Comfort me with apples—and long autumn walks

by June

We're saying goodbye to the colors—to the oranges and reds of October, but also the green grass that sprouted early this year and has stayed long.

Autumn calls us out for long rambles.

We climb along rocks by the river.

Or we take rides along curving roads and end up at the apple orchard.

This is the season of bittersweet truth though—a crackle of ice on the chickens' water, tracings of frost on the window. Winter will close in.

So we go out with our cameras and dazzle ourselves with the light on the water, the snap in the air, the antics of the goats.

We sit in the grass and stare into our hen's eyes.

We lie down and look at the blue sky and the red leaves and the white clouds. Everything is clarified to its purest hue.

Dark nudges us into the house finally. But we have apples and more time for dinner. What should we make? What should we make up?

Since we have a pizza dough ready to go, how about spinning a pizza inspired by our adventures? How about a Savory Applesauce and Ham Pizza?

We peel and dice up two apples and put them in a sauce pan with a tablespoon of olive oil and two cloves of garlic. We cover the pan and keep the heat low. When it is all good and soft, we roughly mush the apples with the garlic (though you could remove the cloves if you just wanted a garlicky nuance).

While the applesauce is cooking, we slice a red onion into thin rounds and sweat them over low heat, then fire it up a little to caramelize them.

We have a bit of ham and dice it up.

Birch smoothes out the pizza dough. The applesauce goes on first, then the caramelized onions, then the ham, then some shredded mozzarella. We finish it with a sprinkling of ground coriander, pepper and salt.

 Darkness may come early now, but it brings with it the gift of having more time together in the kitchen—more time to make dinner out of what we've found growing all around us this long, lovely season.