Anticipating Autumn

What I love most about Fall is how different its approach feels than any other season.

With Spring, things begin to warm up slowly, there's the blossoms, and then all of a sudden it's 90 degrees and we're into Summer. Winter seems to happen abruptly as well. They're all beautiful in their own way, sure, but there's nothing better than the way Fall sneaks up on you. One day you're basking in the heat of late summer, and the next you wake up and there is a chill in the air, a feeling like something wonderful is about to happen. From that day on, you wear a jacket everywhere. You bust out your boots. The tip of your nose gets cold when you walk any farther than 25 yards. The heater kicks on.

It's that feeling that triggers all the others to burst out suddenly, almost unexpected, like fireworks on July 6th. It's the Halloween excitement. Fall TV premieres coupled with hope and anxiety. Amazement at the beauty of dying leaves. School nerves. Music that seems to fit better in crisp temperatures. The comfort that comes from crackling fires and the joy of frothy hot chocolate. Can you feel that? That's Fall.

For me, it's the season that induces anticipation like none else. And a sense of urgency. Like it's saying "You'd better get in all you hoped to, I don't know how long I'll be here. The snows of Winter are coming to take you hostage for five months."

So, I love Fall. And I know it when I feel it.

If you want to keep reading, here's a poem I wrote in 2003 about Fall:

Wishful Maple

When I die, everyone will notice. I want to make a scene. I am going to strip myself naked. Slowly. Piece by piece. Standing proud, limbs unsheathed, I'll shiver one last time and splatter red all over the yard. A timely pre-winter whisper will be my cue to come apart. When it is my time to die, the guard will drop and gravity will take over, slowly. It is possible my brilliant remains will be left on the knobby ground to rot. Or maybe, they will be swept into a crispy colorful pile, used as an itchy nap-time mattress or haunted hiding place and then cremated, autumnal ashes reaching a hundred nostalgic noses

What Your Husband Should Be Wearing This Fall

There are so many reason to love fall. But don't you think the best one is fall clothes? Sure, if you are super fit and look great in tank tops and short shorts, you probably love summer. But if you are me, and you are a little rounder and softer, you look better with a few more layers to hide how many pumpkin flavored desserts you ate the night before.

Who doesn't love sweaters and blazers and woolly hats and corduroy and boots?? WHO, I ASK YOU?! (I don't want to know who.) Every year I start wearing all my fall clothes far too early (when the temperature drops to 82 degrees) but today in my neighborhood it was chilly and rainy and felt like the right time to bust out some fall-wear.

I know that this blog is mostly read by women (70% of you in fact!!) but if you want to know what YOU should wear, ladies, you are going to have to wait for Patrick to post about that. He's the real fashion expert here. But I'm a man and I like clothes. And I like to look put together, but not too crazy. So I'm here to tell you how to update your husband's wardrobe so all the gents at the office can tell him he's fashionable and up to date. As the gents at the office are want to say. (Read my previous fashion advice columns here and here.)

1. Chambray

From J. Crew. So so pretty.

Say it with me: "SHAM-bray." This is what we liked to call a denim shirt back in the 90s when Brandon Walsh tied one around his waist over a peach tank top. But chambray is a little bit lighter and more refined than denim. If you follow one piece of advice from this blog, make it the chambray shirt. It's a wardrobe essential. I'll admit, I have a full on Chambray addiction. I currently have 7 of them, and there is one at my store I am eyeing to add to the collection. You can dress it up with a pair of dress pants and a blazer and a tie. You can wear it with jeans as long as the tones of denim are different (wear the shirt above with dark denim.) Or put it under a sweatshirt or sweater. Go get one. Today. 

2. Camo
STAY WITH ME HERE! Maybe it's because we are a nation perpetually at war, but camo is crazy in this fall. I know what you are thinking, "But my husband only wears camo cargo shorts and I hate them!" But trust me. Camo is more refined, dressy and super wearable. If you are me, you would wear these camo skinny chinos.

Via Old Navy

Wear them with a chambray shirt (see what I did there?) or a navy blue sweater and you're good to go. If camo pants are a little too G.I. Joe for you, try a camo polo.

From Banana Republic

Or a camo skinny tie

Also Banana Republic. I need to go buy this.

If it's subtle and mixed in with the rest of your outfit, it looks current and modern, without looking like you are storming the beaches of Normandy. Just don't wear the camo all together, unless you are hiding in the woods in a really chic way.

3. Fair Isle

If the idea of camo is too terrifying to you, the second most important pattern this fall is called Fair Isle. It's named after a small island off the coast of Scotland called...you guessed it, Fair Isle!! Its usually alternating colors in a geometric pattern like this:

God bless, J. Crew. Also, do you see what's underneath? CHAMBRAY!

