We have just moved into temporary quarters – a place too small for our many boxes of books, the hats, the scrapbooks, the baby treasures, our clattering miscellany of pots, pans, racks, roasting pans, wine glasses, salad bowls, platters, the KitchenAid mixer and the Dutch ovens. We hadn’t yet packed up our knives, scouring pads, shrimp de-veiner, can opener, the brownie pan and the Champagne flutes before the packers came – so everything we hold dear – they wrapped in miles of paper, and stashed away in a mountain of boxes, now squirreled away in storage. The packers were more efficient than we were – and were faster and lighter on their feet, too. How could they expect us to live someplace for three months without cookie sheets? All the tablecloths and napkins are snug in boxes packed under our own personal Rosebuds. But somehow, amid the chaos and welter and reams of crisp packing paper, Mr. Sanders had to presence of mind to guard the Crock-Pot®. Thank goodness. And soon we will be able to prepare for fall.
It’s the beginning of October, for heaven’s sake. It’s still hot. Candy corn and Halloween candy have been displayed at the grocery store since August, when the children went back to school! It should be cold by now! At least sweater weather. Please don’t let this be a Halloween when we have to worry about the chocolate candies melting in the neighbors’ Trick or Treat buckets. (Let us pause for a minute and give thanks that the Hurricanes Humberto and Imelda are dancing a pas de deux out in the wide Sargasso Sea instead of along the east coast. Amen!) Let’s enjoy some coolth with our ghoulies and ghosties and long leggedy beasties.
I am ready now to break out the slow-cooker, and rummage around the internet for warm, comforting, homey recipes, since the cook books are God knows where. Every seasonal change brings a different view of what we should be cooking for dinner while breakfast never seems to vary much: a bowl of sticks and twigs livened up with some blueberries or bananas seems fine 12 months out of the year. Maybe we substitute hot oatmeal on snow days, and pancakes for weekends, but otherwise breakfast seems boringly and comfortingly consistent. We do like to vary our dinner prep. In my annual summer project to foist most of the cooking off on Mr. Sanders, I am doing my best to stay out of the blazing hot kitchen. The more grilling he can do, the better. But once the cooler weather rolls around again, I am excited about spending hours puttering, stirring, chopping, flouring, browning, tasting, and imagining warm, candlelit dinners. Maybe with a cheering glass of red wine, and a little Red Garland playing in the background.
We are adrift this year, between homes, and need a little cosseting. But we also have a new town to explore; we’d like to be a little more foot loose and fancy free, and don’t want to be stuck in a pokey apartment all day long – so a Crock-Pot® is the answer. We can load it up with tasty ingredients, run out for a few hours to case the new neighborhood, and come back to the apartment, that for an evening, will smell like home, and our dinner will be waiting for us. Genius.
Our smart friends at Food52 have the answer, as usual: Chicken Parm Soup
Slow Cooker French Wine and Mustard Chicken
55 Slow-Cooker Recipes That Will Warm Up Your Fall
Sweater weather shouldn’t be too too far away. Go out to a harvest festival this weekend, buy a pumpkin and an armful of mums. Make hay while the sun shines!
“If you are careful,’ Garp wrote, ‘if you use good ingredients, and you don’t take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.”
― John Irving
Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.
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