Hello friends, it’s Friday, though I suspect you don’t need me to remind you the weekend is almost here. It’s still hot, as it is in many of your towns too. Don’t let that get you down. Light your fall candle, drink your pumpkin spiced latte, wrap yourself in your lightest cashmere in the air conditioning, and reach for a cozy book. That is exactly what I am doing, and the minute I step outside I am reminded that summer is still with hanging on, but inside I am fully committed to my fall world.
I have lots to share this week, so let’s get to it.
Food
Fall may not have arrived outside, but it is very much on the table this week. I have been saving these recipes for exactly this moment, and every single one of them smells like the season I am waiting for.
Roasted Butternut Squash Pasta by Half Baked Harvest
Rosemary and garlic roasted butternut squash pureed into a creamy parmesan sauce, then tossed with pan-seared Italian seasoned chicken and sun-dried tomatoes. It is the kind of pasta that tastes as though it took all afternoon, and it absolutely did not.
Caramelized Onion Butternut Squash Soup by The Only Podge
Only eight common ingredients, and the spices are simply salt and pepper, which means every bit of the flavor comes from the process itself. The caramelized onion does the work here, drawing out a sweetness that makes this soup taste far more complicated than it is. Simple, harmonious, and exactly the kind of thing you want a bowl of when the air finally turns.
Pumpkin Bolognese by Serving Dumplings
A hearty meat sauce with tender chunks of pumpkin, finished with ricotta and served over pasta in a single pan. It is rich and comforting in the way a good bolognese always is, and the pumpkin gives it something softer and more unexpected than your standard version.
Pumpkin Scones with Glaze and Candied Pecans
These are from right here on the blog. Golden, warmly spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and allspice, drizzled with a sweet glaze and finished with candied pecans. Best warm, best with something hot in a cup you love, and easy enough that you could have them on the table before anyone else in the house is properly awake.
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Books
My wishlist is looking very good this week. Three books that could not be more different from one another, and yet every one of them is exactly the kind of story I want to read this season.
The Moon, the Stars, and Madame Burova by Ruth Hogan
Imelda Burova has spent her life in a fortune-teller’s booth on the Brighton seafront, reading Tarot cards for lovers and liars, dreamers and fools, keeping their secrets the way the sea keeps everything. Now she is retiring, but there is one last promise to keep, made back in the 1970s when she and her friends were young and the future still felt infinite. The story spans more than fifty years and weaves between the bright, slightly reckless world of holiday camps and seaside entertainers and a present-day London where a woman named Billie has just had everything she thought she knew about herself overturned. Ruth Hogan writes the kind of fiction that makes you feel you have stumbled into a story that was always going on just around the corner from you. Magical and wise and full of the particular pleasure of wrongs that finally get put right.
The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen by Ada Bright
A time-traveling Jane Austen, stranded in modern England by a mischievous dog, is the premise, and yes, it is exactly as delightful as it sounds. Rose Wallace, a devoted Austen reader in Bath for the annual festival, is the only person who realizes who her mysterious new neighbor actually is, and now it falls to her to help Jane find her way home before the novels we love are never written at all. It is funny and warm and charming.
The Lost Art of Letter Writing by Menna van Praag
Clara Cohen runs a quiet stationery shop in Cambridge and has a particular gift: she writes letters to strangers in need, the kind that change things. When she discovers her great-grandmother’s wartime love letters, she follows them to Amsterdam, hoping to heal old losses and, in the process, find her own way forward. It is a book about correspondence and the weight a few carefully chosen words can carry, about how the past reaches into the present in ways we don’t always see coming. For anyone who still believes a handwritten letter is one of the loveliest things one person can send to another.
Outfit of the Week
This the season, for plaid and if you are mad for plaid as I am, there is a plethora to choose from. This weeks outfit is a beautiful burgundy plaid dress that you can wear from now until Spring. Wear it with boots, slingbacks, pumps or flats. Change the look by adding a pull-over sweater so that it looks like a skirt. I added a Mulberry bag(splurge) but this forest green one would look beautiful as well.
You can see more of my outfits, fashion, and home decor on ShopMy.
Outfit Details Below
Tell me about your week. What are you cooking, reading, or looking forward to this weekend?
Find me on Pinterest and Instagram for more during the week. And, last but not least, don’t forget to join Kim, Juliet and I for Weekend Meanderings.
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