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The heat came on this week. I heard it click on, and that was it. That’s my sign that the season has really turned.

It’s getting dark so early now. By late afternoon, I’m already turning on lamps. And when I step outside first thing in the morning, I can see my breath.

So I’m doing what I always do this time of year. I’m staying in, turning the oven on, and leaving it on all afternoon.

This weekend has a little of everything. Saturday is Halloween, and Sunday morning the clocks fall back. We get an hour back, and I already know where mine is going. Into a pot roast.

Braising season is here. Let’s get cozy.

Farm Stand Report

Not much has changed at the stand since last time. Mums, pumpkins, and gourds out front, bins of apples, Halloween decorations everywhere you look, and the shelves of prepared goods inside.

My own garden is retired for the season. Whatever was left went into the compost, and the pots are cleaned out and stacked in the garage until spring.

And the lime tree? It’s not coming inside. I don’t have the right light for it, and more to the point, I have a cat who would dig in that planter relentlessly. So I’m looking for someone to adopt it. And if nobody does... don’t be a hater, but I may have to let it go.

Weekend Menu

Friday: Straight From the Pantry

• Sausage & White Beans with Tomatoes

• Crusty bread from the freezer, warmed in the oven

• Parmesan for grating at the table

Saturday: Halloween

• The pot roast goes in the oven after lunch (it’s for tomorrow)

• Pantry Beef & Black Bean Chili, ready before the first doorbell

• Shredded sharp cheddar on top

• Yellow layer cake with chocolate frosting, baked and frosted for Sunday

Sunday: The All-Oven Sunday

• Irish Stout-Braised Pot Roast with Carrots

• Crispy Oven-Roasted Potatoes

• Roasted Green Beans

• Irish Soda Bread (baked Saturday)

• Yellow Layer Cake with Chocolate Frosting

The cake is the same one I grew up with, box and tub. Some things you just don’t improve on.

Featured Recipe: Irish Stout-Braised Pot Roast

Every Sunday when I was growing up, there was pot roast. My mother made hers the way a lot of mothers did back then, with a can of soup, a packet of soup mix and a sheet of foil (more on that in Nonna’s Notebook). This is my version. Same rump roast, but braised low and slow with a bottle of Irish stout. It gives you a deep, dark gravy with just a little sweetness. Make it Saturday. It’s better on Sunday.

Serves 6 | Prep: 25 minutes | Cook: about 3 to 3½ hours, mostly hands-off

Ingredients

• 1 beef rump roast, 3½ to 4 lb (or a chuck roast; see Notes)

• 2 tsp kosher salt

• 1 tsp black pepper

• 2 tbsp neutral oil

• 2 large yellow onions, cut into thick wedges

• 4 garlic cloves, smashed

• 2 tbsp tomato paste

• 2 tbsp all-purpose flour

• 1 bottle (about 12 oz) Guinness or another dry Irish stout

• 2 cups low-sodium beef broth

• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

• 1 tbsp brown sugar

• 2 bay leaves

• 1 tsp dried thyme

• 1½ lb carrots, peeled and cut into 2-inch pieces

• Optional, for thicker gravy: 2 tbsp softened butter mashed together with 2 tbsp flour

Directions

1. Season ahead. The night before (or at least an hour before), pat the roast dry and rub it all over with the salt and pepper. If you have time, leave it uncovered in the fridge overnight. Take it out 30 minutes before searing.

2. Heat the oven to 300°F (325°F is fine too) with a rack in the lower third.

3. Sear the beef. Heat the oil in a Dutch oven or braiser over medium-high heat. Brown the roast well on every side, 4 to 5 minutes per side, about 15 minutes in all. Move it to a plate. I use my Le Creuset braiser for this. Any heavy pot with a tight lid that can go in the oven will do the job.

4. Build the base. Turn the heat to medium. Cook the onions for 5 minutes, until they start to soften. Add the garlic for 1 minute, then the tomato paste, stirring for 1 to 2 minutes until it darkens. Sprinkle in the flour and stir for 1 minute.

5. Add the liquid. Pour in the stout and scrape up all the browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Let it bubble for 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in the broth, Worcestershire, brown sugar, bay leaves, and thyme, and bring it to a simmer.

6. Braise. Put the roast back in, along with any juices from the plate. The liquid should come about halfway up the meat. Cover and put it in the oven for 2 hours.

7. Add the carrots. Turn the roast over, tuck the carrots in around it, cover, and return it to the oven for another 1 to 1½ hours, until a fork slides into the meat easily. You want it fall-apart tender. Start checking right around the 3-hour mark.

8. If you’re serving it today: Move the roast and carrots to a platter and cover loosely with foil for 20 minutes. Skim the fat off the liquid, take out the bay leaves, and simmer the liquid on the stove for 5 to 10 minutes to thicken. For a thicker gravy, whisk in the butter-flour paste a little at a time. Slice the meat thin, across the grain.

9. If you’re serving it tomorrow (my way): Let the pot cool on the counter for about an hour, then cover it and refrigerate it overnight. The next day, lift the hardened fat off the top with a spoon. Take out the roast, slice it cold across the grain, and lay the slices back in the liquid with the carrots. Cover and reheat at 325°F for 40 to 45 minutes, until it’s hot all the way through. Thicken the gravy on the stove as in step 8.

Notes

• No stout? Skip the stout and the brown sugar, and use 3½ cups of beef broth in all.

• Rump or chuck? Either one works. Rump is what I grew up with, and it’s still my go-to. Cooked low and slow, it falls apart, and the gravy isn’t as greasy. Chuck is the best-marbled cut for braising, so it’s very forgiving, but it gives off more fat. With either one, pour off the fat (or chill the pot and lift it off), and you’re left with a really nice gravy.

• Don’t rush it. If the meat is tough, it needs more time, not more heat. Put the lid back on and give it another 30 minutes.

• Leftovers: Pile the slices on a roll with some gravy for the best sandwich of the week.

Bonus Card: Quick Irish Soda Bread Four ingredients and no yeast. Bake it Saturday morning.

• 4 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 tsp baking soda

• 1 tsp kosher salt

• 1¾ cups buttermilk, plus a splash more if needed

Heat the oven to 425°F. Whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the middle, pour in the buttermilk, and stir with a fork until a shaggy dough forms, adding a splash more buttermilk if it’s dry. Don’t overwork it. Turn it onto a floured counter, pat it into a round about 2 inches high, and set it on a floured baking sheet or in a cast-iron skillet. Cut a deep X across the top. Bake 35 to 40 minutes, until it’s deep golden and sounds hollow when you tap the bottom.

Shoppable List

This week’s list is in two parts. If you keep the On-the-Fly Pantry stocked, you probably have most of the first part already.

From the pantry

• 1 lb Italian sausage, sweet or hot

• 1 lb ground beef

• 4 yellow onions

• 2 heads garlic

• 2 cans (28 oz) whole tomatoes

• 1 small can tomato paste

• 2 cans cannellini beans

• 2 cans black beans

• Chicken broth

• All-purpose flour

• Brown sugar

• Baking soda

• Neutral oil and olive oil

• Butter

• Eggs (for the cake mix)

• Sharp cheddar

• Parmesan

• A loaf of crusty bread from the freezer

• Kosher salt and black pepper

• Bay leaves

• Dried thyme and oregano

• Cumin

• Smoked paprika

• Red pepper flakes

To buy

• 1 beef rump roast, 3½ to 4 lb (or chuck)

• 1 bottle (12 oz) Guinness or another dry Irish stout

• 1 carton (32 oz) low-sodium beef broth

• Worcestershire sauce

• 1½ lb carrots

• 3 lb Yukon Gold potatoes

• 1½ lb green beans

• 1 box yellow cake mix

• 1 tub chocolate frosting

• 1 quart buttermilk (for the soda bread)

From Nonna’s Shop

Thanksgiving is four weeks from today. If the thought of one oven and six dishes is already keeping you up at night, my Thanksgiving Hosting Planner for One Oven walks you through a kitchen audit, a cooking timeline, and which dishes to hand off to your guests, so everything comes out hot at the same time.

Nonna’s Notebook

Dinner was at 5:30. That was the plan, every Sunday.

It never once happened at 5:30. We sat down closer to 6:30, and that was the family joke. Nobody was ever late for Sunday dinner, because Sunday dinner was always late.

But when it came, it was done right. The tablecloth went on. The china came out. The candles got lit. In a regular house, on a regular Sunday, for no reason except that it was Sunday.

Everybody was there. The whole family, plus whoever we were dating at the time. If you were going with somebody, they came to Sunday dinner. That’s just how it worked. Every so often a bachelor uncle would show up too, and somebody would set another place.

The menu never changed. Pot roast, the way my mother made it: a rump roast, seasoned, covered with a can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup and a packet of Lipton onion soup mix, sealed up tight in foil, and into the oven. Mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, and carrots. For dessert, a yellow layer cake from a box with chocolate frosting from a tub. Every single week. You could count on it, and I think that was the point.

The only complaint anybody ever had was the icing. There was never enough. We kids teased about it every single week. It was a given. And every one of us went back for seconds.

Honestly, if she’d ever put more icing on that cake, I think we would have been disappointed.

I wanted that for my own family. But my kids were so much more involved in sports than my siblings and I ever were. Sundays filled up with games and practices, and somewhere along the way the Sunday dinner just stopped happening.

I think that’s sad. I do. But it was our reality, and we went with it.

This weekend I’m making pot roast anyway. Mine has a bottle of stout in the pot instead of a can of soup. But the cake stays exactly the same. One box, one tub, and not a smear more.

Around the House: Fewer Ingredients, Better Pantry

A reader mentioned after a recent issue that my menus have a lot of ingredients. That’s fair, and I’m glad it came up.

The menu was never meant to be a shopping list. Think of it as a buffet of ideas. Pick one dinner, pick two, skip the rest. I won’t be hurt.

But that comment got me thinking about how I actually cook. Most nights I’m not following a menu. I’m opening the cupboard to see what’s there. And that only works because I keep the same basics on hand all the time. When the pantry’s stocked, I only shop for the fresh stuff.

You might notice this week’s menu is shorter. Friday and Saturday dinners come straight off my pantry list.

So I put that list together for you. It’s free, it’s one page, and it goes right on the fridge. Grab Nonna’s On-the-Fly Pantry →

At the bottom of the list are five dinners you can make without going to the store:

• Pasta with garlic, oil and red pepper flakes. Warm sliced garlic slowly in olive oil with a pinch of flakes, toss it with spaghetti and a splash of the pasta water, and grate cheese over the top.

• A cheese-and-potato frittata. Brown thin-sliced potatoes and onion in an oven-safe skillet, pour beaten eggs over them, scatter on cheddar, and finish it under the broiler.

• Sausage and white beans with tomatoes. That’s Friday this week.

• Lemon-garlic chicken thighs over rice. Roast the thighs with lemon, garlic and oregano, and spoon the pan juices over the rice.

• Beef and black bean chili. That’s Saturday.

Two more things I’ve changed in my own pantry this year.

I’m getting the plastic out, starting with the spices. I always try to buy spices in glass. When I can’t find them that way, I buy the plastic jar and move the spice into a glass jar as soon as I get home from the store. Glass seals better, doesn’t hold onto smells, and all the jars match, so I can actually see what I have. (These are the jars I’m using → glass spice jars)

I’ve also stopped buying the big containers. I buy the smallest size I can find. Spices don’t really go bad, but they lose their flavor sitting around. That giant jar of cumin was costing me more in flavor than it ever saved me at the register.

While I was at it, I started writing the date on a little label on the bottom of every jar, and I moved the whole collection away from the stove. Heat and light fade spices fast.

Where “Braise” Comes From

“Braise” comes from the French word braise. It means live coals.

That’s how it started. A heavy pot sat right in the embers of the fire, with more hot coals piled on the lid. Heat from below, heat from above, and a long, slow wait.

The word first shows up in English print in 1797, spelled “braze.”

The pot got an upgrade around then, too. In 1707, an Englishman named Abraham Darby patented a way to cast iron pots in sand. He’d picked up the method from Dutch brass makers. It’s one of the stories behind the name “Dutch oven.”

Why does it work? Tough, cheap cuts of meat are full of connective tissue. Low heat and liquid, over a few hours, melt that tissue into gelatin.

That’s what makes a pot roast tender enough to cut with a fork. It’s also what gives the gravy that rich, silky body.

So the cheapest cut in the case is the right one for the job.

Worth Knowing: Make It Saturday, Serve It Sunday

A pot roast is better the second day. Overnight the flavors settle in, and the meat soaks up more of that braising liquid.

There’s a bonus, too. When the pot sits in the fridge overnight, the fat rises to the top and turns solid. In the morning, you just lift it off with a spoon. No skimming, no greasy gravy.

And even a roast that falls apart when it’s hot slices neatly when it’s cold. Slice it, lay it back in the gravy, cover it, and warm it in the oven.

One rule: don’t leave the hot pot sitting out all evening. Let it cool for about an hour, then get it into the fridge.

Weekend Kitchen Planner

Thursday

• Shop, using the two-part list.

• Season the roast with salt and pepper and leave it uncovered in the fridge overnight.

Friday

• Sausage & White Beans (about 30 minutes): Brown the sausage in a deep skillet, then soften an onion and some garlic in the drippings with a pinch of red pepper flakes. Add the whole tomatoes, crushing them by hand, plus both cans of cannellini (drained) and a splash of chicken broth. Simmer 15 minutes. Warm the bread in the oven.

Saturday (Halloween)

• Morning: Bake the cake following the box directions. Cool it completely, then frost it. Bake the soda bread next, at 425°F.

• 12:30: Sear the roast and build the pot. In the oven at 300°F by 1:00.

• 3:00: Turn the roast and add the carrots.

• 4:00 to 4:30: Check for tenderness. When it’s done, let the pot cool on the counter.

• 4:30: Start the chili. Brown the ground beef with an onion and garlic, then stir in 2 tbsp tomato paste, 1 tbsp cumin, 1 tbsp smoked paprika, 1 tsp oregano and ½ tsp red pepper flakes for a minute. Add the whole tomatoes (crushed by hand), both cans of black beans (drained) and about a cup of chicken broth. Simmer 30 minutes.

• 5:30: Put the cooled pot roast in the fridge. Chili’s on the table before the trick-or-treaters show up.

Sunday (clocks fall back, so enjoy the extra hour)

• Lift the hardened fat off the pot. Take out the roast, slice it cold across the grain, and lay the slices back in the liquid with the carrots.

• 4:45: Heat the oven to 400°F. Cut the potatoes into chunks, toss them with olive oil, salt and pepper on a sheet pan, and roast 45 to 50 minutes, turning once.

• 5:00: Slide the covered pot roast onto the lower rack to reheat, 40 to 45 minutes.

• 5:20: Toss the green beans with olive oil and salt on a second sheet pan and roast 15 to 18 minutes.

• 5:40: Everything comes out together. The braising liquid is your gravy. If you like it thicker, give it 5 minutes on the stove, the only burner you’ll touch all day.

