Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn, Hello Winter

Seattle weather is a little different every year but this summer was especially odd.  After a very cold winter and a very cold spring, we experienced a very chilly (and depressing) beginning to summer.  It wasn’t until August when the days really started to warm up and then, like a miracle, August and September delivered the most beautiful indian summer I can remember.  One beautiful, seventy-five degree day after another came rolling along until it felt like summer would go on forever.

Of course, that was when it started to get chilly again, but by then I felt as though I’d gotten the summer I’d been waiting for.  Summer this year was a little hard on me as it was, having been diagnosed with skin cancer earlier in the year, for which I underwent surgery in June.  I had to ditch my gauzy summer dresses and spaghetti straps for hats, long skirts, scarves and thin sweaters – for the rest of my life.  It was a hot and rather unpleasantly dressed summer for me, never getting to feel the sun on my face and lathering up with sunscreen wherever I went (doctor’s orders, unfortunately).  I have a post in the works about my special “skin cancer fashions” but for now, let’s just say that although the end of summer was absolutely beautiful, I wasn’t as sad as usual to see it go.  It sure made dressing myself a lot easier!

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What followed was the most beautiful autumn (honest!) that I can ever remember.  Is autumn always this gorgeous?  The leaves seemed to linger forever, shades of gold and red that made my eyes burn.  The crispness in the air, wrapping myself in warm sweaters and getting my nabe cookbook off the shelf, I really relished in all of these things.  I wish I’d gotten some photos of the beautiful leaves around my house – the burning red maples and the yellow ginkos – but whenever we went out for a walk, we just wanted to talk and spend time together and I forgot my camera every time!

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In that transition between summer and autumn, near the end of September, we spent a weekend housesitting for my parents in the house I’d grown up in.  A lot has changed about the house – new floors and carpet and paint, new retaining wall in the garden – but it was very sweet and special to spend the weekend there, just the two of us.  It was so quiet, baking bread in the kitchen I used to watch my mom and dad bake bread in when I was little, playing with flour while the kneaded the dough (my dad still makes all their bread, every two weeks or so, from flour they grind themselves).  It was the first time I didn’t have to use a recipe!

Eve snapped a couple of pictures of me while I worked.  I have my classic look of concentration, haha.

Here are a few more shots from that weekend.  It really did seem like the last hurrah of summer.

After that, the weather started to get cold, and when the weather gets cold, my thoughts go directly to: what nabe am I going to cook for dinner?

Japanese Hot Pots: Comforting One-Pot Meals, by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat, has been used so many times since we bought it that the book is already falling apart.  We already had a number of nabe recipes collected before we invested in this book, but knowing the history of the dishes, information about substitutions, and suggestions for shime (the nabe “finish”) have made the book indispensable.  There were so many things I ate in Japan that I didn’t know the name of, or the ingredient list, and I continuously have that wonderful experience of taking a sip out of my nabe bowl and saying, “oh, I remember this one!”

I’m working on a larger post showcasing more of the nabe we’ve been making (some of them unusual and delicious) so I won’t talk much more about it now.  Both nabe and this wonderful cookbook deserve their own post, to be sure, but here’s a preview below:

This soup comes from Akita, a dish traditionally enjoyed by hunters up in the mountains, a rich broth made with chicken stock, soy sauce and sake.  The tube-shaped dumplings are called kiritampo.  Hunters used to make them ahead of time and bring them on expeditions to add to their soups.  The rice is cooked, mashed until paste-like, wrapped around chopsticks and then grilled in a broiler.  Ours turned out pretty well, but I think they could have had a little more flavor.  I’m planning on mixing some mushrooms in with the rice next time, to give them a more savory flavor.

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Thanksgiving has also come and gone.  We did the whole thing for the first time this year, hosting both sets of parents for a cozy, immediate family-only gathering that made for the best Thanksgiving any of us could remember.  We ordered our turkey ages ago from a farm we often buy from at the farmers market and even though it was our first time stuffing and roasting a bird of this size, it turned out beautifully.  I couldn’t believe it!  Sorry for the flash in the picture, but you can see the happy, surprised look on my face when we took the muslin cloth off.  Turkey!

After that came a few days of lazy walks, turkey sandwiches, naps, and finally cutting up the whole carcass and making it into a delicious batch of turkey soup.  We’re baking the rest of the leftover stuffing in a couple of kabocha today, and I’ll be sure to report how that turns out!  Happy autumn, happy Thanksgiving, and happy all-keeping-warm-activities to you all!

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