fall feasting

today we picked up our last fall basket (michael did a great job spreading the bounty on the counter!) and it seemed a good time to catch up with the snaps i'd been collecting over the last few weeks of everything from october sunflowers to fall tomatoes.  owen and i had fun making the collages (although he did want to include some rocket doodle art from my phone--but that'll be a later post. . .).  i love how the late harvest tomatoes look like squash, and they've been wonderfully robust (not at all mealy).  they're certainly no august tomatoes, and they're especially delish roasted and spread over some whole grain crostini with a bit of creamy goat cheese. . .

since we bought a salad spinner (thank you home goods-- $19 for a kitchen aid pump spinner!) prepping our greens has been lots more fun.  owen washed, rinsed and spun these beet greens all by himself!  we enjoyed these in a simple foil steam pouch thrown on the grill with some onion, salt, pepper and EVOO.

before i put these root veggies int he oven to roast i couldn't resist taking a snapshot--i parboiled the potatoes with the beets and everything turned a lovely lavender.  on the right are the pictures of my first ratatouille effort--i came across an old cooks illustrated that had a recipe for roasting the zucchini and eggplant and it was well worth the effort!  next time i'll make a double batch!

finally, the best part of the harvest has been sharing it with friends. . . we had some of our favorite people over for a "fancy food" dinner party and were gifted with the most gorgeous persimmons and pomegranates (fallen right off the tree).  michael and i made our favorite spatchocked grilled chicken and opened up our "swedish" red quinoa--a first for all of us and apparently we have an insider who can get his hands on this amazing grain (i'm not even sure if that's the right classification?) so watch for it in trader joes!  i followed the swedish directions (more or less) to cook and tossed with some couscous, toasted walnuts and dried apricots.  very tasty!  of course the "fancy" wasn't over until we savoured the "fancy quince" dessert and michael and i knew it was time to open our bottle of harvest reisling we'd been saving.  i knew it was a good evening when the next morning lined up next to the sink was a water xylophone of all of our "fancy" glasses. . .

and this is all but a prelude to thanksgiving!