better than I expected. The balance of cinnamon and nutmeg is perfect, a hint of allspice. And some ingredient I can't place. Almost... coppery? But it works.

It was Friday, so the farmers' market was in full autumnal swing, a sea of potted chrysanthemums and bushel after bushel of apples, pears, Fauvist gourds, and pumpkins with erotically fanciful stems. On one table stood galvanized buckets of the year's final roses; on another, skeins of yarn in muted, soulful purples and reds. Walter loved this part of the season- and not just because it was the time of year his restaurant flourished, when people felt the first yearnings to sit by a fire, to eat stew and bread pudding and meatloaf, drink cider and toddies and cocoa. He loved the season's transient intensity, its gaudy colors and tempestuous skies.

An early spring started one morning in March with a swarm of sudden, glassy, bird cries, and then the cool jewelry of primrose and violet loosened themselves in the dirt. Then summer burst into the world like a gorgeous car accident- opening eyes all over our bodies in the brilliant light. Fall- the smell of pumpkin guts, sluttish and unsweetened. Until winter fell all over us like pieces of heaven, glazed with oxygen or ether, hitting the grounder in small, cold shards. It was like a year in Eden where no Eve had ever lived.

I am Falling in love again with autumn, The smell of warm cider, The orange color leaves, Pumpkins everywhere and the crisp breeze, People walking or riding their bikes, Folks jogging or going on hikes, I love autumn for so many reasons, I must admit- This is my favorite season

What is God doing in my life? In the mornings, I wake to find that he has traced the world in silver. Every blade of grass. Each pumpkin on the porch. In the afternoons, I find him washing these fields with the mellow sunlight of autumn. He has gilded every rail in the fence and the sheet metal roof of the old red barn. He has transformed familiar trees into something otherworldly.

I cut our paper dinner with a pair of scissors borrowed from the front desk of the hotel. I cooked with a spice rack box of crayons – sixteen colors. I seasoned the pumpkin pie with orange crayon, and basted the turkey's crisp skin in brown. I was remorseless with my sketchbook abattoir, playing the part of carnivore just as surely as I was play-acting the role of wife. I may as well have been a wax figure in a dollhouse eating the wax-scented food.

What’s a blow job?” Trevor asked, looking at both of us and setting the pumpkin down. “Um,” I said. Having never dealt with children, I decided to let the seasoned expert handle this one. “Bryce was talking about them but he didn’t seem to really know either,” Trevor added. “It’s a … joke,” Faisal said. “Just a joke.” “Like a gag?” Faisal opened his mouth to say something but just nodded for a second before saying, “That’s definitely one way of looking at it, yes.” “I heard a pretty good blow job earlier,” Trevor said.

I've been studying every aspect of every dish on sauté for the past two months. How the orzo-filled roasted onions accompany the red snapper in a tart broth dotted with hot chili and cilantro oil. How the pheasant, seared skin-side down and flipped, then finished off in the oven, is served with pumpkin risotto, cranberry coulis, and a side of garlic greens. How the grouper, sautéed in olive oil, then butter, and finished in the oven, lies on a mountain of mashed potatoes surrounded by baby turnips and roasted bits of corn, lightly drizzled with a balsamic reduction.

In St. Patrick Town, we find the stubborn, sprightly residents all awake--the leprechaun I spoke to days before still in search of his lost pot of gold in the glen, rain clouds heavy in the distance, and rainbows gleaming above the treetops. In Valentine's Town, Queen Ruby is bustling through the streets, making sure the chocolatiers are busy crafting their confections of black velvet truffles and cherry macaroons, trying to make up for lost time, while her cupids still flock through town, wild and restless. The rabbits have resumed painting their pastel eggs in Easter Town. The townsfolk in Fourth of July Town are testing new rainbow sparklers and fireworks that explode in the formation of a queen's crown, in honor of the Pumpkin Queen who saved them all from a life of dreamless sleep. In Thanksgiving Town, everyone is preparing for the feast in the coming season, and the elves in Christmas Town have resumed assembling presents and baking powdered-sugar gingerbread cookies. And in Halloween Town, we have just enough time to finish preparations for the holiday: cobwebs woven together, pumpkins carved, and black tar-wax candles lit.