Or this

Thanks, H&M

Or this

Are you kidding me, Banana Republic?

Or again, if you don't want to commit to a whole big sweater, get a cool knit tie and wear it with a white shirts and dark denim. 

Banana...are you seeing a pattern?

4. Crazy Socks

This is the bargain entry to fall fashion. Can't afford that $248 J. Crew sweater? Then get these moustache socks from Target

Or these ones from Old Navy

It's a way to add a little color and personality to your wardrobe, even if you work in a boring office. If you're in the Advanced Fashion class, roll your jeans up an inch or so so the socks pop out. Or just let them show when you are sitting in a meeting with your legs crossed.

5. Boots

Stop the presses!! Josh is declaring that boots are a fall trend!! I know, I know. But if your boots were bought when we had a Republican president, it's time to update. And if you are only going to buy one (or two) pairs of boots, here are some options:

Clarks. Via Piperlime. PS. This Ox Blood color is also SUPER on trend. For you too, ladies.

Chukkas are ankle boots with 2 or three holes for lacing and they were popular in the 40s and 50s and are popular now. I don't know why they are called chukkas, but I don't care. They are so pretty.

Or you could get something a bit more rugged and chunky, like this

Frye. Via Piper Lime. Via my heart. 

I don't even know what to say about these, other than that they probably cause world peace, cure cancer and render the wearer impervious to harm.

So that's it. Chambray, camo, fair isle, crazy socks and boots. Your man can handle that, right? You can even wear almost all of them in the same amazing fall-tastic outfit. Just don't do fair isle and camo at the same time. The gents in the office wouldn't like that. 

Time To Fall

So it's happened; that snap of cool wafting down the mountains, breathing the leaves up before they fall. Every year I am surprised by this time of year.  I feels like summer could go forever if it wanted, its like a best friend that stays too long, you still love it, but your home is calling, your soups, your sweaters and so you slowly begin your break up with summer, everything you once found charming now grates on you, the heat, the late nights, the riff-raff that hangs out in the park behind your house, all of it bores you, you've out grown summer and you begin to get whiffs of a crackling new scent that lulls you from your former love and into the barked branch arms of another where you watch from your window as the first gold leaf, much like this sentence, mazes lazily down your sidewalk dancing in and out of fresh school shoes whipping past your front door on their way to a new teacher and other new shoes.


I love the evocation of fall:

'First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren't rare. But there be bad and good, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month: school begins. Consider August, a good month, school hasn't begun yet. July, well, July's really fine: there's no chance in the world for school.'

And'Yet this train's whistle! The wails of a lifetime were gathered in it from other nights in other slumbering years; the howl of moon-dreamed dogs, the seep of river-cold winds through January porch screens which stopped the blood, a thousand fire sirens weeping or worse! the outgone shreds of breath, the protests of a billion people dead or dying, not wanting to be dead, their groans, their sighs, burst over the earth!' And

'Watching the boys vanish away, Charles Halloway suppressed a sudden urge to run with them, make the pack. He knew what the wind was doing to them, where it was taking them, to all the secret places that were never so secret again in life.' 

All those quotes came from 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' by Ray Bradbury, and it's that last one that kills me. I am right at the beginning seeing my children run off to the secret places that will never be so secret again. I love seeing what they are seeing for the first time. Daisy, tonight in our after dinner walk said, "The air smells like fire."  And we both breathed deep and she was right, and in the best way.

Where ever you are, I hope the season whispers it coming tonight and tugs you into flannel sheets or morning knitted socks and warm spiced food made from roots and gourds eaten over laughter with family reminiscing...or at the very least, I hope your air smells like fire.   

It's time to choose sides

About a week ago I got this text from Ken.

It's good to have friends who really get you. Who know that the arrival of pumpkin flavored goods is cause for joy and celebration. Because, as Patrick said, the arrival of fall is the harbinger of so many great things and number one of those things is pumpkin flavored food.

It's odd that Pumpkin is so seasonal. Because nearly everything pumpkin flavored is made with canned pumpkin, which is available anytime and tastes the same whether you eat in in May or October. It's not like Peach Pie, or something, which is really only good with fresh peaches and therefore can only be enjoyed the three weeks of the year that peaches are fresh. But, by golly, it IS seasonal. Pumpkin earlier than September 1st and later than November 28th just seems weird and out of place. Ken has a moratorium in his home against using Pumpkin as a pet name, because it is seasonal. (Why would you call someone "Pumpkin" in June?)