• Slice the soda bread and set out the butter.

• Light the candles. Dinner’s at 5:30 (sort of).

Worth Keeping

“Nobody was ever late for Sunday dinner, because Sunday dinner was always late.”

Before You Go

Did your family have a Sunday dinner? What was on the table? And do you still do it, or did it slip away like ours did?

Hit reply and tell me. I’d love to share a few next week.

And since it’s Halloween weekend, yes, I’ll have candy in the house. Not that I’m expecting a crowd. Most of the kids around here dress up and go to the Trunk or Treat events now, so I’ll be lucky if a handful knock on my door.

So you know what that means. I’m buying the candy I like. Milky Ways, Kit Kats, Junior Mints, and Butterfingers. And if there happen to be leftovers... well. Somebody has to eat them. (Wink, wink.)

Happy Halloween, and enjoy that extra hour on Sunday. I know what I’m doing with mine.

See you next week. Bring your appetite.

— The Jersey Nonna

My not-quite-two-year-old grandson and I spend a lot of time doing nothing. Or what might look like nothing.

We sit on the couch, he in his spot and me in my grandson-assigned spot, and copy each other. Knees up, legs out straight, feet wiggling, hands to our ears. You get the idea.

Then we have parades. We march on our tippy-toes, stomp, run, wiggle-walk. We make faces and sounds together and drum on whatever flat surface is available—the wall, the floor, the table.

Even having a snack is something we do together. He takes one for himself and gives one to me, then insists I eat my “one” right along with him so we can crunch together. I can’t get ahead of him or fall behind. We have to get the crunch right.

Through all these little nothings, he giggles—that melts-your-heart belly giggle that only little ones seem to know how to make. He is so tickled by what we’re doing, and I could happily keep doing it just to hear him laugh.

These moments fill my day with joy. They give me purpose and keep me young. I’m right there with him, waiting to see what he’ll do next, enjoying him as much as he’s enjoying our game.

He probably won’t remember any of this as he gets older. But I believe the feeling can stay with him: that he is loved, listened to, cherished. That I enjoy his company. That spending time with him is something I want to do.

I believe these ordinary afternoons are part of the foundation he’ll carry into his life. That matters to me, even if neither of us could tell you exactly what we did all day.

And it makes me think about how much of my own life has been made up of moments that didn’t seem like much at the time, but that I still carry with me.

None of our games cost money or take planning. We make them up as we go, and every day there seems to be more “nothing” to do.

To me, it’s everything.

This is the kind of project I love doing. I saw a pumpkin I liked and wanted to try making my own, and I already had pumpkins, paint, and floral transfers in my stash.

My inspiration was the MacKenzie-Childs Black Flower Market Medium Pumpkin. The combination of black, colorful flowers, lavender dots, and a gold stem caught my eye. It was listed at $149.95 when I looked at it.

My pumpkins were originally purchased at 40% off at Hobby Lobby. For this project, I decorated two individual pumpkins and a three-pumpkin stack. The stack came already assembled.

Black pumpkins with purple dots and flowers are a departure from my usual decorating, but I enjoyed making these. I’ve included four styling ideas below.

What I used

• Pumpkins from my stash, originally purchased at Hobby Lobby at 40% off

• FolkArt Multi-Surface Satin paint in Noir Pur

• Craft Smart acrylic paint in Grape Taffy

• IOD transfers: Catharina and Lost Garden

• Rub ’n Buff in Antique Gold

• Paintbrushes and a stamper for the dots, also from my stash

• Scissors and the rubbing tool supplied with the transfers

• A protective covering for the work surface

I’m not putting a total price on this project because I used supplies purchased earlier and only portions of the transfers and paint. Your cost will depend on what you already have.

1. Two coats of black paint

I gave the pumpkins two coats of FolkArt Multi-Surface Satin in Noir Pur, allowing the paint to dry between coats.

Work the brush into the grooves, then turn the pumpkin and check it from different angles. It’s easy to miss a pale patch along the lower edge.

2. Stamp the lavender dots

I used Craft Smart acrylic paint in Grape Taffy and the end of a foam stamper to make the dots.

Try a few impressions on scrap paper first to get a feel for the amount of paint to load. Then work around the pumpkin, leaving space for the floral transfers. The grooves make stamping a little trickier than working on a flat surface. My dots aren’t all identical, as you can see in the close-up.

3. Give the stems a gold finish

I used Rub ’n Buff in Antique Gold on the stems. A little gold on the raised details makes the shape of each stem easier to see.

Use a small amount and follow the product directions for application and buffing.

4. Add the floral transfers

I used flowers from two IOD transfer collections: Catharina and Lost Garden.

Before applying a transfer, plan where the flowers will sit with their backing still attached. Look at the pumpkin from the front and sides so the arrangement travels around the shape.

Follow the instructions supplied with your transfers. Work carefully around the grooves and check that the design has released before lifting the carrier sheet away.

A note about the stack and finish

The three-pumpkin stack was purchased already assembled, so there was no construction step. The middle pumpkin is plain black; the top and bottom have the flowers and dots.

I did not use a sealer on this project. These pumpkins are intended for indoor use only. If you use different paint or transfers, follow the finishing instructions for those products.

Four ways to style them

A collected entryway

Place the stack on a dark wooden console beneath an aged gold mirror. Add old books, a small brass dish, and a modest arrangement of autumn foliage. This is the setting closest to my usual style.

A whimsical vintage mantel

Set the two individual pumpkins across a mantel with floral artwork, burgundy foliage, and a black velvet ribbon. Try lavender battery candles to pick up the color of the dots.

A warm boho sideboard

Place one pumpkin on a woven tray with amber glass and dried flowers. A tray keeps the arrangement together and makes it easy to move when you need the surface.

An autumn dinner table

Use the two individual pumpkins with plum linens, cream dishes, and gold flatware. Pull a few colors from the transfers into a low floral arrangement, leaving room for serving dishes and conversation. Choose battery votives around the decorations.

The four styled room scenes are AI-generated inspiration based on my finished pumpkins. The project and process photographs show the pieces I made.

I could keep going with these—there are so many flowers to choose from between the two transfer collections. For now, I have two individual pumpkins and a stack ready for Halloween.

Which setting would you choose?

This is my independent DIY interpretation, inspired by MacKenzie-Childs. This project is not sponsored by or affiliated with the brand.

I found this turkey planter while thrifting the other day and paid $5 for it. It was a little kitschy, and some of the paint had worn off, but I liked its shape. The feathers had so much detail, and I thought they would look beautiful with a different finish.

I wanted something that would feel at home with dark wood, brass candlesticks, and a pretty Thanksgiving table. That traditional Ralph Lauren look was my inspiration—rich, warm, and a little aged.

What I used

• Dawn dish soap and warm water

• Waverly Chalk Paint in Moss

• DIY clear wax

• FolkArt 6445 Antique Wax

• Rub ’n Buff in Antique Gold

• Paintbrush, a brush for dry-brushing, and a cloth for removing excess wax

• Waxing Brush

Here are some of the products I used:

https://amzn.to/4elUR1a FolkArt Home Decor Chalk Furniture & Craft Acrylic Paint in Assorted Colors, 8 ounce, Antique Wax

https://amzn.to/4iynsmp Rub ‘n Buff The Original Wax Metallic Finish antique gold [PACK OF 3 ]

https://amzn.to/4ixB8ht Paint Brushes Set of 24 Pieces with Canvas Brush Case

https://amzn.to/4dUsWW6 Chalk and Wax Paint Brushes for Furniture, 2 Pack Natural Bristles

I earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through these links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

The makeover

First, I gave it a good washing with Dawn dish soap and warm water. Then I left it to dry thoroughly. Really dry—especially around all those little feather details.

Once it was dry, I painted the outside with two coats of Waverly Chalk Paint in Moss, leaving the inside as I found it.

Next came one coat of DIY clear wax, followed by one coat of FolkArt Antique Wax. I dabbed away the excess antique wax until I had the aged look I wanted, leaving some darker color in the recesses to bring out the feathers.

For the finishing touch, I dry-brushed Antique Gold Rub ’n Buff over the raised details. That little bit of gold catches the light beautifully against the Moss paint.

I’m really pleased with how it turned out. It certainly looks like more than the $5 I paid for it, and I’m glad I took a chance on it.

Four ways to use it

Once it was finished, I wanted to see how it might look styled for Thanksgiving.

The room scenes above are AI-generated styling ideas based on a photograph of my actual finished planter.

1. An autumn flower arrangement

Burgundy mums, cream flowers, and autumn leaves would look lovely against the soft green and gold. For fresh flowers, I’d tuck a separate waterproof container inside; faux stems would work beautifully, too.

2. A little evening glow

An ivory battery-operated pillar candle, with a few autumn leaves around it, would make a pretty sideboard accent. Use a flameless candle for this arrangement.

3. Napkins and silverware for the buffet

This might be the most useful option: rolled linen napkins and flatware tucked into the opening, with a clean removable liner. A turkey that helps set the table earns its place in the Thanksgiving decorations.

4. A harvest arrangement

Small pears, a pomegranate, and a miniature cream pumpkin would make a generous-looking display without needing flowers. Use faux fruit, or a separate food-safe insert for real fruit.

I gave the floral arrangement my first styling attempt. The flowers are lovely, but I do like the idea of putting this turkey to work holding the napkins.

Which would you choose?

And next time you see a slightly worn turkey planter at the thrift store, take a second look. There may be some beautiful feathers hiding under that old paint.

Preamble

I’ve noticed it this week. I look up from the stove, and it’s already getting dark out the window, and it isn’t even suppertime.

I’m a sunlight person. Always have been. And I’ll tell you something I’ve never figured out. The minute the dark shows up, my energy goes right along with it. Gone, just like that. In the summer, I’ve still got something left at the end of the day. Okay, maybe not plenty, but enough that I’m not in my pajamas by seven o’clock, ready to hunker down for the night. Come fall? That’s exactly where you’ll find me.

I know it’s all in my head. Mostly. But it always makes me wonder why. Same me, same house, same day. Just less light.

And it’s only going to get worse. I thought we were done turning the clocks back, but no. We still fall back on November 1, and I’ll lose another hour of light at the end of the day whether I like it or not. I don’t like it.

So I’m leaning in. We’ve still got some warm, sunny afternoons left, and I’ll take every one. But when the dark comes, the soup pot comes out. This weekend that means my mother-in-law’s escarole soup, the one that’s been warming this family in the stands for three generations. With plenty of good bread for dunking.

Farm Stand Report

The stand has gone full autumn on me. Chrysanthemums in bloom everywhere you look, hay bales stacked up, corn stalks tied to the posts, and gourds and pumpkins in every shape and size you can imagine.

The produce is another story. It’s winding down. There’s the last of the corn and the last of the tomatoes, and plenty of squash: butternut, acorn, and spaghetti. There were apples, too, but Honeycrisp and Gala, the same ones you’d find at any grocery store. The real Jersey stuff is wrapping up for the year.

So for my escarole, I’m heading to the farmers market. And here’s what surprised me. I always figured escarole came from somewhere else, but it’s a Jersey crop, and it actually likes this time of year. Cool nights are good for it. So the one thing I need most this weekend is right in season. I’ll take it.

As for my own tomatoes, there are a few green holdouts still hanging on. I’m thinking fried green tomatoes, and I can’t believe I’ve never tasted one. When the first hard frost comes, I’ll pick whatever’s left and send those skeletal plants to the compost pile to feed next year’s soil.

I learned a lot this year. Soil, nutrients, how much sun they really need, and which varieties actually earn their spot. The plums were the stars, hands down. I’ll spend the winter figuring out what goes in next year. It’ll be here before I know it.

Weekend Menu

Friday: Get the Pot Going

• Scarole & Cottage Ham Soup (the big pot, first bowls tonight)

  Nonna's Note: It is scarole—that is not a typo! It's pronounced skuh-ROHL.

• Good crusty bread, for dunking

• Sharp cheddar and sliced pears on a board

Saturday: Pack It Up

• Scarole & Cottage Ham Soup, in the thermos

• A loaf of crusty bread, torn and wrapped in a towel, for dunking

• Pimento cheese on soft potato rolls, wrapped in wax paper

• Deviled eggs, packed back into the egg carton

• Spiced candied pecans

• Brown butter blondies

• Hot cider with a little bourbon, in the other thermos

Sunday: Home From the Game

• Kentucky Burgoo, started in the slow cooker before kickoff

• Skillet cornbread

• Chewy molasses cookies, from the tin

I know. A Jersey girl making Kentucky stew. But the people who invented burgoo had the same idea we do: throw in what you’ve got, keep it going all afternoon, and feed whoever shows up. That’s not Southern. That’s just good sense.

Featured Recipe: Scarole & Cottage Ham Soup

My mother-in-law was a really good cook, and every fall she made this soup. Just escarole and cottage ham, simmered until the whole house smelled like it. My son makes it now in a stock pot big enough to bathe in, and he adds white beans. The broth alone is the point. It warms your innards. Make the big pot. It’s better the next day, and you’ll want plenty to share and some to freeze.

Makes: a very big pot, about 16 to 20 servings, on purpose Pot: 16- to 20-quart stock pot

Ingredients

• 1 cottage ham, about 2½ to 3 lbs

• 12 heads escarole

• ¼ cup olive oil

• 2 large onions, diced

• 8 to 10 cloves garlic, sliced

• 4 quarts water, plus more as needed

• 2 quarts chicken broth

• 1 Parmigiano-Reggiano rind

• 3 to 4 cans (15 oz each) cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

• Salt, only at the end, and black pepper if you like

• Grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, for topping bowls

• Good crusty Italian bread, for dunking

Directions

1. Start the base. Warm the olive oil in the stock pot over medium heat. Add the onions and cook until soft, about 8 minutes, then add the garlic for another minute or two. Don’t let it brown.

2. Simmer the ham. Add the water, chicken broth, and the whole cottage ham. Bring it up to a boil, then lower to a gentle simmer, partly covered, for 3 to 4 hours. Test it with a fork; it’s ready when it’s tender enough to fall apart. Add more water along the way if the level drops.

3. Wash the escarole while the ham cooks. Escarole hides grit down in its leaves, so chop it, dunk it in a sink full of cold water, swish it around, and lift it out. Do it twice. Nobody wants sandy soup.

4. Shred the ham. Lift the ham out, let it cool enough to handle, and shred it, pulling off and discarding any fat or skin. Set it aside.

5. Add the escarole. Drop in the Parmigiano rind, then add the escarole a few big handfuls at a time, letting each batch wilt down before adding the next. You’ll think there’s no way a dozen heads will fit. It fits. It cooks down to almost nothing, which is exactly why you need so much. Simmer for 1 to 2 hours, until it’s silky and tender.

6. Finish it. Stir the shredded ham and the beans back into the pot and simmer another 10 minutes. Taste before you add any salt, because the ham brings plenty on its own. Fish out the rind.

