Kitchen Witchery

My kitchen smells like Autumn! There are apples cooking on the stove and baking in the oven; pumpkin bread just above the baking apples, and pumpkin butter cooling on the counter; molasses cookies in a bowl waiting to be dropped on the cookie sheet...all with the heavenly scent of  nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon, ginger and cloves ( The Five Sisters).

The last of the garden produce sits on a tray nearby: eggplant, green and banana peppers, grape tomatoes, a few stray okra and an onion. It begs to become a soulful mixture of tampanade with the addition of a salt, olive oil and a little gentle cooking. There are potatoes, cabbage and turnips to accompany the porchetta to be served as Samhain Eve Dumb Supper. With all this harvest abundance, you'd think I'd be cooking for days-and you'd be right. When the nights become longer, I cook heavier, more extravagant meals. The chill in the air signals the need for food to 'stick to your ribs', as the old folks used to say. I suspect somewhere in my place of Deep Indwelling there is a need to keep the pots boiling, something harkening back to the days when an abundant harvest meant surviving through the cold winter months. My Celtic spirit honors that.

The aroma of the Five Sisters wafts up from the pan of apples. When cooled a bit, they'll be drizzled with a bit of maple syrup and wear a crown of vanilla ice cream. They reach up through the steam with beckoning fingers and whisper, " Come closer!"