Our gardening forebears meant watermelon to be the juicy, barefoot taste of a hot summer's end, just as a pumpkin is the trademark fruit of late October. Most of us accept the latter, and limit our jack-o'-latern activities to the proper botanical season. Waiting for a watermelon is harder. It's tempting to reach for melons, red peppers, tomatoes, and other late-summer delights before the summer even arrives. But it's actually possible to wait, celebrating each season when it comes, not fretting about its being absent at all other times because something else good is at hand.

She looked at the produce stalls, a row of jewels in a case, the colors more subtle in the winter, a Pantone display consisting only of greens, without the raspberries and plums of summer, the pumpkins of autumn. But if anything, the lack of variation allowed her mind to slow and settle, to see the small differences between the almost-greens and creamy whites of a cabbage and a cauliflower, to wake up the senses that had grown lazy and satisfied with the abundance of the previous eight months. Winter was a chromatic palate-cleanser, and she had always greeted it with the pleasure of a tart lemon sorbet, served in a chilled silver bowl between courses.

The Herb Farm reminded Marguerite of the farms in France; it was like a farm in a child's picture book. There was a white wooden fence that penned in sheep and goats, a chicken coop where a dozen warm eggs cost a dollar, a red barn for the two bay horses, and a greenhouse. Half of the greenhouse did what greenhouses do, while the other half had been fashioned into very primitive retail space. The vegetables were sold from wooden crates, all of them grown organically, before such a process even had a name- corn, tomatoes, lettuces, seventeen kinds of herbs, squash, zucchini, carrots with the bushy tops left on, spring onions, radishes, cucumbers, peppers, strawberries for two short weeks in June, pumpkins after the fifteenth of September. There was chèvre made on the premises from the milk of the goats; there was fresh butter. And when Marguerite showed up for the first time in the summer of 1975 there was a ten-year-old boy who had been given the undignified job of cutting zinnias, snapdragons, and bachelor buttons and gathering them into attractive-looking bunches.

While Mrs. Hisa steeped fresh fava beans in sugar syrup, Stephen dry-fried baby chartreuse peppers. I made a salad of crunchy green algae and meaty bonito fish cubes tossed with a bracing blend of soy and ginger juice. Mrs. Hisa created a tiny tumble of Japanese fiddleheads mixed with soy, rice vinegar, and salted baby fish. For the horse mackerel sushi, Stephen skinned and boned several large sardine-like fillets and cut them into thick slices along the bias. I made the vinegared rice and then we all made the nigiri sushi. After forming the rice into triangles, we topped each one with a slice of bamboo grass, as if folding a flag. Last, we made the wanmori, the heart of the tenshin. In the center of a black lacquer bowl we placed a succulent chunk of salmon trout and skinned kabocha pumpkin, both of which we had braised in an aromatic blend of dashi, sake, and sweet cooking wine. Then we slipped in two blanched snow peas and surrounded the ingredients with a bit of dashi, which we had seasoned with soy to attain the perfect whiskey color, then lightly salted to round out the flavor. Using our teacher's finished tenshin as a model, we arranged most of the dishes on three polished black lacquer rectangles, first lightly spraying them with water to suggest spring rain. Then we actually sat down and ate the meal. To my surprise, the leaf-wrapped sushi, the silky charred peppers, candied fava beans, and slippery algae did taste cool and green.

Duck E beak, Pumpkin feet. Wonder Woman is on fleek!

We stuck with the traditional Äpple Munk and the favorite munkhål, but we also added a seasonal one I'd been working on in Mrs. Bixler's room during this dramatic lull in school-apple leftovers. I'd perfected a pumpkin cream cheese filling to go with a cinnamon sugar coating. It was like if pumpkin pie and donuts had a baby, and that baby turned out to be the Chosen One from the prophecy. Pumpamunk.

