Fall Cooking

"I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So
I like best of all autumn, because its tone is mellower, its colors are
richer, and it is tinged with a little sorrow. Its golden richness speaks
not of the innocence of spring, nor the power of summer, but of the
mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of
life and its content."
- Lin Yutang

   My favorite time of year is here! I love Autumn! The beautiful colors everywhere we look, putting the garden to bed, getting wood stacked up for the winter and lots of baking. I really like to bake in the fall and winter months, at the moment my favorite is pumpkins. I like to make pies, breads, cookies and am always looking for new recipes. I also love to use the dehydrator and yesterday I found out that I can dehydrate pureed pumpkin to put away for pies later.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWFZURS5UUg, I will be trying this sometime this week. We do have a freezer but if the power went out for any length of time we would be up a creek as we do not have a generator yet. Next year I hope to do a lot of canning but for now I will work with the dehydrator. I have a round one that my kids got me from Wally World, now I am looking for a bigger square one. I have my eye on a Excalibur, http://www.excaliburdehydrator.com/9-Tray-Large-Excalibur-with-26-hour-Timer-3926T-28-37-regular-prod.htm, but doubt that will happen any time soon. I will watch craigslist and the notice wall at the co-op, hopefully one will show up that I can afford. My kids like fruit leathers and jerky a lot and I can't keep enough made for them. I plan on borrowing my sisters food vacuum sealer to put some away. Next summer I plan on building a solar dehydrator and oven. http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Cooking/cooking.htm. I found a good book on canning yesterday at Walmart that has a lot of recipes for dehydrated foods , Ball Blue book guide to preserving. It has a whole lot of good recipes and step by step guides on what to do, it was in the canning dept. I look forward to experimenting with them all.

 What is your favorite thing about Fall?