Things I like today: October

As we slip into Autumn, I’ve bought a few new things and am dreaming of a few others. It’s funny how universal that Back to School urge is; this is the one time of year when it’s incredibly hard to resist freshening up my wardrobe and the house. So far I’ve remained pretty restrained, but I thought I’d share a couple things.

1. An older acquisition: Bridge gave me this awesome hand-printed towel as a birthday present, with a quote from Pride & Prejudice. (Oh, Mr. Darcy.) I couldn’t bear to use it as a towel so I tacked it up above the sink and I love the result. (It’s from the shop Brookish on Etsy, though I don’t see any more towels at the moment. Lots of other P&P stuff though!)

2. I had a lingering credit at Simon Pearce, up in Vermont, and while we were in NH last weekend we made the trip over to the main store. I totally scored! I got a salt pig on sale, and found fantastic Dwell placemats on clearance.

Even the little sheep likes the salt cellar:

3. I checked out Laurie Colwin’s “Home Cooking” and “More Home Cooking” from the library ages ago and I can’t bear to return them until my copies arrive from Amazon. Must make gingerbread. Adore Laurie Colwin.

4. Oh god, a couple years ago I became fixated on dark brown shearling-lined Bean Boots, but I resisted because they seemed like they’d get quite a bit of snow in around the laces. The L.L. Bean gods heard my excuse and now they taunt me with these beauties:

I have perfectly good snow boots. I will love them from afar. (And I do still really love the laced-up ones, too.) But they also have nice-looking Hunter-style wellies, complete with fleece liners! I want those. My rain boots leak a little.

5. In honor of fall, I washed out an old spice jar and filled it with cinnamon-sugar. Happy breakfast days for me.

(BTW, I found a roll of 100 of those round blue labels on clearance at Papersource a month or two ago, and I recently labeled the tops of all my spice jars. They are in a container, so I used to have to lift them out one at a time to find a specific jar. I should have labeled them ages ago, duh!)

6. I found a ring at Forever 21 and fell in love with it, but of course it’s, like, gilded plastic and is already starting to peel. I need to find a real-metal version of it, but somehow hollow (light) and sturdy (non-denting). Love love love.

Misc.
This summer I gave in and bought American cheese to use on burgers. Because, I’m sorry, cheddar goes greasy and I don’t like blue cheese much and American melts best. Anyway, the other place American cheese sort of takes the prize is when you want a plain, non-fancy grilled cheese. And burger season is over so guess what I had for lunch yesterday?

You know you’re jealous.

Finally, in crafty news, I found these earrings marked down to $4 at Kohl’s (don’t ask) and thought they’d be pretty cool without all the extra loops. So I took them apart and put them back together.

Things I must do this month:
-Cook something amazing with the mound of shallots I scored from the farm.
-Re-do my desk chair, which is in sad shape with old foam crumbling out of the bottom and onto the floor. (Ew.) My solution has been a plastic bag taped to the bottom of the chair but that’s stopped working.
-Make gingerbread.
-Walk Lola, the darling dog who now lives downstairs!

12 thoughts on “Things I like today: October”

  1. I keep my most frequently-used spices in a basket with a front handle above the stove, and I just write on the tops w/ a Sharpie. This is my most useful kitchen idea ever, except for covering the insides of my main food cabinet with Post-It note shorthand versions of my most frequently used recipes and tips (like hardboiled eggs, how long to broil Brussels sprouts for, dirty rice rice-to-broth-to-meat ratios, meringues, etc.) and easy wheat-and-dairy-free recipes for Jen to use when she has to fend for herself.

  2. I can’t decide now if I want cinnamon-sugar toast or grilled cheese as a snack 🙂 Your blog never fails to make me hungry.

  3. Rachel- Smartness. It took me a long time to get there.

    Paige- Both! Grilled cheese, then cinnamon-toast for dessert.

    Brooke- You’re gross, but I’m laughing pretty hard. Have you landed safely on the East Coast?

  4. Gingerbread…do you need molasses? I still have 3 (yes 3!) jars left over from last year’s gingerman project, for which my estimation skills were a bit off.

    I saw an old smitten kitchen recipe for roasted shallots recently that looked mighty good. Made me think of roasted garlic, and wondered if it too would be good smeared on bread.

  5. Nicole, darling! I can always use molasses–try using it in milk as an alternative to chocolate syrup; that was my favorite as a kid and it’s packed with iron, as a bonus! I ended up roasting some of the shallots tonight, with delicata squash and cipollini onions and a bit of balsamic. Delicious. I don’t know how smeary they would have been because I wolfed them off my fork.

  6. i am envious of your towel and your salt pig. the towel is so much more awesome than the mugs on brookish. and i’ve been salt pig hunting for a while now and am always offended by the cost of the ones i like.

    this post made me happy.

  7. We’re glad you want to walk Lola. She’s good for the heart. You can borrow her any time!!

  8. All these things do resonate fall. I love the salt pig; does the salt stay granular or get cakey? And that ring…I would love it in silver.

  9. Amy- I should have known you’d have a pair! Perfect.

    Aileen- Check out the link–this one’s on sale. Or keep an eye out at Fish’s Eddy; seems like they would have them occasionally.

    Lindsey- It’s a very low-maintenance way for me to “have” a dog!

    Mom- The salt is flaky for now. I held on to the screw-top container I’ve always used because in summer I know the salt would cake up really fast. I haven’t quite got the hang of it yet; my hand goes in at a different angle and I seem to drop salt more than I used to? We’ll see.

  10. Would Italian fontina work well in a grilled cheese? It melts well so I think it might. It’s nutty too; yum.

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