7. Serve or pack. Ladle into bowls, top with grated Parmigiano, and put good crusty bread on the table. This soup is meant for dunking. You don’t leave a drop behind. Skip the grated cheese in the thermos, since the rind already did the work.

Notes

• Make the big pot. It’s better the next day, when the broth has deepened, and the escarole has soaked up all that ham.

• It freezes beautifully. Cool it completely, then pack it in quart containers with a little headroom, since it expands. Freeze some in thermos-size portions so it’s ready on a game morning.

• Can’t find cottage ham? It’s a smoked pork shoulder butt and very much a Northeast thing. A smoked ham hock or smoked pork shoulder works, though the flavor will be a little different.

• Beans: canned is how my son does it. Dried work too; soak and cook them first.

Shoppable List

• Cottage ham

• Escarole, 12 heads

• Olive oil

• Yellow onions

• Garlic

• Chicken broth

• Parmigiano-Reggiano (wedge with rind)

• Cannellini beans

• Crusty Italian bread (two loaves)

• Sharp cheddar

• Pears

• Cream cheese

• Jarred pimentos

• Mayonnaise

• Dijon mustard

• Paprika

• Cayenne

• Soft potato rolls

• Eggs

• Pecans

• Granulated sugar

• Brown sugar

• Cinnamon (ground and sticks)

• Ground ginger

• Ground cloves

• Molasses

• Butter

• Vanilla extract

• All-purpose flour

• Baking powder

• Baking soda

• Cornmeal

• Buttermilk

• Apple cider

• Bourbon

• Bone-in chicken thighs

• Pork shoulder

• Beef stew meat

• Potatoes

• Frozen corn

• Frozen lima beans

• Okra

• Crushed tomatoes

• Worcestershire sauce

• Apple cider vinegar

• Kosher salt and black pepper

Curious what’s in my kitchen? Shop Nonna’s Favorites →

Nonna’s Notebook

My mother-in-law was a really good cook. Every fall, without fail, she made escarole soup.

Now, being from New Jersey, we root for the New York Giants. (We do have some ardent followers of other teams in our ranks. All are welcome. It makes for some vociferous afternoons when the rivals are playing.) And Giants games were mostly cold-weather affairs. After a few hours in the stands, the concrete under your feet sends the cold right up through you, no matter how warm your boots are.

So she sent the guys off to the game with thermoses of that broth to warm their innards. And there was always more waiting when they got home.

It went from my father-in-law, to his son, to his son’s son. We’ll have to wait a little while for my grandsons to take their turn. These days, it doesn’t even matter whether anyone’s actually at the game. Some traditions are worth keeping either way.

My son makes it now, in a pot big enough to feed all of us, with plenty left to freeze.

Around the House: Making the Nest

When the dark comes early, I don’t fight it. I nest. Here’s how.

1. The sheet swap. Out go the cotton percale sheets, and on go the cotton flannel. I’m a natural-fiber girl, no microfiber for me. Last year was the first time I ever slept on flannel sheets, and my first thought was, where have I been all these years? They’re so cozy and inviting. It’s like getting into a big hug.

2. More throw blankets, everywhere. One on every chair and the couch. They’re perfect for taking the chill off after I come in from walking the dogs, and for burrowing under to read, binge a new show, or best of all, take a nap.

3. A short stack of books. I pick two or three to start. In the long, light months there’s always something else to do, and I hardly read at all. But when it’s dark at six, I get my read on.

4. Real hot chocolate. Not syrup stirred into milk. From scratch, with real cocoa and a favorite flavoring. Mine’s peppermint. Rich and chocolatey, with whipped cream on top. And yes, I take the easy route and use the canned stuff, plus an extra squirt straight from the can when no one is looking.

5. The oven stays on. Soup simmering on the stove, and something in the oven. No more worrying about overheating the kitchen. Baking is my first love, pies, cakes, cookies, so out come the cookbooks. My family’s happy about it too, since they become my always-at-the-ready taste testers.

What on Earth Is Burgoo?

Nobody knows where the word came from. Not really.

The oldest “burgoo” on record isn’t even a stew. It was a thin oatmeal porridge that sailors ate back in the 1700s. How it crossed the ocean and turned into a Kentucky meat stew is anybody’s guess.

The early Kentucky versions used whatever was running around. Squirrel, rabbit, and whatever else the hunt turned up. Today it’s chicken, pork, and beef, and nobody’s out in the woods with a slingshot first.

Burgoo was crowd food from the start. It was cooked by the gallon in huge iron kettles for church picnics and political rallies. You didn’t make burgoo for four people. You made it for the whole county.

In Owensboro, Kentucky, mutton is still the star, a leftover from the area’s sheep-farming days, and they’ll tell you any burgoo without it is just stew.

And the Kentucky Derby connection is real. In 1932 a horse named Burgoo King won the Derby, named after a Lexington grocer so famous for his burgoo that people called him the Burgoo King. He bet $50 on his namesake at 40-to-1 odds and walked away with $2,000. Now that’s a good pot of stew.

Worth Knowing: Keeping the Thermos Hot (and Safe)

A thermos of soup in the stands is a beautiful thing. A thermos of lukewarm soup that’s been sitting in the car since noon is not.

Heat the thermos first. Fill it with boiling water, cap it, and let it sit 10 minutes before you dump it out. A cold thermos steals the heat right out of your soup.

Fill it hot, and fill it full. Bring the soup back up to a boil before it goes in, then fill it to the top. Less air inside means it holds the heat longer.

Keep an eye on the clock. Hot food needs to stay at 140°F or above to stay safe. A good insulated thermos will hold it there for about 4 to 6 hours. Plan to eat within that window.

Don’t bring the leftovers home. Whatever’s left at the end of the game gets dumped, not saved for tomorrow.

Cold food has rules, too. The deviled eggs and pimento cheese belong in the cooler with ice packs, at 40°F or below, not on the tailgate. If cold food sits out more than 2 hours, or 1 hour when it’s hot out, toss it.

Weekend Kitchen Planner

Thursday

• Shop the list.

Friday

• Get the soup on by late morning. The ham needs 3 to 4 hours, and the escarole another 1 to 2.

• While it simmers, bake the blondies and the molasses cookies, and do the candied pecans.

• First bowls for supper. Cool the rest and refrigerate. It’s better tomorrow.

Saturday: game day

• Morning: hard-boil and fill the deviled eggs, mix the pimento cheese, make the sandwiches and wrap them in wax paper.

• Reheat the soup to a boil, preheat the thermoses, and fill them. Heat the cider.

Pack the night before (so nobody’s running back inside):

• Thermoses, plus a cup or mug for everyone

• The bread. Don’t you dare forget the bread.

• Cooler with ice packs for the eggs and sandwiches

• Real napkins, plus paper towels for the spills

• Spoons

• A trash bag, because you leave the lot the way you found it

• Wet wipes

• Folding chairs and a blanket for your lap

• The cookie tin

Sunday

• Morning: brown the meats and get the burgoo into the slow cooker, on low for at least 8 hours.

• Mix the cornbread dry ingredients ahead, then finish and bake it at halftime so it’s hot when the game ends.

Worth Keeping

“There was always more waiting when they got home.”

Before You Go

Around here, fall means soccer. And I wouldn’t miss one of my grandson’s games for anything.

I love that time outdoors. I’m hoping for more brisk sunny days than cold windy ones, but it doesn’t matter. We’re there to cheer the team on. And these future soccer stars get so into it. They seriously man their positions and cheer every time someone scores, like it’s their own mini World Cup. They run around, get sweaty, have a blast, and when it’s over, win or lose, they trot off the field ready for whatever’s next on their weekend.

And I go on about my day happier for it. Happier for the time with my grandson and his family, and for the memories of my own boys’ soccer days that come back while I watch him. Chores and errands can wait. For me, this is the best way to spend my time.

See you next week. Bring your appetite. — The Jersey Nonna

While putting together this season’s Halloween mantel inspiration, I found myself thinking about a mirror I brought home from a thrift shop earlier this year. An old gold frame can give a seasonal arrangement its character, but my attachment to this particular mirror goes beyond decorating.

I first shared its story in Collected Momentum. It belongs here, too, among the things we bring home, live with, and come to treasure.

There is a corridor in my favorite thrift shop that turns halfway down, as if the house itself is deciding whether to reveal more or keep something back. On either side hang artwork and mirrors, layered one against another, some hopeful, some tired, most waiting.

At the very end, almost beside the doorway to pay and leave, it hung slightly higher than my eye level. I am only five feet tall, so many things hang just out of my natural line of sight. But this one caught my eye immediately.

It was ornate. Heavy even from a distance. Antiqued gold, carved wood, unapologetically detailed. Not flashy. Not trendy. Elegant.

Sometimes I circle a piece two or three times before committing. I doubt my instinct. I walk away. I return. I negotiate with myself.

Not this time.

I lifted it down carefully, almost reverently, as though it had already been mine for years. I placed it in the holding area, that small sacred space in a thrift store where a piece waits for its next home. I did not hesitate. I did not second-guess.

It felt discovered.

The shop itself is an old house, cluttered and generous. It requires two passes, sometimes three, to truly see everything. I move through it methodically, slowly. I look for artwork. Mirrors. Architectural pieces. I stand back. I look again. I tilt my head. I imagine placement. I am not there for everything. I am there for the one thing.

This mirror was the one.

An older woman, a volunteer, stood in a doorway as I lifted it down. She watched me with a knowing expression, the faintest smile. It felt like an unspoken exchange between us. You see it too. That one is good. Don’t let it go.

I carried it to the register.

The tag read: $25 — AS IS.

I thought nothing of it at first. It seemed perfect to me.

When the clerk mentioned “as is,” I paused. I laid it gently on the table and ran my fingers along the carved edges, over the curves and flourishes of the wood. I examined the glass closely. Had I missed something? A crack? A chip? A flaw hidden in my enthusiasm?

There were only a few small darkened specks in the mirror itself, places where the silvering had worn thin. Subtle. Honest.

“That’s why,” the clerk said. “It’s old.”

As if age were damage.

As if wear were defect.

I looked again at the small blackened spots and felt something unexpected. They did not diminish it. They validated it. They were proof of time. Proof of presence. Proof that this mirror had hung somewhere long enough to be marked by living.

I would not have wanted it new.

If it had been freshly stamped from a factory mold, flawless and identical to a hundred others, I would have walked past it without a second glance. What drew me was not perfection. It was care.

Someone had shaped—or chosen—these curves with care. The frame, the finish, the glass: together, they had lasted. It was made to last beyond a season, beyond a trend, perhaps beyond its first owner.

I imagine it hanging in a curated Victorian entryway. A last look before stepping out into the world. A welcome home at day’s end.

I see a young woman, hopeful and untested, adjusting her collar before embarking on something new. A mother smoothing her hair, steadying herself before tending to a household. A widow standing quietly, seeing both her present face and her remembered past. A woman returning home tired, catching a glimpse of herself, and gathering the strength to continue.

Each woman saw something different.

And yet, perhaps, they all saw the same things, too. Joy. Fear. Resilience. Sorrow. Becoming.

Now it hangs, for the moment, in my bedroom. I suspect it will wander from room to room before it comes to rest. For now, I see it in the quiet light of morning and again at night before sleep. It greets me at the edges of the day.

When I stand before it, I do not see flaw in the worn glass. I see depth. I see endurance. I see something made with care, still holding its shape after decades.

Grace.

Dignity.

As is.

Halloween with an Antique Soul

A collected mantel, a little autumn color, and just enough mischief.

I like a little Halloween in the house—a raven perched among the pumpkins, a few bats above an old mirror, black velvet ribbon tucked into autumn branches.

This is the sort of room that appeals to me: warm, richly textured, and built around beautiful things that could stay long after October. The brass candlesticks, the gold-framed landscape, the mirror—all form the foundation. Halloween arrives through a handful of smaller details.

The image here is AI-created decorating inspiration, a way to explore an idea before bringing it into a real home. Here’s how I would borrow from it.

Start with what stays

Look around your house before opening a shopping cart. A mirror, framed picture, favorite vase, or pair of candlesticks can anchor the arrangement. They don’t have to match. A little variation gives a display its collected character.

An old landscape painting is especially lovely here. Its autumn colors help tie the whole mantel together.

Add the season

Choose foliage in rust, copper, and burgundy. Let one side have a little more height and fullness, then carry a few branches across the mantel.

Black velvet ribbon adds softness and a touch of drama. Small pumpkins bring in the harvest without taking over.

For a real arrangement, I’d use flameless candles and keep foliage and ribbon safely away from heat.

Finish with a little mischief

Two ravens and a few paper bats are enough to make this unmistakably Halloween.

That is the part I would keep simple. Give the eye a few things to discover rather than filling every available space.

Nonna’s decorating audit

Before buying anything, ask:

• What do I already own that could anchor this?

• What can I move here from another room?

• What might I find secondhand?

• What one seasonal addition would make the biggest difference?

You might need only black ribbon and a raven. You might have almost everything tucked away already.

Get the look, in your own way

The ingredients are simple: aged brass, an antique-style frame, autumn foliage, black velvet, small pumpkins, and a little Halloween character.

I have added shopping suggestions below, they are similar pieces to help you interpret the look — not the exact objects pictured in this generated scene.

The nicest result will have something of your own in it: the candlesticks you inherited, the picture you found while thrifting, or the bowl that comes out every autumn.

A home gathers its character that way, one small choice at a time.

Save this idea for your October decorating, and tell me which detail you’d bring into your own home.

Shopping guide contains affiliate links; I may earn a commission from purchases. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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Preamble

Looks like the summer growing season is coming to an end. We could get the first frost any night now, so I’ve been out there picking what’s left: the last of the fresh herbs, the last few tomatoes, and whatever the summer annuals still have to give.

It always sneaks up on me. One week I’m watering every morning and wondering if the zinnias will ever slow down, and the next I’m checking the overnight temperatures and pulling the pots closer to the house.

It’s also grape harvest time, and not too long ago I got to celebrate it in a way I never expected to, with my bare feet. More on that below.

Farm Stand Report

The mums have finally burst open. I’d been watching them sit in tight buds for weeks, and now the whole stand is covered in rust and gold and burgundy.

The Concord grapes are in, too, if you want to try this week’s featured recipe.

This time of year, there’s one farm I always visit because they go all out for Halloween. It makes a full day for families. There are hayrides, a petting zoo, a corn maze, pumpkin painting and face painting, a picnic grove if you bring lunch, and, of course, the pumpkin patch. They also have those painted photo boards with holes cut out for your face, and the children (and plenty of grown-ups) line up to stick their heads through.

My advice is to get there early, because by late morning it’s packed.

