Drooling in Anticipation

I love fall. Everything about it is appealing to me. Well, almost everything. There's the little issue of those pesky wasps and yellow jackets that seem to come out at this time of year that act like WWII flying aces as they dive bomb you or act like kamakazee pilots as they drive straight for you. Ahem. But that's a post for another day.

Ninety-nine percent of the things of fall make me happy. I just love how the days are still for the most part warm around here but the nights cool off. I even love when those days start turning colder all day, where the air is cool & crisp but the sun still touches the skin with warmth. The chunky knits and warm, cozy sweaters. I love the fall rain when it comes. I love when the leaves turn color and everything becomes rich and earthy looking. I love when the leaves drop and you have a colorful carpet to walk on of stress-busting crunchiness. And the smells, oh the smells of fall. The fallen leaf mustiness, the campfires, the baking.

And the food. I love the food of fall. While summer's barbques are wonderful fare, in the fall is when all the comfort foods of life start to make an appearance on the table. The potatoe soups, the beef stews made with veggies from the harvest, the baked pastas, the homemade applesauces and the apple crisps. I love the apple crisps. While wonderful all year, there is something about making them with brand new, crisp, juicy apples. And Thanksgiving, who can forget Thanksgiving is in there. For us Canadians, this comes sooner in early October. Everything about Thanksgiving dinner is comfort food to me.

Even today my mom is making my absolute all time favorite comfort food: plum dumplings. A wonderful potatoe dumpling encasing a prune plum filled with an oozing mixure of brown sugar and cinnamon. Baked with toasted bread crumbs and sprinkled with icing sugar before serving, it is the queen of comfort foods on my list. It is hot, tasty and visually gorgeous with that melted brown sugar running out as you cut into the piping hot ball. I'll eat it for breakfast, lunch, supper, dessert and anytime I can lay my hands on one. It is here so fleetingly that I gorge myself on them while I can. My mouth watereth even as we speak in anticipation of delivery of the wonderful concoction this afternoon. Heaven on a plate.

I'll update with a pic when it arrives. However, now that I've got you screaming for the recipe, I have to disappoint you. See my mom, wonderful European cook that she is, makes it from a cookbook which does everything by weight, not measure, and in decagrams and kilograms. So I'll have to get her to translate for me. But I promise, I hope, to post a recipe soon. In the meantime, I have to go make sure my bowl and fork and a glass of ice cold milk is at the ready for when she rings the doorbell.

What is your favorite fall comfort food?