the fall

Ah my FAVORITE time of year. it's cool and beautiful outside, our wedding anniversary and halloween happen, and of course - my birthday and thanskgiving right around the corner. time to make soups out of the leftovers from the garden and all the great fall vegetables, apple picking, pumpkin picking, trick or treating (sort of), cooking...
cooking. so lately jack had been doing a lot of cooking. and he's a great cook. our new favorite: thai basil pesto chicken. i made up some thai basil pesto substituting peanuts for pinenuts and cutting out cheese, and adding canola oil (although next time i think peanut oil will be better) instead of olive oil. mix with a little coconut milk (  a LITTLE, i hate coconut milk), peppers and chicken and its pretty freaking good. even baby loves it. i also went on a soup spree a couple of weekends ago and made broccoli cheddar for the baby (she loves broccoli cheddar soup), corn chowder (not my best effort), and a minestrone/italian veggie style soup. all fair attempts. we brought home some amazing curry from south africa (the spice guy at a little market we went to mixed it up right in front of us. incredible!) so that soup recipe up there should be fantastic. plus i bought some nann at whole foods we've yet to make anything to eat with. we also have so many little green tomatoes we may need to do some fried green tomatoes too. yum.
i'm also on a quest for some pate here in richmond. i was thinking olio might have some, but i tweeted them and got no response. still have to go check that place out though. i also know belmont butchery carries pate..a pate search is planned for saturday.

for our anniversary jack and i (of course) went up to the vineyard. we dropped the baby off with her cousins and spent a lovely monday up in crozet. this year we stopped at blue mountain brewery which is literally down the road from King family and had lunch and did a beer tasting. lunch was a bratwurst pizza with apples, caramelized onions and brat. sooo freaking good. our beer sampling consisted of (among a few others) a lighter pilsner, a pumpkin ale - the best thing i had, and even a chocolate stout for ol jackie. highly recommend this place! too bad it was drizzling, it would have been nice to sit outside. the view isn't great, but it isn't terrible either. we wanted to go to Starr hill brewery too but they're only open on the weekends. the vineyard is as it has been for the past three years - raining everywhere but there for our wedding day. we got a bottle of meritage (my favorite there, besides the crose), didn't bother with a tasting, and missed some wonderful pate they usually have that i have been CRAVING (hence the pate excursion this weekend).

we also did the classic apple picking this past month - four words to describe it: hot, dusty, buggy, and crowded. i think we're going to venture out and find a new place to go. carters mountain is way too popular. we had to climb a second mountain to find apples. with a 25 lb baby on your hip, its just not quite as fun.

and halloween: my goal was to use the baby as a candy-getter. but my conscience got the best of me and i felt bad collecting candy with a 1 year old who obviously was not going to be doing the majority of the eating (unless i was a REALLY bad mom). but we took her out saturday and sunday. and the friday before we attempted a movie night at dogwood dell (alice in wonderland!). but it was cold and we had no warm cup of fun, so we left pretty early. ah well, these things will get more fun as she gets older. hopefully.

note - i wrote this obviously about a month ago and never posted. feel like its time to post now?