Weekend Menu

Friday

• Concord Grape Spritzer (grape juice, sparkling water, a squeeze of lemon)

• Harvest Board: sharp provolone, pecorino, toasted walnuts, honey, and small clusters of red and Concord grapes

• Sausage and Grapes (salsiccia e uva), the classic Umbrian skillet dish, with crusty bread

Saturday

• Morning: Ricotta Pancakes with Warm Concord Grape Syrup

• Dinner: Rosemary Roast Chicken Thighs with Roasted Red Grapes and Shallots

• Crispy Smashed Potatoes with Garlic and Parmesan

• Roasted Cauliflower with Lemon and Toasted Breadcrumbs

Sunday

• Espresso and Anise Biscotti

• Baked Rigatoni with Sunday Sauce and Ricotta

• Featured Recipe: Schiacciata all’Uva (Tuscan Grape Harvest Focaccia)

Featured Recipe: Schiacciata all’Uva (Tuscan Grape Harvest Focaccia)

I went from stomping grapes to baking with them. Schiacciata all’uva is a flat Tuscan bread that families make at harvest time, layered with grapes that burst in the oven and turn jammy. This is my first time baking it, so I’ll be trying it right along with you this weekend. Traditionally, the seeds stay in for a little crunch, and I’ve put some options for that in the notes.

Serves: 8 to 10 Prep: 30 minutes, plus about 2½ hours rising Bake: 45 to 50 minutes

Ingredients

For the dough

• 4 cups (500 g) all-purpose flour

• 2¼ teaspoons (1 packet) instant yeast

• 1 tablespoon sugar

• 1½ cups warm water (about 110°F)

• 1 teaspoon kosher salt

• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for the pan

For the filling and topping

• 2 lb Concord grapes, stemmed, rinsed, and patted dry

• ⅓ cup sugar, divided

• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided

• 1 teaspoon anise seed or 1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary (optional)

Directions

1. Make the dough. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, yeast, and sugar. Add the warm water and olive oil and stir until a shaggy dough forms, then add the salt. Knead on a lightly floured counter for 8 to 10 minutes, until smooth and elastic.

2. First rise. Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover with a towel, and let it rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1½ to 2 hours.

3. Prepare the pan. Generously oil a 9x13-inch baking pan. Divide the dough in half. Press one half into the pan, stretching it to the edges with oiled fingertips. If it springs back, rest it 10 minutes and try again.

4. First layer. Scatter half the grapes over the dough. Sprinkle with half the sugar and half the anise or rosemary, if using, and drizzle with 1 tablespoon of olive oil.

5. Top layer. Stretch the second half of the dough into a rough 9x13 rectangle and lay it over the grapes. Pinch the edges together as best you can; it doesn’t need to be perfect. Press the remaining grapes firmly into the top so they sink in slightly. Sprinkle with the remaining sugar and anise or rosemary, and drizzle with the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil.

6. Second rise. Cover loosely and let it rise 30 to 45 minutes while the oven heats to 400°F.

7. Bake. Bake 45 to 50 minutes, until the top is deep golden and the grape juices are bubbling and jammy at the edges. If the top browns too fast, tent loosely with foil for the last 10 minutes.

8. Cool before cutting. Let it cool in the pan at least 30 minutes so the juices set. Cut into squares and serve warm or at room temperature.

Notes

• About the seeds: traditionally the seeds stay in for a pleasant crunch. If that’s not for you, halve and seed the Concords (tedious but doable), or use red seedless grapes. The flavor will be milder and less jammy.

• It will stain. Concord juice is deep purple, so use a pan you don’t mind marking, or line it with parchment.

• Make ahead: it’s best the day it’s baked, but it keeps covered at room temperature up to 2 days. Don’t refrigerate it, or the bread turns tough.

• How to serve: with espresso in the afternoon, or alongside cheese as a sweet-and-savory finish to Sunday dinner.

Shoppable List

Quantities are for a table of 4 to 6.

Produce

• 4 lb Concord grapes (schiacciata, syrup, and the board)

• 3 lb red seedless grapes (sausage, chicken, and the board)

• 2 lb small Yukon Gold potatoes

• 1 large head cauliflower

• 4 shallots

• 1 yellow onion

• 2 heads garlic

• 3 lemons

• 1 bunch fresh rosemary

• 1 bunch fresh basil

Meat & Dairy

• 2 lb Italian sausage links, sweet or hot

• 3 lb bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs

• 1 lb sharp provolone

• 1 wedge Pecorino Romano

• 1 wedge Parmigiano-Reggiano

• 2 lb whole-milk ricotta (pancakes and rigatoni)

• 1 lb fresh mozzarella

• 1 dozen eggs

• Milk

• Butter

Pantry

• 1 lb rigatoni

• 2 (28 oz) cans crushed tomatoes

• All-purpose flour

• Instant yeast

• Sugar

• Baking powder

• Extra-virgin olive oil

• Balsamic vinegar

• Honey

• Walnuts

• Plain breadcrumbs

• Kosher salt and black pepper

• Anise seed (optional, for the schiacciata)

Bakery & Drinks

• 1 crusty Italian loaf

• Anise biscotti, bakery-bought or homemade

• Espresso

• Concord grape juice

• Sparkling water

Curious what’s in my kitchen? Shop Nonna’s Favorites →

Something New Is Coming

I’ve been sewing, crafting, and making over thrift-store finds most of my life, and now I’m putting it on video. My new channel, Kathleen Makes, is coming soon with DIY, craft, and upcycling projects. I’ll let you know here when the first ones are up.

Nonna’s Notebook

Who would have thought that the Northeast, and New Jersey in particular, was its own wine country? I sure didn’t, until I spent an afternoon at Laurita Winery out in New Egypt, right here in Central Jersey.

They offer grape stomping, and just like Lucy in that I Love Lucy episode, I had to have a go at it. I couldn’t find a costume red wig large enough to fit me, but I did pull off the old-world peasant outfit, climbed into the tub, and went stomping away. The grapes are cold and slippery, and they squish up between your toes, and I could not stop laughing. So much fun, so many laughs.

What surprised me about Laurita is that the whole place runs on solar power. Every part of the winemaking process is powered by the sun. The venue itself is lovely and perfect for a fun outing, and they keep a full calendar of events, so there’s always a reason to go back.

As for the wine, I’ll give you my honest opinion as someone who enjoys a glass, but is by no means an expert. It’s drinkable, but it isn’t on a par with the world-class wines of Europe, South America, or some of the California wines. A lot of what they pour is on the lighter side, often with fruit flavors added. I didn’t go for the wine, though. I went to stomp grapes, and I’d go back and do it again.

Around the House: My Little Garden Experiment

I’m trying something this fall, and I’ll let you know in the spring how it went.

I deadheaded my zinnias and saved the dry seed heads to plant next year. If your zinnias came from a packet of hybrid seeds, the flowers you grow from saved seed may not look exactly like the parent plant, but I don’t mind a surprise.

The experiment is what I’m doing with everything else. Instead of bagging up the spent plants, tomato plants included, I’m “planting” them. I’m dumping them in an open area of the yard, covering them with the soil they grew in, and taking my chances. If something comes back next year, great. If not, they’ll break down over the winter and serve as mulch to enrich that bed. Gardeners even have a name for this, trench composting, so I’m not as crazy as I sound.

One caution if you try it with tomato plants: they can carry blight that lives over the winter in the soil, so bury them somewhere you won’t be planting tomatoes, peppers, or eggplant next year.

Rotating Feature: New Jersey Wine Country

New Jersey has four official wine-growing regions.

The largest is the Outer Coastal Plain, which covers nine counties in the southern part of the state.

The Atlantic Ocean and the Delaware Bay keep the weather there milder, and the flat, sandy soil drains well, which grapes need.

Cape May has more frost-free days than anywhere else in the state, so its growing season runs the longest.

Our summers are humid, and humidity means mildew and mold on the vines. That’s why a lot of Jersey vineyards grow French-American hybrid grapes like Chambourcin and Vidal Blanc, which hold up better in our weather.

Fruit wines made from blueberries, apples, and even Asian pears are a longtime Jersey tradition, which explains all the fruity wines on the tasting lists.

Back in 1767, two New Jersey men were recognized by a society in London for growing grapes and making wine here, nine years before the Declaration of Independence.

Welch’s grape juice started in Vineland, New Jersey, in 1869, when Thomas Welch figured out how to pasteurize Concord grape juice so it wouldn’t ferment.

Worth Knowing: Putting Container Herbs and Geraniums to Bed

When frost is in the forecast, here’s what to do with your pots.

Geraniums. These aren’t true annuals. They’re tender perennials, so they’ll come back year after year as long as they don’t freeze. There are two easy ways to keep them.

Keep them growing. Bring the pot inside, cut the plant back by about a third to a half, water it well, and put it in your sunniest window. They do best in a cool room, around 55 to 65 degrees.

Let them go dormant. Cut them back and move the pot somewhere cool and dim that won’t freeze, like the basement or an attached garage. Give them just enough water to keep the soil from drying out completely. In spring, trim off any dead stems and bring them back into the light.

Thyme, oregano, sage, and chives. These are hardy, and in most of New Jersey they can stay outside in their pots. Group the pots together against the house where they’re out of the wind, and make sure they drain well, because sitting in wet soil will kill them faster than the cold will. The chives will die back but come up again in spring.

Rosemary. Bring it inside. It’s iffy in our winters, especially in a pot. Give it a bright window in a cool room and keep the soil lightly moist but not wet.

Parsley. Dig it up with as much of the root as you can and put it in a deep pot, and you can keep cutting it all winter.

Basil. It won’t make it through the first frost, so pick it all now. I’d make pesto.

Weekend Kitchen Planner

Thursday

• Shop from the list above.

• Make the Sunday sauce for the rigatoni and refrigerate it. It’s better on day three anyway.

• Make the Concord grape syrup for Saturday’s pancakes; it keeps in the fridge up to a week.

Friday

• Set out the cheeses an hour before guests arrive so they come to room temperature.

• Build the harvest board and mix the spritzers.

• Sausage and grapes go in the skillet last and take about 30 minutes start to finish.

Saturday

• Morning: ricotta pancakes; warm the grape syrup gently while the griddle heats.

• Midday: assemble the baked rigatoni, cover, and refrigerate for tomorrow.

• Afternoon: boil the potatoes for smashing and cut the cauliflower into florets.

• Dinner: the chicken, potatoes, and cauliflower all roast at 425°F so everything can share the oven.

Sunday

• First thing: mix the schiacciata dough so it’s risen by late morning.

• Late morning: assemble the schiacciata and let it do its second rise.

• Midday: bake the schiacciata, then take the rigatoni out of the fridge to come to room temperature.

• Afternoon: bake the rigatoni (about 45 minutes covered, then 15 uncovered), and serve the schiacciata with espresso and biscotti to finish.

Worth Keeping

“Who would have thought New Jersey was its own wine country?”

Before You Go

As much as I don’t like rushing the seasons, I also don’t like the stress the holidays bring, so I’ve already started my Christmas shopping, a gift here and there.

The trouble is, I need a better system. I often forget where I put the gifts, and something always turns up after Christmas that I’d completely forgotten about. Then there’s knowing when to stop. I keep seeing things I think my family will like, and I can’t help myself.

So I’m asking you. How do you keep track of the gifts you’ve bought and where you’ve hidden them? And how do you decide when you’re finished? Reply to this email or leave a comment, and I’ll share your best ideas in a future issue.

See you next Friday. Bring your appetite.

— The Jersey Nonna

The Weekend the Air Turned

The Jersey Nonna

Preamble

This time of year, pumpkins are everywhere. Farm stands have them piled high. Fields are still dotted with them, waiting to be picked. And the supermarkets around me have gotten in on it too, lining them up on stands positioned right at the entrance so you practically trip over them walking in. There’s no missing them.

It’s those supermarket pumpkins that make me pause every time.

Sure, it’s quick. Grab one on your way to the checkout, toss it in the cart, done. But where’s the fun in that? Where are the memories? Where’s the time actually spent with the people you love?

It’s a little like fast food. It does what it’s supposed to do, but it can’t hold a candle to something you actually took the time to prepare, to sit with, to savor.

So no, you won’t find me grabbing a pumpkin off a supermarket pallet. Give me the patch, every single time.

Farm Stand Report

And that’s exactly where I was this week.

The stand’s deep into pumpkin season now, kabocha, acorn, butternut, delicata, sweet dumpling, all of it piled up wherever it fits, not lined up in neat little rows like the supermarket does it. Half of them still have dirt on the bottom from sitting in the field. Honestly, I kind of love that. It looks like what it is.

The pie pumpkins are out too, the small lumpy ones, and I always get a kick out of watching people walk right past them heading for the big picture-perfect ones for carving. Those little ugly ones are the ones you actually want if you’re cooking.

And that’s the thing about the stand, you go for one pumpkin and twenty minutes later you’re still there. You end up chatting with whoever’s working it, or the person next to you picking through the same pile, and somehow you just don’t rush it.

Some years, not every year, but some, I’d plant a small garden with my children, too. Not because we needed the produce, but because I wanted them to see how things grow, what it takes to tend something. Weeding, of course, was always a “me” job no matter how many times I explained why it mattered.

One year we planted pumpkin seedlings. Just a few, nothing ambitious. And boy, did they grow, vines creeping across the ground, yellow blossoms opening up, and then actual pumpkins right there in our own yard. They grew so well, in fact, that someone at the town newspaper got wind of it, I’ve always had my suspicions it was our “grandfather” neighbor across the street who tipped them off, and a photographer came out to take a picture of my son with his prized pumpkin. I still have that photo. Such an ordinary little moment, permanently filed away in the town paper’s archives. Nothing dramatic about it at all. Just a small, good memory that still makes me smile. I’m smiling right now, writing this.

Weekend Menu

Friday

• Roasted Kabocha & Goat Cheese Crostini with Honey-Thyme Drizzle

Saturday

• Creamy Delicata Squash & Sage Soup with Crispy Pancetta and Toasted Pepitas

• Butternut Squash & Sharp Cheddar Galette with Rosemary Crust

Sunday

• Stuffed Acorn Squash with Sweet Italian Sausage, Apples & Cranberries (Featured Recipe)

• Sweet Dumpling Squash & Brown Butter Gnocchi with Crispy Sage

• Pumpkin & Amaretto Bread Pudding with Spiced Cream

Featured Recipe: Stuffed Acorn Squash with Sweet Italian Sausage, Apples & Cranberries

The kind of dish that makes the whole kitchen smell like fall before it even hits the table, sweet and savory, and pretty enough to be the centerpiece all on its own.

Serves 4-8 (one half or two, depending on appetite)

Ingredients

• 4 acorn squash, halved and seeded

• 2 tbsp olive oil, divided

• Salt and pepper, to taste

• 1 lb sweet Italian sausage, casings removed

• 1 small yellow onion, diced

• 2 cloves garlic, minced

• 2 Honeycrisp or Gala apples, diced

• ½ cup dried cranberries

• ½ cup panko breadcrumbs

• ¼ cup grated Parmesan

• 1 tsp fresh thyme leaves (or ½ tsp dried)

• ¼ cup chicken broth

• Fresh parsley, chopped, for garnish

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Halve and seed the squash, brush the cut sides with 1 tbsp olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and place cut-side down on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Roast 35-40 minutes until fork-tender.

