Hi, everyone!
It’s been a while. Since you haven’t received weekly fall content from me (and since I’m sure you haven’t seen ANY autumnal content AT ALL over the last two months), I thought I’d do a round-up of the fall recipes I shared last year, along with a new recipe I made yesterday. I also have two excellent books to recommend, one fiction and one nonfiction.
It’s raining and chilly today, which in my opinion is perfect fall weather. I’m writing from a window seat in a new-to-me local coffee shop (Coat Check, for anyone local who’s wondering.) Being here reminds me how much I love sitting in a coffee shop, alone but not alone. It feels luxurious to simply exist in public.
I hope that you are well, and that you too are finding solace in small luxuries.
Round-up of Fall Recipes
Based on the following list, late August and September seem to be peak pumpkin baking season for me, and in October I turn towards apples. That has also been the case this year. For those of you who are new around here, I’m including a link to the original newsletter because I usually share my experience, tips & any modifications I made when I share a recipe.
Pumpkin Bread (#5) - I make these as muffins. The recipe makes a lot of batter, but I only make two dozen muffins, filled to the top. As they rise, you get an amazing, crispy muffin top with a soft center.
Pumpkin Bars with cream cheese icing (#6) Don’t skimp on the cream cheese icing, y’all. These would be perfect for a Halloween party.
Brown Butter & Maple Chewy Cookies (#8) SO GOOD.
Apple Peanut Butter Cookies (#11) Warm and filling.
Mom’s Apple Cake (#12) From a falling-apart recipe book in my mom’s kitchen. Simple and perfect.
Flour’s Apple Snacking Cake
Yesterday, I somehow forgot about my mom’s apple cake and so I made this one. I love Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston’s Flour Bakery and Cafe - everything I’ve made from it so far has been delicious and do-able. This snacking cake is slightly less sweet than my mom’s (linked above), and the texture is softer (more likely to fall apart in your hands, or maybe that’s because I didn’t let it cool for long enough because I was impatient!) It has a crispy top and sides, and is spiced perfectly. The final texture reminds me of a decadent banana bread - but with fall flavors.
I didn’t have Granny Smith apples on hand, so I used the Pink Ladies I had. I also don’t own a 10” cake pan, so I used a 9x13 and reduced the baking time by 10-15 minutes. It worked fine.
If you make it, let me know how it turns out for you!
The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin
I borrowed this one from the library after not one, but three, people recommended it. My friend Bri raved about it when we saw each other this summer, and then two of my fellow co-teachers recommended it.
As alluded in the title, the book’s premise is an post-apocalyptic imagining of the world after ecological disaster. Like many books in the genre, Jemisin explores themes of oppression and discrimination. However, what strikes me about this book is that it doesn’t feel derivative, even though it was published during the height of Hunger Games/ Divergent popularity. It took me some dedicated time to get into the universe: I needed more than 10 minute chunks, which is helpful to know when you’re going into a new book, I think. But once I was in, I was hooked.
Jemisin is a master world-builder, who manages the complex jenga of consistently moving the plot forward while giving you just enough context. The structure of the novel creates a good deal of suspense, but I can’t talk more about the structure without giving away some important plot points that I didn’t see coming. Suffice it to say, I was blown away and plan to finish the trilogy very soon. Has anyone else read this? And if so, why am I only just hearing about it??
No Cure for Being Human: (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) by Kate Bowler
I love Kate Bowler’s podcast Everything Happens and her Instagram presence, so ordering her newest book was an easy decision. Bowler is a historian and seminary professor who refuses to moralize suffering. In her newest book, she chronicles her journey with stage-four cancer and how she coped (and didn’t) with the loss of control and the reality of mortality it brought with it.
Bowler’s prose is poignant and at times hysterical; reading this book felt like a bear hug. It made me feel less alone, and more at peace with my own human limitations. I was trying to explain to Noah how powerful it is, so I started reading a chunk to him and then I read him a whole page because I couldn’t stop. “Are you just going to read the rest of the book out loud to me?” he asked. “I could!” I said.
This book is for those of us who witness suffering, who wonder what it means to be human, and who yearn for even a glimmer of meaning. It’s for all of us who are done with dishonest platitudes. And it’s for all of us who struggle to separate our identity from our productivity. Although Bowler occasionally discusses her Christian faith in the book, you don’t need to believe what Bowler does to take something from this book, and the tone is not preachy.
If you want a taste of Bowler’s writing, she recently wrote this opinion article for the The Washington Post entitled “We can’t upgrade our lives. We can only live them.”
That’s it for today, friends! Have a lovely rest of your day.