The hills had trotted out the boldest colors this autumn, blushed in scarlets, pumpkins, and golds. The dying leaves shimmered in lifting breezes, somehow breathing life into the dying season.

Dad had always composed his daily look carefully: neatly combed hair, seasonal tie featuring pumpkins in October or flags in July, dark leather loafers buffed to a high shine, white doctor’s coat laundered in hot water and pressed crisp. True, he also mowed the lawn in black knee socks and khaki shorts. I’m not saying he always made good choices, just that the outfits, like other decisions, had always been his to make.

In the tin-covered porch Mr Chawla had constructed at the rear of the house she had set up her outdoor kitchen, spilling over into a grassy patch of ground. Here rows of pickle jars matured in the sun like an army balanced upon the stone wall; roots lay, tortured and contorted, upon a cot as they dried; and tiny wild fruit, scorned by all but the birds, lay cut open, displaying purple-stained hearts. Ginger was buried underground so as to keep it fresh; lemon and pumpkin dried on the roof; all manner of things fermented in tightly sealed tins; chilli peppers and curry leaves hung from the branches of a tree, and so did buffalo curd, dripping from a cloth on its way to becoming paneer. Newly strong with muscles, wiry and tough despite her slenderness, Kulfi sliced and pounded, ground and smashed, cut and chopped in a chaos of ingredients and dishes. ‘Cumin, quail, mustard seeds, pomelo rind,’ she muttered as she cooked. ‘Fennel, coriander, sour mango. Pandanus flour, lichen and perfumed kewra. Colocassia leaves, custard apple, winter melon, bitter gourd. Khas root, sandalwood, ash gourd, fenugreek greens. Snake-gourd, banana flowers, spider leaf, lotus root …’ She was producing meals so intricate, they were cooked sometimes with a hundred ingredients, balanced precariously within a complicated and delicate mesh of spices – marvellous triumphs of the complex and delicate art of seasoning. A single grain of one thing, a bud of another, a moist fingertip dipped lightly into a small vial and then into the bubbling pot; a thimble full, a matchbox full, a coconut shell full of dark crimson and deep violet, of dusty yellow spice, the entire concoction simmered sometimes for a day or two on coals that emitted only a glimmer of faint heat or that roared like a furnace as she fanned them with a palm leaf. The meats were beaten to silk, so spiced and fragrant they clouded the senses; the sauces were full of strange hints and dark undercurrents, leaving you on firm ground one moment, dragging you under the next. There were dishes with an aftertaste that exploded upon you and left you gasping a whole half-hour after you’d eaten them. Some that were delicate, with a haunting flavour that teased like the memory of something you’d once known but could no longer put your finger on. Pickled limes stuffed with cardamom and cumin, crepuscular creatures simmered upon the wood of a scented tree, small river fish baked in green coconuts, rice steamed with nasturtium flowers in the pale hollow of a bamboo stem, mushrooms red – and yellow-gilled, polka-dotted and striped. Desire filled Sampath as he waited for his meals. Spice-laden clouds billowed forth and the clashing cymbals of pots and pans declared the glory of the meal to come, scaring the birds from the trees about him.