2. Meanwhile, heat the remaining olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the sausage, breaking it up as it browns, about 6-8 minutes. Add the onion and cook until softened, 4-5 minutes, then stir in the garlic for one more minute.

3. Add the apples and cranberries to the skillet and cook 3-4 minutes, just until the apples start to soften. Stir in the breadcrumbs, Parmesan, thyme, and chicken broth until it holds together loosely.

4. Flip the roasted squash halves cut-side up and mound the filling generously into each cavity, packing it in gently.

5. Return to the oven and bake 10-15 minutes more, until the filling is golden and heated through.

6. Garnish with fresh parsley before serving.

Nonna’s Note: This is one of those dishes that looks like you fussed over it, but the filling can be made a full day ahead and just spooned in before the second bake. A drizzle of warm maple syrup over the top at the table isn’t traditional, but nobody’s ever complained about it.

Shoppable List

• Kabocha squash

• Delicata squash

• Butternut squash

• Sweet dumpling squash

• Acorn squash (4)

• Pumpkin puree

• Baguette

• Goat cheese

• Honey

• Fresh thyme

• Fresh sage

• Fresh rosemary

• Fresh parsley

• Pancetta

• Sharp cheddar cheese

• Pie dough (or flour, butter, ice water)

• Potato gnocchi

• Unsalted butter

• Parmesan cheese

• Yellow onions

• Garlic

• Honeycrisp or Gala apples

• Dried cranberries

• Panko breadcrumbs

• Sweet Italian sausage

• Chicken or vegetable broth

• Heavy cream

• Milk

• Eggs

• Day-old brioche or challah bread

• Amaretto liqueur

• Cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves

• Vanilla extract

• Pepitas (pumpkin seeds)

• Sugar

• Olive oil

• Salt and pepper

Curious what’s in my kitchen? Shop Nonna’s Favorites →

Nonna’s Notebook

There was a method to it, believe me. Every fall we’d head out to the local farm, and my children and I would scour that pumpkin patch like we were on a mission, bending down, turning pumpkins this way and that, examining shapes from every angle. We weren’t looking for just any pumpkin. We were looking for Bert and Ernie. Oval and tall, short and round, my children grew up on Sesame Street, so of course that’s what we hunted for. Once we’d found our pair, each of them would pick out their own small pumpkin too, whichever one suited their fancy that year.

I honestly don’t remember Bert and Ernie ever getting carved. I think we always bought a separate traditional pumpkin for that, the classic jack-o’-lantern with the smiling, zig-zag grin that was somehow both cheerful and a little creepy at the same time. And no trip to the patch was complete without the hayride, finished off with a cup of cider and an apple cider donut. Every single time.

Around the House

This time of year always gets me thinking about organization. While I’m switching over my summer clothes for fall, I usually end up in the pantry too, pulling out anything expired and rotating what’s left so the oldest stuff is up front where I’ll actually grab it first.

While I was in there this week, I got to looking at all those dates stamped on everything, and honestly, I never really knew what they meant. There’s actually a difference.

A “Best Used By” date isn’t about safety. It’s just the company’s guess at when something tastes its best. If the package is sealed and nothing looks or smells off, you’re fine eating it past that date.

An “Expiration” or “Use By” date is a bit different, but even then, for most shelf-stable stuff it’s still mostly about quality, not danger. The real exception is anything perishable, your dairy, meat, deli items, and things like infant formula. Those you do want to toss once you’re past the date.

Now spices, that’s where it got interesting. Ground spices and dried herbs don’t really expire the way we think. They won’t make you sick. What actually happens is the oils that give them their flavor slowly fade, so they just get weaker over time until they’re not doing much for your cooking anymore.

Just to give you a sense of timing, ground spices like cinnamon and cumin are good for 2 to 3 years, dried herbs like oregano and basil for 1 to 3, and whole spices like peppercorns and nutmeg can go 3 to 4. Salt and pure vanilla extract basically last forever if you keep them stored right.

If you’re not sure about something, do the sniff test. Rub a little in your palm to wake it up, then smell it. Barely anything there? It’s not going to do much for your dish, so it’s probably time to let it go. The one real thing to watch for is moisture, if the powder’s clumped or hardened, water got in somewhere, and that one you do want to toss.

Anyway, that’s where I’ve been this week, half organizing my closet, half reorganizing my spice cabinet.

Rotating Feature: The Spice That Isn’t Actually Pumpkin

Here’s one that trips people up every year: pumpkin spice doesn’t actually have any pumpkin in it.

What you’re tasting is cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves. Those are the same spices that have always gone into a good pumpkin pie.

The pie has the pumpkin. The spice mix just took its name.

That blend goes back further than you’d think. An 1896 cookbook called American Cookery had one of the country’s earliest pumpkin pie recipes, spiced with nutmeg, allspice, and ginger.

It wasn’t until the 1930s that a spice company started selling it pre-mixed, so home bakers didn’t have to measure out five different jars every time they wanted a pie.

Then Starbucks came along in 2003 with the Pumpkin Spice Latte, and that’s really what sent it everywhere: coffee, candles, lip balm, you name it. All of it built on a spice blend that’s never had a bit of actual pumpkin in it.

Kind of makes you want to bring it up next time someone’s on their third PSL of the week.

Worth Knowing

Here’s the thing about pumpkins nobody tells you, they don’t last on their own, you’ve gotta baby them a little. Give it a quick bath first: a tablespoon of bleach to a gallon of water, wipe it down or dunk it for a few minutes, that kills off the mold and bacteria sitting on the skin. Dry it completely, don’t skip that part.

Find it a shaded spot, under a porch roof or overhang, not out in the sun. Direct sun cooks the skin soft, and if rain’s pooling underneath, that’s mold waiting to happen. And don’t just set it on the ground, a wood block, a straw bale, even an old mat will do. Keeps air moving underneath so it’s not sitting in its own dampness.

Last step, once it’s bone dry: rub a thin coat of vegetable oil, coconut oil, or even petroleum jelly over the skin. Seals in the moisture, keeps the critters and the rot away. Do all that, and your pumpkin’s got a real shot at making it to Thanksgiving looking like you just brought it home.

Weekend Kitchen Planner

Thursday (get-ahead prep)

• Make pie dough for the galette and refrigerate.

• Roast and puree pumpkin if not using canned; cube and store the butternut, delicata, and dumpling squash separately.

• Stale the bread for the bread pudding (leave cubed brioche/challah out uncovered overnight, or dry in a low oven).

Friday

• Roast the kabocha for the crostini, assemble and serve.

• While the oven’s on, get a jump on the sausage-apple filling for Saturday’s stuffed squash if you’re doing it ahead, cook, cool, and refrigerate.

Saturday

• Morning: start the soup base (onion, garlic, delicata, broth) so it simmers while you prep the galette dough and filling.

• Crisp the pancetta and toast the pepitas fresh, right before serving, so they stay crunchy.

• Assemble and bake the galette alongside the soup, both share oven space, so stagger by about 20 minutes.

Sunday

• Roast the acorn squash for the Featured Recipe first thing; stuff and finish baking while the gnocchi and brown butter sage come together on the stove.

• Bread pudding can go into the oven while the table’s being set, it holds warm nicely and gives you a clean finish to the meal.

Worth Keeping

“Just a small, good memory that still makes me smile.”

Before You Go

I’m off to the garden center this week. A bale of hay, some pumpkins and gourds to set the stage out front, a new wreath for the door, a fresh seasonal doormat. Get those few things in place and I’m pretty much ready for the season.

That’s my kind of fall decorating. Simple, a little rustic, nothing that takes over the whole yard.

I’ll say this though, I am not a fan of those giant skeletons you see on lawns everywhere now. The twelve-foot ones towering over the mailbox. How do those not scare the daylights out of children? They get me every time, and I’m well past trick-or-treating age.

Anyway. Off to gather my supplies and get decorating. Have fun with your own this year, whatever your style is.

See you next Friday. Bring your appetite.

— The Jersey Nonna

Halloween dinner is always at the wrong time, isn’t it?

The children want to get out the door, somebody can’t find part of a costume, and nobody is interested in sitting down to a proper meal.

I’d put out food they can pick at while they’re getting ready: pinwheels, apple slices, clementines, cheese, cut-up vegetables, and a dip. Nothing shaped like a spider. Just food they’ll actually eat before the candy starts.

Then comes the last check. Can they see through their masks? Where are the flashlights? Who’s going with whom, and when is everyone coming back?

Of course, a lot of trick-or-treating now happens while it’s still light outside. There’s also trunk-or-treating, where families decorate their car trunks and hand out candy as the children make their way through a school or church parking lot.

I can understand the appeal. The children are in one place, there are fewer streets to cross, and everyone can see where they’re going.

But it is quite different from the Halloween I remember.

In my memory, Halloween was almost always raw and drizzly. We went out after dark with a parent along, and whatever costume we had planned was usually covered by a coat. The sidewalks were wet, the leaves stuck to our shoes, and familiar houses looked a little strange at night.

It was creepy, and that was part of the fun.

I’m not suggesting that Halloween was better then. Honestly, it has never been one of my favorite holidays. But I do think something changes when we remove the darkness and the uncertainty from it. We felt as though we were having an adventure, even with a parent only a few steps behind us.

Have we made Halloween safer and lost some of the mystery? Probably. But children today aren’t comparing their Halloween with ours. This is simply Halloween to them. A parking lot filled with decorated trunks may be every bit as exciting as walking from house to house in the dark was to us.

And years from now, they’ll probably be the ones wondering why their grandchildren celebrate it differently.

No matter how they go trick-or-treating, I’d still take a quick walk up to my own front door before they arrive. Can people see the steps? Is the doormat flat? A pumpkin can look lovely on the porch and still be exactly where someone needs to put a foot.

If the grown-ups are staying, a pot of soup or sausage and peppers will do nicely. Add some bread and leave it all alone when the doorbell rings.

When the children come back—whether from the neighborhood or the school parking lot—let them empty their bags on the table and tell everyone what happened.

Somebody will want to start trading candy before taking off a coat.

That part, I suspect, hasn’t changed much.

I made a Halloween Hosting Planner for the food, porch, guest list, and all the little things that are easy to forget. If you’re hosting this year, it might save you from trying to keep the whole evening in your head.

Preamble

I noticed it for the first time last night — dusk arriving earlier, just like that. One day it’s still light at 8, and now it’s darkening before 7:30. I’m one of those people affected by the shortened days. I want to hibernate — close the drapes, put on my pajamas, and hunker down with a book, some knitting, or a good bingeable show. And that turns my mind straight to comfort food — those familiar, go-to, feel-good dishes that are, if I’m being totally transparent, probably carrying more carbs and calories than I’d admit to in July. But it’s time. Bring out the Dutch oven and the slow cooker. Bring on the soups and the stews and the sugary baked goods — all the things we didn’t want in the hot summer months. Now we want food that warms us from the inside out. That’s what this issue is about.

Farm Stand Report

I visited the farm stand today and actually had to ask a worker if it was open — it looked abandoned. The transition from summer to fall is clearly underway. The fields are full of spent zinnias, just a few brave ones still standing tall. The flowering plants and trees are gone, replaced with evergreens ready for fall planting and chrysanthemums still waiting to bloom. A few hay bales sat out, along with colorful ornamentals — peppers and cabbages. Inside the general store, Halloween was already on full display, shelves loaded with decorative items. As for produce — a few ears of corn, some peppers, small zucchini, and what’s most likely the last of the season’s Jersey beefsteak and heirloom tomatoes.

I couldn’t resist buying a couple of the beefsteak tomatoes, going home, and treating myself to a tomato sandwich with a few of my fresh basil leaves on it — a lovely way to see out the tomato season.

Weekend Menu

Friday

• Golden Pastina & Shredded Chicken Pot Pie Soup

• Skillet Warm Goat Cheese & Fig Jam Dip with Crispy Prosciutto

Saturday

• Rustic Beef & Barley Braise with Root Vegetables & Thyme (Featured Recipe)

• One-Pan Braised Autumn Greens & Cannellini Beans with Garlic & Lemon

• Stovetop Slow-Simmered Tomato & Bacon Jam

Sunday

• One-Pot Creamy Wild Mushroom & Parmesan Risotto with Crispy Sage and Toasted Hazelnuts

• Warm Skillet Spiced Apple & Blackberry Cobbler

Featured Recipe: Rustic Beef & Barley Braise with Root Vegetables & Thyme

Serves 6

Ingredients

• 3 lb bottom round roast (rump roast), trimmed

• 1½ tsp kosher salt

• ¾ tsp black pepper

• 2 tbsp olive oil

• 1 yellow onion, large-diced

• 3 carrots, thick-cut on a bias

• 2 parsnips, thick-cut on a bias

• 2 turnips, cut into rounds

• 4 garlic cloves, smashed

• 2 tbsp tomato paste

• 1½ cups dry red wine

• 2 cups beef bone broth

• ¾ cup pearl barley, rinsed

• 4 fresh thyme sprigs

• 2 bay leaves

Directions

1. Season the roast. Pat the roast dry and season all over with salt and pepper. Let sit at room temp 20–30 minutes.

2. Sear the roast. Heat olive oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high. Sear the roast on all sides until deeply browned, 3–4 minutes per side. Remove and set aside.

3. Build the aromatics. In the same pot, add onion, carrots, parsnips, turnips, and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until beginning to caramelize, about 8 minutes. Stir in tomato paste and cook 1 minute.

4. Deglaze with wine. Pour in the red wine and scrape up any browned bits from the bottom. Simmer 2–3 minutes to cook off the raw alcohol smell.

5. Return roast and add broth. Return the roast to the pot. Add beef broth, thyme, and bay leaves — liquid should reach only 1/3 to 1/2 up the side of the roast, never fully submerged, so the meat braises in gentle simmering liquid and trapped steam rather than boiling. Bring to a gentle simmer on the stovetop.

6. Braise low and slow, flipping halfway. Cover and transfer to a 325°F oven. Braise 1.5 hours, then flip the roast to the other side for even tenderness. Continue braising until a fork slides in with zero resistance and the internal temp reads 185–190°F, about 2.5–3 hours total, checking liquid level partway through.

7. Add the barley. Stir the barley directly into the braising liquid around the roast. Cover and continue braising 35–40 minutes, until the barley is tender.

8. Rest, slice thin across the grain, and serve. Remove thyme sprigs and bay leaves. Rest the roast 10 minutes, then slice thin, across the grain. Serve over the barley and vegetables, spooned with braising liquid.

Notes: Pull the roast at 185–190°F internal, or the moment a fork slides in with zero resistance; bottom round is very lean, and pushing to 200–205°F (right for a fattier cut like chuck) will dry out these fibers instead of tenderizing them further. Keep the liquid at only 1/3 to 1/2 up the side of the roast, never fully submerged — full submersion boils the meat and leaches flavor into the broth rather than concentrating it. Slice thin, across the grain, both for serving and before reheating leftovers — with a lean cut, slicing direction is what makes or breaks perceived tenderness.