During the Weeks of Pumpkin, if I am in a restaurant, bakery, soap shop, candle maker or fragrance distributor and there is a pumpkin option, you can guarantee that is what I will buy. Perhaps it is the seasonality of it that makes me crave it so. You can get the Red Velvet Cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory at any time. But you can only get the Pumpkin Pecan Cheesecake a few weeks out of the year so if you happen to be at the Cheesecake factory at that time and the Pumpkin Pecan Cheesecake is available, then why would you order anything else? Do you hate Freedom?

But, strangely, I know there are people out there who don't like Pumpkin. They don't want to eat a pumpkin bagel with pumpkin cream cheese, light a pumpkin scented candle and get into a shower and wash with pumpkin scented body wash. Like Republicans, I don't really understand these people, but as a Christian, I will try and love them even though they smell like Tropical Breeze and they are eating a blueberry bagel and the leaves are turning orange, for the love of the Great Pumpkin!

So give me your pumpkin Soup with toasted pumpkin seeds. Your pumpkin ice cream. Your pumpkin bread slathered in pumpkin butter with a side of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. I'll build myself a house out of pumpkin cake, pumpkin pie and pumpkin cheesecake and adorn it with pumpkin pancakes , pumpkin biscuits and pumpkin ravioli. Pumpkin donuts, pumpkin snicker doodles and pumpkin whoopie pies shall be hung above the entry and the air will be scented with Glade Plugin Pumpkin Spice and Yankee Candle Company's Pumpkin Wreath. And I shall bathe in Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin from Bath and Body Works and drink great mugs of pumpkin cream hot chocolate. And I shall then eat my pumpkin house and sleep on the streets, a satiated and pumpkinful homeless man.

But seriously, only until November 28th. Then we move on to peppermint.

Finding Fall

This morning it rained.  I have been out of town and it was so nice to be home and look into the faces of the people I love the very most in the world.  My wife and I super love the Fall, so when it rained we donned we now our harvest apparel and headed out to do the most fall of activities...school shopping. Now, our daughter is three.  She is going to be attending Pre School for two days a week at three hours a time.  She needed new clothes. Buckets of them. So there we were...at the mall...sweatered and buying more sweaters when the sun broke through the clouds and scorched the last of the mums off our porch.

I guess what the sun was saying is, "Sit down, it's not Fall yet."  We had to come home and every member of the family had a costume change.  Shorts back on, corduroy back in the drawer.

I love living in a place where there are four seasons. We haven't always and it is something that I have come to appreciate.  But our excitement for the up coming Fall is palpable.  We just moved and we now live in a Fall Disney setting: in the mountains, covered with broad-leafed trees, on a collage campus. If you were to go to Wal-Mart and have your picture taken in the photo studio, they would pull down a back drop and our house would be in it. We can not wait.

Fall food is the most comforting.

Fall fashion is the most interesting.

Fall colors are the most flattering to my autumnal complexion.

Fall has the best Holidays: Halloween and Thanksgiving, yes winter has Christmas and New Years, but it needs them or we'd all go skating off a cliff by January 2nd.

Fall has back to school and with it the promise of reinvention (with a wardrobe to support my new self)

I guess I woke up ready for the season to begin and the lingering summer had other plans, but it's fine, I can wait...I'm just going to do it with the AC cranked all the way up so I can sit next to my crackling fire.    

Me and My TV

Here’s the thing about TV. I hate it. 

I really do. 

It’s like I’m in a bad relationship with it.  I get all excited then I’m getting ready to spend time with it and when things get rolling everything is fine and we face each other and I listen as TV talks and we get into a rhythm and then I think, “I need some cereal.” (cereal: another thing I love that I hate) and soon the dog is licking the last of the milk out of the bowl on the floor and I am totally engrossed with everything TV is saying.  I’m like, ‘You are kidding me?!” and TV’s all, “No, for reals.”

Then it’s 2:30 in the morning. 

“Son of a pistol, those stinkin’ kids are gonna wake up in 5 hours regardless of what Senator Underwood is gonna do now.”  So I make a vow.  Never again. And the shows almost over and I hate myself for doing this, I’ve got TV on my body, on my body like a tattoo and then…HE KILLED THE CONGRESSMAN!! You are joking me?!!

Then it’s 3:30 in the morning.

“I WILL KILL YOU!! I hate you so much for doing this to me TV! I have to work in 3 hours I will never get this sleep back! YOU DON’T EVEN CARE!  This is always your plan! Whether I sit down at noon or a midnight you goal is the same, never ever let him leave that couch*.”

And so it goes.  I have canceled the cable and found myself at 4:30 am waiting to see how much this lady’s grandmothers candlesticks, which she found in 1921 next to a dead hobo in upstate New York, will now fetch at auction. 