For spring and summer, Dina baked delicate and light pastries fragranced with rosewater, meskouta orange bundt cake, and delicate raspberry macarons. When strawberries were in season in early June, she made airy fraisier cake. For autumn and winter, Dina worked with heavier ingredients: thick, dark chocolate, cinnamon, cardamom, gingerbread, and pumpkin. As the days grew colder and the light dimmed earlier and earlier, people started to crave that feeling of warmth and comfort. And Dina would give that to them, even if only for a short while. One special bake for this season was a ginger and persimmon cake, yellowed with saffron strands, which Dina had bought on her last trip to Morocco, and fresh vanilla pods, their sweet scent so potent that it wafted across the café. This was in addition to all the regular pastries and cakes she had on offer, which were all recipes her mother had taught her to bake. The cake made with dark honey from the Atlas mountains was an all-time customer favorite. Dina had imbibed it with a very specific spell, a childhood memory of a time that she must have fallen asleep on a car ride home, and although she was a little too big to be carried, she remembered her father lifting her into his arms, her mother closing the car door softly so as not to wake her, then carrying her upstairs and tucking her into bed. When she'd been fashioning the spell for the first time, it had occurred to Dina that one day your parents put you down and they never picked you up again, and so she'd made the honey cake to recreate that feeling of childhood comfort. That sensation of someone taking the utmost care of you, holding you close, was a feeling that many in the rushing city of London didn't experience often. Sometimes she wondered if she was really in the business of café ownership, or if she was more of a fairy godmother in disguise. Undeniably, the magical pastries were great at keeping customers coming back for more, so that was a bonus on the businesswoman side of things.

Fall is the season for reading. Fall is the season for pumpkin-spiced drinks. Fall is the season for sweaters. Fall is my definition of peace, the utter epitome of relaxation.

Are you in danger? No, I’m fine. Go to sleep. I’ll just rewatch season 4 again. Schitt’s Creek? Of course. David and Patrick forever. Exactly. Nighty night, little brother. Night, Jeanie. Don’t get murdered. Xo.

No, I’m fine. Go to sleep. I’ll just rewatch season 4 again. Schitt’s Creek? Of course. David and Patrick forever. Exactly.

one of the healthy vegetable with different color, it come in by a lot of fun and beautiful fall season. Gardening, seasons, life, and what people doing with pumpkin. Family can have a lot of fun and enjoy their time (and at the same time learn a lot of new things)

The dark came down on All Hallows’ Eve. We went to sleep to the sound of howling wind and pelting rain, and woke on the Feast of All Saints to whiteness and large soft flakes falling down and down in absolute silence. There is no more perfect stillness than the solitude in the heart of a snowstorm. This is the thin time, when the beloved dead draw near. The world turns inward, and the chilling air grows thick with dreams and mystery. The sky goes from a sharp clear cold where a million stars burn bright and close, to the gray-pink cloud that enfolds the earth with the promise of snow. I took one of Bree’s matches from its box and lit it, thrilling to the tiny leap of instant flame, and bent to put it to the kindling. Snow was falling, and winter had come; the season of fire. Candles and hearth fire, that lovely, leaping paradox, that destruction contained but never tamed, held at a safe distance to warm and enchant, but always, still, with that small sense of danger. The smell of roasting pumpkins was thick and sweet in the air. Having ruled the night with fire, the jack-o’-lanterns went now to a more peaceful fate as pies and compost, to join the gentle rest of the earth before renewal. I had turned the earth in my garden the day before, planting the winter seeds to sleep and swell, to dream their buried birth. Now is the time when we reenter the womb of the world, dreaming the dreams of snow and silence. Waking to the shock of frozen lakes under waning moonlight and the cold sun burning low and blue in the branches of the ice-cased trees, returning from our brief and necessary labors to food and story, to the warmth of firelight in the dark. Around a fire, in the dark, all truths can be told, and heard, in safety. I pulled on my woolen stockings, thick petticoats, my warmest shawl, and went down to poke up the kitchen fire. I stood watching wisps of steam rise from the fragrant cauldron, and felt myself turn inward. The world could go away, and we would heal.

Shattered Silence" (aka "When Michael Calls") for that early 1970s Halloween school carnival feel. It stars a young Michael Douglas and has decidedly autumnal feel. The nostalgic/vintage Halloween also includes the classic elements of the season from ghosts made of sheets and witches flying on broomsticks to pumpkin patches, corn mazes, apple cider, apple bobbing, fall leaves, Sleepy Hollow, and the like. You might start getting inspired with some candy of your childhood with candy crate collections – 1950s, 1960s