Shoppable List

• Bottom round (rump) roast

• Sweet Italian sausage

• Prosciutto

• Bacon

• Chicken bone broth

• Beef bone broth

• Pearl barley

• Shredded/cooked chicken

• Pastina pasta

• Yukon gold potatoes

• Carrots

• Parsnips

• Turnips

• Yellow onions

• Garlic

• Swiss chard

• Curly kale

• Cannellini beans

• Cremini mushrooms

• Shiitake mushrooms

• Arborio rice

• Fresh fennel

• Hazelnuts

• Fresh sage

• Fresh thyme

• Bay leaves

• Lemons

• Plum tomatoes

• Fig jam

• Tomato paste

• Brown sugar

• Apple cider vinegar

• Dry red wine

• Dry white wine

• Sweet onions

• Goat cheese

• Ricotta

• Sharp cheddar

• Parmesan (plus a rind if you have one)

• Heavy cream

• Butter

• Sourdough bread

• Crusty bread

• Honeycrisp apples

• Blackberries

• Cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg

• Turbinado sugar

• All-purpose flour, baking powder, buttermilk

Curious what’s in my kitchen? [Shop Nonna’s Favorites →]

Cookbook Tie-In

If tonight’s braise has you thinking about slow, comforting cooking all season long, you’ll find more like it in Red, Ripe & Ready and Sun-Kissed — both available in the shop.

Nonna’s Notebook: The Care We Put on the Plate

The other night, I stood at the kitchen counter eating leftovers from a paper plate.

There was nothing particularly wrong with the food. It was perfectly good, and I was perfectly capable of warming it properly, putting it into a bowl, and sitting down at the table. But somewhere between being tired and telling myself it didn’t matter, I decided the paper plate was good enough.

Then I looked at it and thought: What’s wrong with this picture?

If one of my children or grandchildren were sitting in my kitchen, I would never hand them a paper plate of barely warmed leftovers and call it dinner. I would heat the food until it was just right. I would put it in a proper bowl, add a little grated cheese or a piece of bread, and probably ask twice whether they had enough.

We know how to feed the people we love.

We make the soup they like when they are sick. We carry casseroles to people who are grieving. We put a pot of sauce on the stove when the family is coming. We make baked pasta, stew, or chicken and vegetables because one generous dish can feed everyone without requiring a great deal of ceremony.

That is the real comfort in comfort food. It is not only the cream, the cheese, or the long, slow simmer. It is the feeling that someone has considered what might make us feel cared for.

But somewhere along the way, many of us begin to believe that this kind of attention is unnecessary when we are feeding only ourselves.

It isn’t.

A one-dish supper can be humble and still feel like a meal. Leftovers can become dinner again when they are warmed properly and served with care. A bowl, a cloth napkin, a piece of good bread, and five quiet minutes at the table can change the way an ordinary evening feels.

The food does not have to be elaborate. Most comfort food isn’t. It is often something simple and forgiving — a soup that improves overnight, a casserole that waits patiently in the refrigerator, or a pot of something warm that asks very little of us.

Perhaps that is why we return to these dishes. They do more than fill us.

And sometimes the person who needs that care is the one standing alone at the kitchen counter.

Around the House: Back-to-School Sports Season

Back-to-school doesn’t just mean lessons and homework — it means practices, games, and a calendar that fills up faster than I remember it filling up when my own kids were the ones running the drills. Weeknights turn into a shuffle of gear bags, snack duty, and cheering from a folding chair on the sideline, usually with one eye on the clock for whatever’s waiting at home. This is exactly the season a slow cooker earns its keep — something can be quietly doing its thing on the counter while everyone’s out, ready the second the last cleat comes off. It’s not glamorous. It’s just what gets a family through September and October in one piece.

Rotating Feature — Nonna Explains: Why Pastina Is Called “Italian Penicillin”

If you grew up in an Italian household, chances are pastina showed up the moment anyone got sick — a small bowl of tiny star-shaped pasta, swimming in butter, broth, and maybe a little grated Parmesan and an egg stirred through. It’s often affectionately called “Italian penicillin,” and while it obviously has no actual medicinal power, the nickname isn’t entirely a joke. Pastina is easy to digest, gentle on an upset stomach, and — more importantly — it’s usually made by someone who loves you. That combination of comfort and care may do more for how we feel than the soup itself ever could.

It’s not the only dish with a nickname like this. Jewish households have long called chicken soup “Jewish penicillin” for many of the same reasons — a warm, simple dish handed down and made with love whenever someone needs tending to. Interesting how so many cultures landed on the same idea: when someone we love isn’t feeling well, we reach for something warm, familiar, and a little bit healing, even if the “medicine” part is really just the care behind it.

Worth Knowing: Bulk Cooking Saves Time (and Money)

A little planning goes a long way this time of year. Cooking in bulk on a slower weekend — a double batch of soup, a tray of roasted vegetables, extra shredded chicken — means weeknight dinners come together in minutes instead of starting from scratch after a long day. It also tends to save money: buying in larger quantities and using what you have before it goes bad cuts down on both waste and last-minute takeout. A few labeled containers in the freezer now can be the difference between a calm Tuesday and a scramble.

Weekend Kitchen Planner

Friday: Make the Pastina & Chicken Soup start to finish (~40 min). Whip and warm the goat cheese dip just before serving; crisp the prosciutto and grill the sourdough alongside.

Saturday morning: Sear the roast and get the braise into the oven early (about 4 hours total, mostly hands-off). While it cooks: shave the fennel for Sunday, start the Tomato & Bacon Jam low and slow on a back burner, and prep the greens/cannellini side to finish right before dinner.

Saturday evening: Rest and slice the roast, finish the greens side, warm the jam, plate.

Sunday: Make the Mushroom & Parmesan Risotto fresh, start to finish (~40 min active, don’t walk away). Assemble and bake the Apple & Blackberry Cobbler while the risotto rests.

Worth Keeping

“Sometimes the person who needs that care is the one standing alone at the kitchen counter.”

Before You Go

There’s so much coming up this season — in my own household, and in the rhythm of the year itself — that gives us reason to gather. In my immediate family alone, we’ve got seven birthdays and two wedding anniversaries ahead — that’s a lot of cake and a lot of candles (though one family member isn’t a cake person, so he’ll be blowing his out of a blueberry pie instead). I plan to enjoy every bit of it. Football games, harvest weekends, holidays just over the horizon — but honestly, you don’t need a special occasion. Getting together is reason enough in my book.

See you next Friday. Bring your appetite.

— The Jersey Nonna

There are few smells as comforting as bread baking.

Before you see the loaf or cut through the crust, the smell has already traveled through the house. You know something good is coming.

Bread feels older than memory. Maybe that is why its smell affects us the way it does. It seems familiar even when the particular loaf is new.

My son is very health-conscious. He eats responsibly, limits carbohydrates and pays attention to the carbohydrates he does choose. He isn’t going to eat bread simply because someone puts a basket of it on the table. If bread is going to be part of his diet, it has to be worth eating.

Some time ago, I found a terrific bread cookbook: The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François. I had tried a number of its recipes with good results, and it offered plenty of choices using the kinds of grains and ingredients that could work for him.

I bought him a copy.

This was not an old family cookbook with handwritten recipes and flour caught between the pages. It was simply a book I liked and trusted. It had taught me something, and I thought he might enjoy it too.

What he did with it was entirely his own.

He read it, chose recipes that suited the way he wanted to eat and began experimenting. He tried different flours and different methods. Some recipes worked better than others. He paid attention, adjusted things and tried again.

Then he shared the results with me.

I love watching his hands work with the dough. There is confidence in the way he handles it now, but also curiosity. He isn’t just following directions. He wants to understand why one flour behaves differently from another and why one loaf turns out better than the one before it.

And then there is that moment when the finished bread comes out of the oven.

We look at the crust. We cut into it. We talk about what he used, how the dough behaved and what he might do differently next time. The kitchen smells wonderful, the bread is still warm and, for a little while, that is what we are doing together.

Talking about bread.

Of course, we are usually talking about other things too.

That is one of the gifts of cooking with someone. You don’t have to sit down and announce that you are going to spend meaningful time together. Your hands are busy. There is something to pay attention to. Conversation comes and goes without being forced.

I once thought passing something down meant teaching a child to make a recipe exactly the way I made it. The same ingredients. The same directions. The same result.

But that isn’t what happened here.

I gave my son a book. He took what was useful from it, made choices that worked for his life and kept experimenting until the process became his own.

Perhaps that is what passing things down really looks like.

Our children will not do everything the way we did it. Nor should they. They take what we give them, add what they learn for themselves and create something that belongs to them.

The recipe may change. The flour may change. The person standing at the counter certainly changes.

What remains is the willingness to try, the patience to begin again when something doesn’t turn out and the pleasure of sharing the result with someone you love.

The loaf will be eaten. The warmth will leave the oven. Eventually, even that wonderful smell will disappear from the kitchen.

But my son knows how to make another one.

And perhaps that was what I was passing to him all along.

Preamble

I was out driving this weekend when I caught my first glimpse of it — one tree, just a stretch of branch really, gone that pumpkin-orange before anything around it had even thought about turning. Not the whole tree. Just a tease.

And the mornings — the mornings have been so deliciously cool. Sweater weather, my favorite time of year, before the heat of the day catches up. We’re squarely in that in-between now, the dress-in-layers phase, where fall clothes feel too warm by afternoon and summer clothes leave you chilly before nine a.m. Last night I slept with the bedroom window open for the first time all season. The night air coming in was so cool and clean I almost forgot what month it was.

I love how nature handles this handoff. It doesn’t just flip a switch from summer to fall — it nudges. A cooler morning here, one orange branch there, a window worth cracking open. All of it building toward the real show, which up here in the Northeast can be something to behold. There’s actually a name for people who plan entire trips around it — “leaf peepers” — and honestly, I get it. There’s a whole tourist season built around driving backroads just to watch trees change color. We’re not there yet. But you can feel it coming, and that anticipation might be my favorite part of all.

Farm Stand Report

The tomatoes are giving me a lesson in patience. I’ve got just a handful of red ones so far, and a whole lot of green ones still holding out — I’m out there checking daily for any sign of blushing.

I’ve also officially decided I won’t be harvesting my own tomato seeds for next season. I gave the whole soak-the-seeds-and-pulp method a try, the one where they’re supposed to separate cleanly in a little water. And to be fair, some of them did exactly that. But mostly what I ended up with was a moldy mess. Nothing ventured, nothing gained — lesson tried, and lesson learned. I’ll be buying my plants from the local garden center from here on out.

Weekend Menu

Friday

• Pink Lady & Goat Cheese Crostini with Pickled Mustard Seeds

• Granny Smith & Fennel Pork Sausage Rolls

Saturday — Morning

• Honeycrisp & Gruyère Dutch Baby

Saturday — Dinner

• Jonagold Braised Red Cabbage with Roast Pork Loin

• Mutsu (Crispin) & Roasted Brussels Sprout Skillet

Sunday

• Northern Spy & Sharp Cheddar Gougères

• Winesap Chutney with Mustard & Ginger, served alongside

Featured Recipe: Roxbury Russet Apple Cake with Brown Butter Glaze

Cake

• 3 Roxbury Russet apples, peeled, cored, and diced small

• 2 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 ½ tsp baking powder

• ½ tsp baking soda

• ½ tsp salt

• 1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon

• ¼ tsp ground nutmeg

• ¾ cup unsalted butter, softened

• 1 cup light brown sugar, packed

• ½ cup granulated sugar

• 2 large eggs

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• ½ cup sour cream

Brown Butter Glaze

• ½ cup unsalted butter

• 1 ½ cups powdered sugar, sifted

• 1–2 tbsp milk or cream

• Pinch of salt

• ½ tsp vanilla extract

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour a 9-inch round cake pan (or line with parchment).

2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a medium bowl. Set aside.

3. Cream the softened butter with brown sugar and granulated sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.

4. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Mix in vanilla.

5. Alternate adding the flour mixture and sour cream to the butter mixture, starting and ending with flour, mixing just until combined.

6. Fold in the diced Roxbury Russets by hand.

7. Pour batter into the prepared pan, smoothing the top. Bake 45–50 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean and the top is deep golden.

8. Cool in the pan 15 minutes, then turn out onto a rack to cool completely before glazing.

9. For the glaze: melt the butter in a light-colored saucepan over medium heat, swirling frequently, until it turns amber and smells nutty, about 5–6 minutes. Watch closely — it goes from browned to burnt fast.

10. Immediately remove from heat and whisk in powdered sugar, milk, salt, and vanilla until smooth and pourable. Work quickly, as the glaze firms up as it cools.

11. Pour the warm glaze over the cooled cake, letting it drip down the sides. Let set 10 minutes before slicing.

Notes

• Roxbury Russets hold their shape well when baked, so don’t expect the apple pieces to fully break down into the crumb — that’s the point, not a flaw.

• Cake keeps well covered at room temperature for 2–3 days, or refrigerated up to 5.

Shoppable List

• Pink Lady apples

• Goat cheese (chèvre)

• Sourdough bread

• Mustard seeds (for pickling)

• Fresh thyme

• Granny Smith apples

• Pork sausage meat

• Fennel seeds

• Puff pastry

• Honeycrisp apples

• Gruyère cheese

• Eggs

• Milk

• Jonagold apples

• Red cabbage

• Apple cider vinegar

• Caraway seeds

• Pork loin roast

• Mutsu (Crispin) apples

• Brussels sprouts

• Bacon

• Pecans

• Apple cider (for reduction)

• Northern Spy apples

• Sharp white cheddar

• Choux pastry ingredients (butter, flour, eggs)

• Winesap apples

• Yellow mustard seeds

• Dark raisins

• Fresh ginger

• Brown sugar

• Roxbury Russet apples

• All-purpose flour

• Cinnamon, nutmeg

• Sour cream

• Powdered sugar

• Vanilla extract

Curious what’s in my kitchen? Shop Nonna’s Favorites →

Cookbook Tie-In

If this issue had you reaching for the apron more than once, you might like knowing this is exactly what Jersey Nonna Publications is for. I’ve got seasonal cookbooks built the same way every Gathering is — real recipes, real stories, nothing fussy — and there are more coming soon. Keep an eye out; I’ll let you know the moment a new one lands.

Explore what’s available now →

Nonna’s Notebook

Every fall, we go apple picking as a family, and every fall I forget just how much of a workout it actually is.

There’s an orchard we’ve gone back to for years now, and the varieties are planted in sections up a hillside — which means if you’re after a particular apple, you’d better do your homework first, because ripening times vary and the apple you want might not even be ready yet. Learned that one the hard way more than once.

The real lesson, though, was about where you park. I made the mistake of leaving the car at the bottom of the orchard one year — and let me tell you, a steep climb up a hillside will tell you exactly how out of shape you are. There’s a lot of walking involved, more than people expect, and if you’ve got little ones along, plan on carrying them for at least part of it. Their legs give out long before their enthusiasm does.