It literally doesn’t matter. Golden Girls? Love ‘em, I know every name. Nashville? Check. Glee? Okay…well?...okay fine.  Frasier? Oh you bet! Scrubs? Yes, but not the ninth season. Arrested Development? Duh. Buffy the Vampire Slayer? There has never EVER been a better show to grace the frame of my television. Freaks and Geeks? Own it.  It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia? Filthy! Fine I’ll watch…oh, love it.

I have horrible taste in TV and that’s because I have no hang ups. I’ll watch whatever as long as I keep liking it and as long as TV keeps pumping it at me, with that said, here are my recommendations for this Falls line up:

First: Get off the couch and play with your kids, because guess what, they canceled "Happy Endings" which is real sad to me.

Then watch: 

The Mindy Project

The New Girl

Modern Family (forever and ever!)

Community

Scandal (Lindsay's)

House of Cards (very...let's say grown up)

and probably Nashville and Grimm (but don't think it's Buffy, cause it ain't.)

Have fun! 

*Excepting collusions with cereal.    

"You Gotta Wear Fall To Sell Fall."

The title of this post is the phrase we've been kicking around at my store.  I work retail and you are always ahead one season.  Some parts of this are great, you start to see the spring clothes come in when there is still slush on the ground or see the Christmas ornaments before Halloween (that one's not the greatest.)  The down side is, of course, you are so sick of the season by the time it finally shows up! HOWEVER, while all the seasons bring a fresh point of view, none is as evocative and sense stirring as Fall. 

Beautiful Soup

Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!

Beau--ootiful Soo-oop!
Beau--ootiful Soo-oop!
Soo--oop of the e--e--evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!

Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish,
Game, or any other dish?
Who would not give all else for two
Pennyworth only of Beautiful Soup?
Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?

Beau--ootiful Soo-oop!
Beau--ootiful Soo-oop!
Soo--oop of the e--e--evening,
Beautiful, beauti--FUL SOUP!

~Lewis Carroll

I have to agree with Lewis Carroll's lilting praise on this one: on a damp autumn night, there is nothing quite as satisfying as a steaming tureen of beautiful soup. When we were younger, my mom would regularly make us grilled cheese sandwiches and cream of tomato soup; this meal remains one of my most basic comfort foods. Since then, Lindsay and I have adapted this formula slightly: vegetarian chili in place of the cream of tomato soup; pepperjack grilled cheese (I guess we just mostly Tex-Mexed the meal). I love soup and sandwich nights.

A couple of years ago, I came home from my fancy store with this book:

It is filled with mouth-watering soups suited to the fresh ingredients available in each of the four seasons. We, of course, are looking forward to  enjoying the book's suggested Fall fare, and, boy, is it delicious! Our favorite so far is a terrific adult spin on my old grilled cheese and tomato soup combo: Fabulous Fall Root Soup and Grilled Gorgonzola and Apple on Sourdough. The recipes are both scrumptious and simple: two words I like very much.


Fabulous Fall Roots SoupMakes 8 servings

4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 1/2 cups chopped leeks, white and light green parts only ( 3 to 4 medium leeks)
1 1/2 pounds carrots, peeled and diced
1 medium rutabaga (1 to 1 1/4 pounds), peeled and diced
8 cups chicken stock (we used vegetable stock)
Kosher salt
1 1/4 cups crème fraîche
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

1. Heat butter in a large, heavy pot (with a lid) over medium-high heat. When melted and hot, add leeks, carrots, and rutabaga. Sauté vegetables until softened, for 10 minutes or longer. Add stock and bring mixture to a simmer. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer until vegetables are very tender, for about 30 minutes.

2. Purée the soup in batches in a food processor or blender and return the soup to the pot. Whisk in 3/4 cup of the crème fraîche. Taste soup and season with salt, as neede. (The soup can be prepared 2 days ahead. Cool, cover, and refrigerate. Reheat over medium heat.)

3. To serve, ladle soup into shallow soup bowls. Garnish each serving with a generous dollop of the remaining 1/2 cup crème fraîche and a sprinkling of parsley.


Grilled Gorgonzola and Apple on Sourdough
Makes 4 servings

1/2 Granny Smith apple, cored but unpeeled, very thinly sliced and tossed in 1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
8 crusty sourdough bread slices (3/8- to 1/2-inch thick)
8 ounces creamy blue cheese, such as Gorgonzola, Fourme d'Ambert, or Bleu d'Auvergne, thickly sliced.
4 tablespoons chopped pecans
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus more if needed

Layer one slice of cheese on bread; top with pecans. Gently press pecans into cheese. Place apple slices on top of cheese and pecans, then top with second slice of bread. Brush both sides of bread with melted butter and grill until browned on both sides.

So get ready to enjoy some fancy fall comfort food -- and let us know what your favorite soup/sandwich combo is.