Shokado bento boxes were originally paint boxes, you know--- that's why they're divided up into squares like that. Anyway, in the top left are the appetizers. Wakasa winter mackerel, marinated in vinegar and served sashimi-style; Hinase oysters simmered in a sweet soy and mirin sauce; Kyoto-reared chicken, deep-fried in the Toji temple style using a yuba batter; vinegared Taiza crab; stewed Shishigatani pumpkin; and Omi beef, marinated and deep-fried Tatsuta-age style. All served bite-size. In the top right is what we call 'imobo'--- dried codfish stewed with ebi-imo taro. I've served it with grated yuzu from Mio. Should brighten up the flavor a little. Bottom right is a selection of sashimi: lightly salted Wakasa tilefish served on a bed of kelp, and Toyama winter yellowtail, sliced extra thin and wrapped in thin slices of lightly pickled Shogoin turnip. Try those with a bit of the shredded shio-kombu--- kelp simmered in soy sauce. And bottom left is the rice, cooked in soft-shelled turtle broth. It's a very delicate flavor, so you can eat it just like you would plain white rice. In that little sake cup is some squeezed ginger juice--- try drizzling that on the rice, if you like. It'll really bring out the flavor. The soup is white miso with chunks of millet cake. Take your time, and enjoy!

There is nothing better than fall, the way in which the earth seems to hug us, cocooning us in its cozy grip. Fall is the season for reading. Fall is the season for pumpkin-spiced drinks. Fall is the season for sweaters. Fall is my definition of peace, the utter epitome of relaxation.

At the last market of the season I still had produce to sell. My pumpkin vines had flourished, so I could lay out eighteen small, golden sugar pumpkins, perfect for pies. I also had potatoes and carrots and a dozen jars of blackberry preserves. Charlotte and I were especially proud of those. The glass jars with their felt-topped lids glowed like garnets in the autumn sun.

To recover an intuitive sense of what will be in season throughout the year, picture a season of foods unfolding as if from one single plant. Take a minute to study this creation—an imaginary plant that bears over the course of one growing season a cornucopia of all the different vegetable products we can harvest. We’ll call it a vegetannual. Picture its life passing before your eyes like a time-lapse film: first, in the cool early spring, shoots poke up out of the ground. Small leaves appear, then bigger leaves. As the plant grows up into the sunshine and the days grow longer, flower buds will appear, followed by small green fruits. Under midsummer’s warm sun, the fruits grow larger, riper, and more colorful. As days shorten into the autumn, these mature into hard-shelled fruits with appreciable seeds inside. Finally, as the days grow cool, the vegetannual may hoard the sugars its leaves have made, pulling them down into a storage unit of some kind: a tuber, bulb, or root. So goes the year. First the leaves: spinach, kale, lettuce, and chard (here, that’s April and May). Then more mature heads of leaves and flower heads cabbage, romaine, broccoli, and cauliflower (May–June). Then tender young fruit-set: snow peas, baby squash, cucumbers (June), followed by green beans, green peppers, and small tomatoes (July). Then more mature, colorfully ripened fruits: beefsteak tomatoes, eggplants, red and yellow peppers (late July–August). Then the large, hard-shelled fruits with developed seeds inside: cantaloupes, honeydews, watermelons, pumpkins, winter squash (August–September). Last come the root crops, and so ends the produce parade. Plainly these don’t all come from the same plant, but each comes from a plant, that’s the point—a plant predestined to begin its life in the spring and die in the fall. (A few, like onions and carrots, are attempting to be biennials, but we’ll ignore that for now.) Each plant part we eat must come in its turn—leaves, buds, flowers, green fruits, ripe fruits, hard fruits—because that is the necessary order of things for an annual plant. For the life of them, they can’t do it differently. Some minor deviations and a bit of overlap are allowed, but in general, picturing an imaginary vegetannual plant is a pretty reliable guide to what will be in season, wherever you live. If you find yourself eating a watermelon in April, you can count back three months and imagine a place warm enough in January for this plant to have launched its destiny.