We stick to the low-hanging fruit, literally — and there’s always plenty of it. You can spot the seasoned pickers right away, though, the ones with those long picker baskets on poles that twist the apples right off the high branches. That’s not us. Never has been. Picking low as we go has always suited us just fine.

And these orchards aren’t just orchards anymore, not really. There’s the all-things-apple general store, pony rides, a petting zoo — it’s become this whole mini amusement park experience. I used to think that was a little much. Now I think that’s exactly the point. It’s not really about the apples. It’s about building the kind of day that turns into a family tradition, the kind of afternoon the grandkids will remember years from now. Judging by how many families we see picnicking right there among the trees, I’m not the only one who feels that way. Just — get there early. The crowds and the traffic only build as the day goes on.

Around the House

I own four different ways to get the skin off an apple, and depending on my mood — or how many apples I’m dealing with — I reach for a different one every time.

The regular Y-peeler is my go-to for anything small-batch — a couple apples for a snack, or prepping for a recipe where I want control over how thick or thin I’m taking the skin off. It’s fast, it’s precise, and there’s something satisfying about a long unbroken ribbon of peel. The catch is it’s all manual effort — fine for two or three apples, tedious the moment you’re staring down a full bushel.

The section cutter (the kind that presses down and gives you eight even wedges, core removed in one motion) is the one I hand to grandkids, or reach for myself when I just want a quick snack with zero fuss. It’s the fastest tool in the drawer for turning a whole apple into ready-to-eat pieces. The trade-off is you lose control — every wedge is the same size whether the recipe wants thin slices or thick chunks, and it only works cleanly on apples that are a fairly standard round shape.

Slicing by hand, side to side off the core (what I think of as the “restaurant cut”) is what I use when I want fanned slices for something like the Dutch Baby in this issue, where presentation matters. It takes more time and a decent knife, but you get complete control over thickness and you can keep pieces uniform for even cooking or a nice visual layout.

The crank peeler — the countertop-clamp kind that peels, cores, and spirals an apple in one motion — is the one that comes out only when I’m making something in real volume. Pie season, apple butter, anything where I’m processing a dozen or more apples at once. It’s genuinely fun to use, honestly, watching that long spiral peel come off. But it’s one more gadget to store, it doesn’t work well on odd-shaped or very small apples, and for just one or two apples it’s more setup than it’s worth.

None of them is the “right” one — it really comes down to how many apples you’re working through and what you’re making. But if I had to keep just one, it’d be the Y-peeler. It’s the only one that works well no matter the job in front of me.

Rotating Feature: Freezing Apples — What I Learned the Hard Way

I always figured you could just toss apples in the freezer the way you would berries and call it a day. Turns out, apples have opinions about that.

Here’s the thing — apples are mostly water, and when that water freezes, it expands into ice crystals that punch right through the cell walls holding the fruit together. So when they thaw, all that structure is gone. You end up with something soft, a little spongy, sometimes downright mushy. Not what you want if you’re planning to eat them out of hand. But if you’re cooking, baking, or blending them anyway — where you’re breaking them down regardless — that softness stops being a problem and just becomes a head start.

So this is not an “eat them frozen off the counter” situation. This is strictly a “future pie, future sauce, future something-warm-from-the-oven” situation. Think pies, crisps, cobblers, muffins, quick breads. Applesauce, apple butter, that braised cabbage-and-apple side from this issue’s menu. Smoothies, purees — anywhere you were going to cook or blitz them down anyway.

If you want to give it a try yourself, here’s how I do it:

• Prep them. Peel if you want to (I usually do), core, and cut into pieces that are roughly the same size, so they freeze evenly.

• Keep them from browning. A quick dunk in water with a tablespoon of lemon juice per gallon does the trick. Drain and pat dry before moving on.

• Flash freeze first. Spread the pieces out in a single layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet — don’t let them touch — and freeze for a few hours until solid. Skip this step and you’ll end up chipping apple chunks out of one giant frozen block later, which nobody has patience for.

• Then bag them up. Once they’re frozen solid, transfer to airtight freezer bags, press out as much air as you can, and they’ll keep for the better part of a year.

One more thing worth knowing — you don’t need to thaw them before you use them. Straight from freezer to pot or batter is fine. Just know they’ll release a bit more liquid as they cook than fresh apples would, so a pinch of extra flour or cornstarch in whatever you’re making will keep things from getting watery.

Worth Knowing

If you’ve never made applesauce from scratch, this is your sign — it’s absurdly easy, and it’s one of those things where homemade genuinely is better, not just different. Peel, core, and chop your apples, toss them in a pot with a splash of water or cider, and let them simmer down until soft. Mash to whatever texture you like — chunky or smooth — and that’s it. No added sugar required if you pick the right apple.

And that’s the part people don’t realize: the variety you use is the flavor. You’re not seasoning applesauce so much as choosing which apple gets to speak for itself.

• Honeycrisp or Gala — sauce comes out sweet and mellow, almost no tartness. Good for kids, good if you don’t want to add sugar at all.

• Granny Smith — sauce comes out bright and properly tart, a little sharp even. This is the one I use when applesauce is going alongside something rich, like pork.

• Jonagold or McIntosh — right down the middle, sweet-tart balance, which honestly makes the most “classic applesauce” flavor of the bunch.

• Mix two or three varieties together — this is my actual favorite move. A blend gives you more depth than any single apple can, the way a good sauce or stock benefits from more than one ingredient doing the work.

Once you make it one time, you’ll wonder why you were ever buying it in a jar.

Weekend Kitchen Planner

Thursday

• Buy apples: Pink Lady, Granny Smith, Honeycrisp, Jonagold, Mutsu, Northern Spy, Winesap, Roxbury Russet

• Pick up goat cheese, Gruyère, sharp white cheddar, puff pastry, pork sausage meat, pork loin

Friday

• Make pickled mustard seeds ahead if you can — they only get better with a day or two of sitting

• Assemble and bake the sausage rolls; slice and plate the crostini right before serving

Saturday

• Morning: mix the Dutch Baby batter fresh, don’t get ahead of this one

• Afternoon: start the braised cabbage low and slow alongside the roasting pork loin; trim and halve the Brussels sprouts ahead, but roast them last-minute

• Bake the Roxbury Russet cake in the afternoon so it has full time to cool before glazing

Sunday

• Make the gougères fresh — choux pastry doesn’t hold well overnight

• The Winesap chutney is best made a day or two ahead so the flavors settle; if you’re making it same-day, let it cool completely before serving

Anytime this week

• If you’re trying the frozen apple method from this issue, this is a good week to prep and flash-freeze a batch for pies and sauces down the road

Worth Keeping

“We don’t build traditions because they’re easy. We build them because someday, ‘remember when’ will be worth more than the apples ever were.”

Before You Go

That’s the Gathering for this week — go pick some apples, make a mess of applesauce, and don’t forget the layers in the morning.

See you next Friday. Bring your appetite.

— The Jersey Nonna

Preamble

My tomato plants have officially taken over the patio. They’re sprawling, heavy, absolutely loaded — and every single one of those tomatoes is still green. Every day I go out there half-expecting a blush of red and every day I get... green. Turns out I picked up Caspian Pink heirlooms at the nursery, a variety that takes a good 80 to 90 days to actually ripen, and nobody mentioned that little detail on the plant tag when I loaded them into my cart. Lesson learned: read the tag before you fall for a plant because it looks healthy. I spent weeks convinced my plants just weren’t going to bear fruit, when really they were just taking their sweet time.

Here’s another thing nobody warned me about: those little plants you pot up in spring do not stay little. Mine started with the flimsy stick that came stuck in the container, like that was ever going to hold anything up. By midsummer I’d graduated to “proper” stakes from the garden center, thinking I’d solved it. The plants outgrew those too. Right now I’ve got a cobbled-together situation involving sign posts and garden twine, and it’s barely holding — these things got top-heavy fast, and I was chasing the problem the whole way instead of getting ahead of it. It’ll get us to the end of the season, but next year I’m doing actual research before planting so I’ve got a real support plan in place from day one, not a patchwork built one crisis at a time.

The tomatoes may be testing my patience, but the herbs are where all that same “growing something yourself” feeling really pays off. They’ve been prolific this year, an absolute embarrassment of riches, and every time I walk out there and see how much they’ve given me, I feel this ridiculous swell of pride. I grew that. So this week’s project isn’t just about preserving — it’s about not wasting a single leaf of something I worked for. Herbs pickled, dried, and frozen in oil, cubes stacked in the freezer waiting for the next soup or sauce that needs them. As for the tomatoes still holding out on ripening — some will go toward next year’s seeds once they finally turn, but the ones that stay stubbornly green by the time frost threatens aren’t going to waste either. Fried green tomatoes, a quick green tomato relish — there’s a plan for those too.

Farm Stand Report

The stand is in that awkward in-between right now — not quite summer, not quite fall. The flowering shrubs and bushes are done for the season, spent and a little sad-looking, and they know it — everything’s marked down. I almost walked right past them until it hit me: this isn’t a clearance rack, it’s actually the smart time to buy. Fall is when shrubs want to go in the ground. The soil’s still warm from summer, the air’s finally cooled off, and that combination lets the roots settle in and get established without a fight — no scorching heat, no drought stress. By the time spring rolls around, anything you plant now will already have a head start. So if you’ve had your eye on something for the yard, don’t wait for the price to be the only reason. The timing’s actually on your side too.

The mums, meanwhile, are just getting going — tight little buds everywhere, not a bloom open yet, but give them another week or two and the whole stand’s going to be nothing but color.

My own patio’s having its own in-between moment. The tomatoes are still green, still taking their sweet time, and I’ve made my peace with that — once a few finally ripen, or go a little past ripe, I’m saving the seeds. Here’s what I’m doing about it:

Want next year’s tomatoes to be this year’s tomatoes? Here’s what I’m doing about it. I pick a tomato that’s fully ripe, maybe even a little past its prime, off whichever plant did best this year — no sense saving seed from a mediocre performer. Slice it in half across the middle and scoop the seeds, pulp, gel and all, into a clean glass or jar. Add a splash of water, cover it loosely with a paper towel or cheesecloth so the fruit flies stay out, and then just... leave it. A couple days to about four, sitting right on the counter. Don’t panic when a layer of white, slightly funky-looking mold shows up on top — that’s not a mistake, that’s the whole point. It’s breaking down the gel coating the seeds are wrapped in.

Once that’s done, fill the jar with fresh water and give it a stir. The good seeds sink to the bottom, and everything else — the mold, the pulp, the seeds that never had a chance — floats. Pour that off. Do it again a couple times until what’s left in the bottom of the jar is just clean seed.

Last step is patience. Spread the seeds out in a single layer — a coffee filter or a piece of parchment works, skip the paper towel or you’ll be picking seeds off it for a week — and let them sit somewhere cool and out of direct sun for a week or two, until they’re completely dry and a little brittle. Then tuck them into a paper envelope, label it with the variety and the date, and put it somewhere cool and dark. Do it right and you’ve got seed that’ll still grow you tomatoes three, four, even five years from now.

Weekend Menu

Friday Night

• Rosemary & Sea Salt Focaccia, warm from the oven

• Lemon Dill Baked Salmon with roasted potatoes

• Rosemary-Garlic Compound Butter for the bread

Saturday Morning

• Lemon Lavender Scones with Lavender-Honey Compound Butter

• Herbed Frittata with fresh chives, dill, and goat cheese

Saturday Dinner

• Garlic & Herb Roasted Chicken (rosemary, sage, oregano under the skin)

• Tomato Basil Soup

• Watermelon, Feta & Mint Salad

Sunday Brunch

• Herbed Omelets with parsley and dill

• Lavender Lemonade

Sunday Dinner

• Classic Pasta Margherita (basil, garlic, sweet tomatoes)

• Herb-Crusted Pork Tenderloin (sage, rosemary, garlic)

• Cucumber Dill Yogurt Salad

Featured Recipe

Rosemary-Garlic & Lavender-Honey Compound Butter

Two ways to freeze summer’s herb harvest into something you’ll reach for all season — one savory, one sweet.

Ingredients — Rosemary-Garlic Butter

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

• 2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, finely minced

• 2 cloves garlic, minced

• ½ teaspoon kosher salt

Ingredients — Lavender-Honey Butter

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

• 1 tablespoon culinary lavender buds, finely crushed

• 2 tablespoons honey

• Pinch of salt

Directions

1. For each version, make sure the butter is fully softened at room temperature — this makes folding in the mix-ins much easier.

2. Rosemary-Garlic: In a bowl, combine softened butter, minced rosemary, garlic, and salt. Mix thoroughly with a fork or spatula until evenly distributed.

3. Lavender-Honey: In a separate bowl, combine softened butter, crushed lavender buds, honey, and salt. Mix until fully incorporated and streaked through with honey.

4. Spoon each butter onto a sheet of parchment or plastic wrap. Roll into a log shape, twisting the ends closed like a candy wrapper.

5. Refrigerate at least 1 hour to firm up before slicing into rounds, or freeze the whole log for longer storage.

To Preserve

• Refrigerator: up to 2 weeks, well wrapped.

• Freezer: up to 3 months. Slice the log into individual rounds before freezing so you can pull off just what you need.

Notes

• Rosemary-Garlic butter is excellent melted over steak, tossed with roasted potatoes, or spread on crusty bread.

• Lavender-Honey butter is meant for warm biscuits, morning toast, or scones — start with 1 tablespoon of lavender and adjust up carefully, since it turns soapy-tasting if overdone.

Shoppable List

• Unsalted butter

• Fresh rosemary

• Garlic

• Kosher salt

• Culinary lavender buds

• Honey

• Basil

• Dill

• Sage

• Oregano

• Parsley

• Mint

• Salmon fillets

• Lemons

• Whole chicken

• Pork tenderloin

• Roma or garden tomatoes

• Watermelon

• Feta cheese

• Cucumbers

• Greek yogurt

• Goat cheese

• Chives

• Fresh pasta

• Heavy cream

• All-purpose flour (for scones and focaccia)

• Curious what’s in my kitchen? Shop Nonna’s Favorites →

Nonna’s Notebook: A Blueberry Jam Kind of Friendship

I have a friend I’ve known for years now, though these days our paths cross less often than either of us would like. But there’s one Saturday I still think about every time I see a jar of blueberry jam.

We’d set the day aside weeks in advance — pick-your-own blueberries in the morning, jam-making in the afternoon. Saturday arrived with full summer heat and the kind of humidity that makes you sweat standing still. We went anyway. Picking turned out to be hot, back-breaking work — bent over the bushes, berry by berry, sometimes a lucky cluster at a time, cartons slowly filling while the sun did its worst.

Then we hauled it all back to my friend’s kitchen — in her historic house, which means exactly what you think it means: no air conditioning. Picture that heat, stacked on top of the heat already outside, stacked on top of several extra-large stockpots at a full boil. First, we washed and sanitized every mason jar. Then we washed and cooked down all those plump blueberries with sugar and lemon juice — no added pectin needed, the fruit did the work itself. We filled the jars, fitted the rings and lids, and lowered them back into the boiling water to seal.

