oh, look. a blogger talking about picking apples…your mind is blown, I’m sure.

Saturday was one of those perfect days. We got to sleep in and when we woke up, without the aid of an alarm clock, there was an adorable ball of fuzz peeking out from under the covers. At Caribou, the barista put exactly the right amount of syrup in my pumpkin latte. The car radio played three good songs in a row and it was a perfect 68-70 degrees all day. The whole drive to Pataskala, we held hands and told jokes and ranted about the election and smiled at each other and it was a perfect day.

This is our fourth autumn in Ohio and, hands down, our favorite thing about Midwest autumns is apple-picking at Lynd’s Fruit Farm. You may remember the apple juggling from last year?

Awww, that smile…oh-em-gee, you guys…so in love with him.

Are those not the most beautiful vegetables you have ever SEEN? We even found cheese cauliflower, which is deceptively NOT cheesy but just cheese-colored.

So now that I have gloated in my perfect autumn bliss, tell me what you’re doing to celebrate October where you live!

love, elizabeth

Vegetable Mondays

In the last five months or so, I have been toying with the idea of becoming a full-fledged vegetarian. I like meat but most days, I can totally do without it and I’ve noticed that when I eat less meat, the better I physically feel. One of my really good friends is a long-time vegetarian and she and I have had lots of conversations about it.

Kyle…on the other hand…is not so thrilled about the idea of cutting meat from our diet. He actually grew up vegan, because of his dad, and has some really strong feelings associated with that. So every time I bring up the whole eat vegetables, not meat, thing, I can see him mentally calculating how he’ll hide the Slim Jim’s and the bacon bits from me.

And while the idea of really committing to this is exciting to me, I’m not interested in creating conflict in my marriage and I’m not interested in trying to make separate dinners for the two of us every night. So when Kyle said, out of the blue, that he would really like to try including more fruits and vegetables in his daily intake, I took it as a sign.

Today at lunch, we came up with a compromise. We’re going to try make one day a week a meat-free day and see how it goes. We’re starting with Mondays. If we find that we can both live with that, we’ll try for two. The point isn’t necessarily to stop eating meat altogether but to find some tasty meat-alternatives that offer good protein and nutrition and see how it affects our health and well-being. I’m also interested in the possibility that eating LESS meat will mean we can afford higher quality meat when we do buy it.

I’ve been working on my list of vegetarian dinners to try…eggplant lasagna, summer vegetable frittatas, savory polenta, gallo pinto, and veggie shepherd’s pie.

So help me out…do you have experience as a vegetarian? Do you have a meat-alternative you love? Recipes I should check out?

love, elizabeth

Breakfast in Leadville

My mom is much more of a breakfast person than I am. But if breakfast was exactly like this every morning…I’d never miss it.

That’s veggie eggs benedict, by the way. And it tasted like heaven.

What’s your favorite way to spend breakfast?

love, elizabeth