There’s a steady crispness in the air now as the leaves on the ancient oaks opposite the parking lot rapidly turn brilliant shades of pumpkin, red, and yellow, officiating fall’s arrival. A season I used to loathe due to a few life-altering summers that I never wanted to end.

Mayonaise" Fool enough to almost be it Cool enough to not quite see it Doomed Pick your pockets full of sorrow And run away with me tomorrow June We'll try and ease the pain But somehow we'll feel the same Well, no one knows Where our secrets go I send a heart to all my dearies When your life is so, so dreary Dream I'm rumored to the straight and narrow While the harlots of my perils Scream And I fail But when I can, I will Try to understand That when I can, I will Mother weep the years I'm missing All our time can't be given Back Shut my mouth and strike the demons That cursed you and your reasons Out of hand and out of season Out of love and out of feeling So bad When I can, I will Words defy the plan When I can, I will Fool enough to almost be it And cool enough to not quite see it And old enough to always feel this Always old, I'll always feel this No more promise no more sorrow No longer will I follow Can anybody hear me I just want to be me When I can, I will Try to understand That when I can, I will Smashing Pumpkins, Siamese Dream (1993)

The old sable house sat nestled in maple, oak, and sweet gum trees dripping with her Autumnal hues. Agatha might prefer black, but she claimed it was because her trees demanded all the luxurious brilliance. This time, her lips tipped up as the chill breeze brushed her cheek and the trees’ branches swayed in its caress. She had to admit, her little corner of the woods was more devoid of light than most, even in midday—like someone had taken a burnt amber brush and painted Agatha’s abyss in hues of warm gloom. But that was precisely how she liked it. The barest tendrils of smoke rose from her chimney—curious, considering the flames had been strong and of magical nature when she’d left. In her short absence, fog had also begun crawling in, curling up to her pumpkins and nestling amongst the leaves. Sister Autumn’s Season had truly arrived.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I’m about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it’s gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There’s a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash. I may even throw some multi-colored leaves into the mix, all haphazard like a crisp October breeze just blew through and fucked that shit up. Then I’m going to get to work on making a beautiful fucking gourd necklace for myself. People are going to be like, “Aren’t those gourds straining your neck?” And I’m just going to thread another gourd onto my necklace without breaking their gaze and quietly reply, “It’s fall, fuckfaces. You’re either ready to reap this freaky-assed harvest or you’re not.” Carving orange pumpkins sounds like a pretty fitting way to ring in the season. You know what else does? Performing an all-gourd reenactment of an episode of Diff’rent Strokes—specifically the one when Arnold and Dudley experience a disturbing brush with sexual molestation. Well, this shit just got real, didn’t it? Felonies and gourds have one very important commonality: they’re both extremely fucking real. Sorry if that’s upsetting, but I’m not doing you any favors by shielding you from this anymore. The next thing I’m going to do is carve one of the longer gourds into a perfect replica of the Mayflower as a shout-out to our Pilgrim forefathers. Then I’m going to do lines of blow off its hull with a hooker. Why? Because it’s not summer, it’s not winter, and it’s not spring. Grab a calendar and pull your fucking heads out of your asses; it’s fall, fuckers. Have you ever been in an Italian deli with salamis hanging from their ceiling? Well, then you’re going to fucking love my house. Just look where you’re walking or you’ll get KO’d by the gauntlet of misshapen, zucchini-descendant bastards swinging from above. And when you do, you’re going to hear a very loud, very stereotypical Italian laugh coming from me. Consider yourself warned. For now, all I plan to do is to throw on a flannel shirt, some tattered overalls, and a floppy fucking hat and stand in the middle of a cornfield for a few days. The first crow that tries to land on me is going to get his avian ass bitch-slapped all the way back to summer. Welcome to autumn, fuckheads!

