Fall Cravings

Last night over dinner, Andrew casually asked how my cravings for salty foods was going. When asked why, he just took another bite and reached for a water glass. Apparently, now that I'm back in the kitchen, I'm a little heavy handed on the salt. That's bothersome for a person who prides herself on cooking. What's worse is that I didn't even realize it.

I'll just have to police myself a little better, but I honestly find nothing so offensive as having people adjust the spice levels on my cooking at the table. I know I put the salt and pepper on the table, but I'll tell you if it's necessary to use it. Occasionally, I recommend that my guests do some adjusting and I don't mind someone kicking up the salt or pepper if they are particularly keen on it. I suppose I must have early on learned that shaking the shakers over your food before even tasting it was gauche. These days, if you're dining with me, I guess you'd come prepared with water to try to overcome my zealous salting.

I'll work on it though since I've got some great food available for a dinner party. My grocery shopping and day at the market have turned up a few fall treasures. Today, I remembered that Thursdays mean market days. I was there and hungry for the first time this pregnancy. That may explain why I came home with half bushels of pears, apples, concord grapes, 6 pumpkins, and a lamb's worth of chops. Not to mention that I went out yesterday and restocked the kitchen. I'm prepared for a small invasion of diners. Hopefully, I can get a plan underway. If you find yourself in the area, you're welcome to join us!

That's the problem with living so far from so many great friends. We can't sit down for a meal together often enough. While we are thrilled to have a couple of great friends and a happy array of people who are coming into the friend circle here, there are so many wonderful people who are living all around North America and the rest of the world that I want to see more.

Excuse my sentimentality, the cold weather has driven me indoors. I'm curled in my favorite chair with a cup of growing belly tea (by Mother Goddess or something like that). I'm devouring a bowl of Concord grapes and an Macintosh apple. Concord grapes are really amazing things. I was very slow in discovering them. They are the grape flavor that is so often packaged and sold as grape flavor. I'm obviously working on improving my healthy eating here. This baby better be coming out healthy as a horse.

Speaking of the baby's arrival: last night Andrew and I came up with the first concrete plan for reorganizing the house that I've been able to get excited about. To give you a better idea, here's what we are working with:


I was reminded when talking to an old friend who now resides in Arizona that we don't do space the way they do in the West. I mentioned that we had lived in a small apartment in Vancouver. She nodded with understanding, "Was it like 1200 square feet?"

No. It was not. That is an incredible amount of space. That is the kind of space that we one day aspire to own. Our basement apartment, beautiful as it was, was 500 square feet. We own less and store efficiently. We're currently living it up in about a 1000 square feet and feeling really excessive.

So by the numbers, we have enough space for a baby, but the layout is hard. We rent what is actually two apartments in an old house. We have the main floor at the front of the house and the basement apartment below it. Don't ask how this came about, it's Andrew's sweet talking. The main floor where we mostly live now consists of an entry way, large living room (where we also dine), a good sized kitchen, large bathroom and a bedroom. The basement has a small bedroom, smallish full bath, and a large open kitchen living area, also a wonderful cellar. We use it mostly for storage, closet space, laundry and a guest room.

To fit a baby in here and not have the baby so far away; I'm starting to consider moving my bedroom into the basement. I have been hesitant to do this until now because the basement apartment less beautiful, the staircase connecting the two is shared by our lovely upstairs neighbours, the basement seems humid. But I'm beginning to set aside these concerns and starting to think of painting and scrubbing and rearranging in favor of readying the space for three Teleps.

The season change is leaving me craving salt and old friends and space for the new baby. Oh and if anyone has any fantastic ideas for pumpkin, I did buy six of them today.