Poet, if you can't grow up, at least grow down. Become a carrot, a parsnip. Even a potato. Let the earth conceal your shame. You mistook the mushrooms in your head for truth. Celebrate the actual beauty of mushrooms. Rejoice in their improbabilities. Accept the shortness of the season. Accept the shortness of your own breath. If you cannot suffer light, learn to engender the dark. The poem as hacking cough, as a croaking in the larynx, as a green discharge from blackened lungs. Poet, if you propose to make poems out of your halloween existence, you must learn to shit pumpkins.

Store-bought spices are often sprayed with preservatives to extend shelf life, and yet they lose potency over time. Purchase spices whole and grinds small amounts at a time. Preserve them in airtight glass jars to keep them fresh. Pantry Whole mung beans Split mung beans, also called yellow dal or moong dal Basmati rice Ghee, or grass-fed unsalted butter to make your own Extra-virgin olive oil Coconut oil Apple cider vinegar Tamari (a Japanese variety of soy sauce that is gluten-free and preservative-free) Almonds, cashews, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds Shredded coconut Cocoa powder Raw honey Maple syrup Jaggery or Sucanat Fresh produce Lemons, limes, citrus, in season Apples, berries, seasonal fruits Root vegetables, like carrots, sweet potatoes, turnips, according to season Leafy greens, in season Seasonal favorites like avocado, broccoli, pumpkin Fresh peas and green beans Fresh cilantro, parsley, other herbs Spices/herbs Spring: Ground ginger, cinnamon, turmeric, black pepper, cayenne, or red pepper flakes Summer: Ground coriander, turmeric, fennel seeds, mint, dill Autumn: Ground ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, whole nutmeg, fenugreek Winter: Ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, turmeric, fenugreek General: Mustard seeds (brown), pink or sea salt, whole peppercorns Miscellaneous Whole-milk plain yogurt Dates

Jasmine stopped at the entrance of Sutton Place Gourmet and sniffed. Pumpkin. She could smell the gourds from where she stood. A good start. Let's see. She sniffed again. A bit of thyme. Not sage. Thyme. Her brain stretched and shook the cobwebs away. Ummm, pumpkin braised until meltingly soft, mashed with mascarpone and spread between thin layers of fresh pasta... a delicate cream sauce infused with thyme. Would it work? A touch of very, very slowly cooked and mellow garlic. That would be the trick. Dash of nutmeg. Yes. Jasmine was salivating as she pushed her cart toward the vegetable section. Freshly spritzed vegetables lay glistening in brightly colored rows. Cabbage of cobalt blue, fern-green fresh dill, and cut pumpkin the color of riotous caramel. Jasmine rubbed her hands together. Autumn was a favorite season for her. Most cooks preferred spring and summer, yearning for fresh bites of flavor after a dark, heavy winter. The fragrant tomatoes, the bright bursting berries, the new spring vegetables as lively and adorable as new lambs. But Jasmine yearned for the rich tastes of the earth. She was a glutton for root vegetables, simmered in stocks, enriched with butter and dark leafy herbs. She imagined them creamy, melting on her tongue, the nutrients of the rich soil infusing her blood.

Seven extra grams of grated nutmeg makes all the difference. Best cinnamon-streusel pumpkin muffin ever. Or at least so far." I opened my eyes, making a slow assessment of my kitchen. Four other batches of pumpkin muffins littered the countertop, many of them on their sides after I took one bite and impatiently tossed them aside. This batch, the fifth, was the queen of the bunch. "I do have some reservations about the pecans." My fluffy panda-head slippers slapped on the wood floors as I walked back to the oven. Holding my butter-smudged working recipe up to the light, I considered the next round of alterations. "I wonder about almonds. Or no! Pistachios!

Your smile.” He shook his head and frowned like he was trying to find the right words. “It’s like pumpkin pie.” My lips twitched as I tried to follow his logic. “Do I want to know?” “I don’t get to eat it very often, so I always appreciate it more when I do. Same with your full-toothed smiles. Don’t get me wrong, I’d happily eat pumpkin pie every day, but I’m not upset that I don’t get to enjoy it all the time. It’s a special treat.

Pumpkin spiced lattes just don’t taste the same when you have them in other seasons.