Hours of work, start to finish. Sweat equity, literally. But by the end, we had jars and jars of something sweet and fragrant to show for it — gifts for friends and family, and a few jars we allowed ourselves to keep. I don’t remember the heat anymore, not really. I remember the two of us, hot and laughing, surrounded by jam.

Around the House: This Is the Year (Yes, Really)

Something about the weather turning does this to me every year — a burst of energy, a sudden itch to finally do the thing I’ve been talking about doing. This year it’s the closet.

You know the drill: try everything on, keep what fits and what you actually love, pack away the summer pieces, haul out the winter ones and do the whole exercise again. But this time I’m being honest with myself about the “donate” pile. Out goes anything that doesn’t fit me, now — not the me I’ll supposedly be once I lose the 20 pounds I’ve been vowing to lose for longer than I’d like to admit. Out goes anything I don’t even like anymore, the pieces where I look at them and think, “What was I thinking?” And out go the four-inch stiletto pumps — gorgeous things, made your legs look like they went on forever, relics of a shoe phase I’m not even a little ashamed of. These days my guilty pleasure is yarn. Go figure.

I wish shedding those pounds were as simple as clearing a closet shelf. It isn’t, but it’s the next thing on my list, and this time I’ve actually done something about it — I joined the local Y. Partly for the obvious reasons: Zumba, cycling, water aerobics, Pilates, yoga, general fitness classes, all in one place, no excuses about not knowing where to start. But also because it comes with a mahjong group, a knitting group, a handful of volunteer causes I can plug into, all under the same roof. This isn’t about unhappiness — it’s about taking my health into my own hands, doing my part to make sure I’m living my best life, and building the energy for everything else I want to do. And there’s a lot on that list. I don’t love calling it a bucket list — too much end-of-life baggage attached to that phrase for my taste. I prefer to think of it as finally having the time to chase all the things I’ve had a passing wish to try for years: watercolor painting, learning Italian, teaching myself piano well enough to play Christmas carols and a little boogie-woogie just for fun, traveling somewhere I’ve only ever pointed at on a map. Mostly, though, joining the Y gets me out of the house and around new people, and that alone is worth the membership.

Rotating Feature: Nonna’s Tip — Freezer Herb Cubes

Don’t let the last of your herbs go soft and sad in the crisper drawer. This works well beyond dill, basil, and parsley — rosemary, sage, and chives all hold up beautifully too, since they’re the sturdier herbs that are usually cooked into a dish anyway. Mint freezes fine as well, just know it’s better saved for something you’re cooking rather than using raw, since the freeze softens that fresh, bright bite a bit. (Culinary lavender is the one exception here — I haven’t found a reliable answer on how it holds up to this method, so for now I’m keeping mine in the compound butter instead, where I already know it works.)

Finely chop whichever herb you’re using, pack it into an ice cube tray, and cover with a good extra-virgin olive oil. Freeze until solid — a few hours or overnight does it. The oil won’t freeze quite as hard as a plain water cube, which is actually a plus: pop one straight into a hot pan and it melts fast, no waiting around. Once the cubes are frozen solid, pop them out of the tray and transfer them to a labeled freezer bag or container — don’t leave them sitting in the tray, you’ll want that tray back for the next batch. No need to thaw first, just drop a cube straight into whatever you’re cooking. It’s the fastest preservation method in this whole issue, and the one I use the most.

Worth Knowing: The Herb-in-Oil Safety Rule

Here’s something a lot of preserving guides skip over: garlic or fresh herbs stored in oil at room temperature — even in a “pretty” jar on the counter, even in the fridge — can create the exact low-oxygen, moisture-rich environment that Clostridium botulinum needs to grow. It’s rare, but botulism doesn’t announce itself with a bad smell or an off taste, which is what makes it genuinely dangerous rather than just an old wives’ tale.

The fix is simple: any herb-in-oil preparation — those freezer cubes, the compound butters, a marinade you’re not using immediately — needs to go in the freezer, not the pantry. Freezing stops bacterial growth cold, which is exactly why it’s the method I lean on for preserving herbs, rather than the room-temperature infused oils you sometimes see in gift baskets. Pretty jar, real risk — better to freeze it and skip the worry entirely.

Weekend Kitchen Planner

• Friday morning: Mix both compound butters (rosemary-garlic, lavender-honey), roll into logs, refrigerate at least 1 hour to firm before dinner

• Friday: Bake focaccia; prep and roast salmon with lemon and dill

• Saturday morning: Assemble frittata ingredients; get chicken seasoned and into the oven early (longest cook time of the weekend)

• Saturday: Simmer tomato basil soup while chicken roasts; toss watermelon-feta-mint salad just before serving so it doesn’t weep

• Sunday morning: Bake lavender scones; steep lavender lemonade

• Sunday: Cook pasta margherita; sear pork tenderloin; assemble cucumber dill yogurt salad

• Any day this week: Chop and freeze herb cubes — no fixed slot needed, good “whenever you have a spare 10 minutes” task

Worth Keeping

“I don’t remember the heat anymore, not really. I remember the two of us, hot and laughing, surrounded by jam.”

Before You Go

Summer’s winding down, and if my patio is any indication, it’s going reluctantly — herbs still going strong, tomatoes still stubbornly green, refusing to let go without a fight. I’ll take it. But the calendar doesn’t care what my tomatoes think, and there’s a lot on the horizon: seasonal projects, indoor and out, plans for the months ahead, and yes, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas all queuing up faster than any of us would like. I’ll admit it: the way retailers start pushing the holidays earlier every year bothers me. But like it or not, that’s the reality we’re planning around, and the truth is, good celebrations take lead time.

So here’s my invitation for this season: make a plan. Get it down on paper — not in your head, not “I’ll remember” — actual paper, an actual list. There’s real satisfaction in crossing off a completed item, and even more in reaching December with room to breathe instead of running on fumes. My goal this year isn’t to do less. It’s to do it all without the physical and emotional stress that usually comes bundled with this time of year — and to leave plenty of room to actually celebrate with the people I love.

See you next Friday. Bring your appetite.

— The Jersey Nonna

Preamble

It’s been the rainiest late summer I can remember in years — one gray day rolling into the next — and it’s had me thinking about all the moods the shore actually has, not just the one we put on postcards.

There’s the day everyone pictures: blue sky, cotton-ball clouds, a stretch on the beach broken up by a walk down to the inlet to watch the boats — the party boats heading out for the afternoon, the real fishermen already coming back in with their haul because they were out on the water hours before any of us made it to our beach chairs.

But there are moody days too — surf rough and crashing, tide pushed all the way in, the sea reminding you it’s more powerful than it lets on most of the time. It’s taught me that lesson more than once.

Either way, the boats keep coming in, and what they bring home is the whole reason for tonight’s table.

Farm Stand Report

Something’s shifting out there. The summer tables are thinning — less corn, less of everything that made July and August feel endless — and in its place, the mums are starting to show up. Not blooming yet, most of them. Just green and stubborn and waiting, tucked in tight rows, but you can tell they’re about to burst — burgundy, rust, pumpkin-orange, that deep goldenrod yellow, and then the purples, which somehow come in more shades than seems necessary. Wine, lavender, something almost plum.

It’s an in-between week at the stand. Too early for the real fall lineup — no pumpkins yet, no gourds, nothing that says Thanksgiving or Christmas is on its way — but too late to pretend summer’s still in charge. The last of it is hanging on: a few tomatoes, some stubborn zucchini, whatever didn’t get harvested last week. Everything else is just... waiting. Same as the rest of us, if I’m honest, standing in that stretch between one season and the next, not quite ready to let go and not quite ready to jump in either.

Weekend Menu

This weekend’s table follows the boats in. Friday keeps it light and briny — clams and a smoky bluefish spread meant for grazing. Saturday sits you down properly, bisque first, then bluefish with a bright tomato-basil relish standing in for summer’s last real heat. And Sunday closes it out with the dish of the issue — scallops seared golden over sweet corn puree, finished with a little something sweet to send you into the week.

• Friday: Broiled Clams Oreganata · Smoked Bluefish & Chive Spread with crackers and crostini

• Saturday: Herbed Shellfish Bisque · Blackened Bluefish with Fresh Tomato & Basil Relish · Chilled Cucumber-Dill Relish · crusty bread

• Sunday: Pan-Seared Cape May Scallops over Sweet Corn Puree (Featured Recipe) · Blueberry, Fig & Port Gelato

Featured Recipe: Pan-Seared Cape May Scallops over Sweet Corn Puree

Serves 4

For the corn puree:

• 4 ears fresh sweet corn, kernels cut off (about 3 cups)

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

• ¼ cup heavy cream

• Salt and pepper, to taste

For the scallops:

• 1 ½ lbs dry sea scallops (about 16-20), side muscle removed

• Salt, to taste

• 2 tablespoons neutral oil (grapeseed or avocado)

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

• Fresh chives, for garnish

• Lemon wedge, for serving

Directions:

1. Make the puree first. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat, add the corn kernels, and cook, stirring occasionally, until tender — about 8 minutes. Transfer to a blender with the cream, blend until smooth, then pass through a fine mesh strainer for that velvety texture. Season with salt and pepper, keep warm.

2. While the corn cooks, prep the scallops: pat them completely dry with paper towels and let them sit uncovered on a paper-towel-lined plate for 15-20 minutes before cooking. A great sear starts before the pan ever gets hot — dry scallops are the whole secret.

3. Season scallops with salt right before cooking, not before.

4. Heat a heavy stainless or cast-iron skillet over high heat until very hot. Add the oil, then carefully place scallops in the pan, leaving space between each one — don’t crowd the pan.

5. Sear undisturbed for about 2 minutes more or less, until a deep golden crust forms. Flip, add the butter to the pan, and baste for another 1-2 minutes until just opaque in the center.

6. Spoon the warm corn puree onto plates, top with scallops, garnish with chives, and serve with a lemon wedge.

Notes: Buy the driest scallops you can find (ask your fishmonger — “dry-packed” is the term) for the best sear. Wet-packed scallops will steam instead of crisp, no matter how hot the pan is.

Shoppable List

• 4 ears fresh sweet corn

• Heavy cream

• Unsalted butter

• 1 ½ lbs dry sea scallops

• Fresh chives

• Lemons

• Littleneck or cherrystone clams

• Fresh bluefish fillets

• Cream cheese

• Horseradish

• Heirloom tomatoes

• Fresh basil

• Cucumbers

• Fresh dill

• Shellfish stock or bones (for bisque)

• Heavy cream (bisque)

• White wine

• Blueberries

• Fresh figs

• Ruby port

• Sliced almonds

• Crusty bread, crackers, and crostini

Curious what’s in my kitchen? Shop Nonna’s Favorites →

Cookbook Tie-In

Craving more late-summer, produce-forward cooking? The Blackened Bluefish’s tomato-basil relish is a cousin to the recipes in Red, Ripe & Ready — grab your copy in the shop.

Nonna’s Notebook

There’s a rhythm to the inlet in late afternoon, and if you’ve never stood there for it, you’re missing something.

The boats start coming in low — that’s how you know they had a good day. You watch them round the bend past the jetty, engines slowing, and by the time they nose up to the dock the gulls already know before anyone else does. They circle first. They’re never wrong.

At the fish market at the base of the bridge, this is the whole show. No performance to the place — just a pebble lot, an ice case, and men in waders hauling coolers straight off the boats and through the back door. Bluefish, mostly, this time of year. Silver-blue and still stiff with cold seawater, laid out on beds of chipped ice before you’ve even parked the car.

That’s the part I think about — how short the distance really is. Hours, not days, between the water and the case. You can still smell the ocean on it. The fishermen are sometimes still standing right there, telling you what the water was doing that morning, which spot gave it up easy and which one made them work for it.

There’s no dressing that up and no need to. Fresh bluefish off an afternoon boat doesn’t need a story. It just needs a hot pan and someone who knows not to overcook it.

That’s tonight’s fish. Caught this morning, cooked tonight, gone by dessert.

Around the House: Setting the Scene for a Seafood Night

You don’t need much to make a seafood dinner feel like an occasion — you just need to lean into what’s already true about it. This is a hands-on meal. Let it look like one.

Skip the fancy tablecloth. A strip of brown kraft paper or a plain linen runner down the center of the table does more work than you’d think — and it means cleanup is a matter of rolling it up and tossing it. If you want to go full shore-town, butcher paper taped down at the corners is completely fair game.

Citrus does double duty as decoration and function — scatter halved lemons and limes right on the table, not just in a bowl. They look good, and they’re already there when someone wants an extra squeeze over their fish.

Mismatched glassware works in your favor here. Mason jars for water, a few thrifted juice glasses for wine — it reads as relaxed on purpose, not like you forgot to buy a matching set.

And the one non-negotiable: napkins, plenty of them, within arm’s reach of every seat. Cloth if you’re feeling it, a deep stack of good paper if you’re not. Nobody should have to ask.

Low candles, nothing fussy — a few tapers or a cluster of votives down the runner once the sun starts to go down. That’s it. That’s the whole trick: let the food be the centerpiece, and get out of its way.

Rotating Feature: The Seafood Night Playlist

Every dinner has a soundtrack whether you plan for one or not, so you may as well pick it on purpose. This one’s built for golden hour into evening — something with a little salt air in it, nothing that demands attention, just enough to fill the space between courses and conversation.

Think coastal, unhurried, a little nostalgic:

• Brown Eyed Girl — Van Morrison

• Cecilia — Simon & Garfunkel

• Kokomo — The Beach Boys

• Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay — Otis Redding

• La Vie en Rose — Édith Piaf (or the Louis Armstrong version, if you want it warmer)

• Banana Pancakes — Jack Johnson

• Sway — Dean Martin

• Corcovado (Quiet Nights) — Stan Getz & João Gilberto

The through-line is easy: nothing that asks you to stop and listen, everything that makes you want to linger a little longer at the table. Start it low when the first course goes out, let it carry you through dessert.

Worth Knowing

There’s a trick to a great scallop sear, and it has nothing to do with the pan being hot enough — it’s almost always about moisture. Before scallops ever touch heat, pat them completely dry and let them sit uncovered in the fridge for 15-20 minutes; any surface water left behind steams instead of searing, and you’ll end up with a gray, sad scallop instead of a golden one. Pull off the small tough side muscle if it’s still attached — it won’t sear evenly and toughens up. Salt right before cooking, not ahead of time, since salt pulls moisture out the longer it sits. Use a hot stainless or cast-iron pan, not nonstick, give the scallops room to breathe, and once they’re in the pan — leave them alone. No shaking, no nudging. About two minutes a side is usually enough to get a real crust. Dry scallops are the whole secret.

Weekend Kitchen Planner

• Friday: Shuck or scrub clams if needed, prep breadcrumb topping for oreganata. Make the bluefish spread and chill.

• Saturday: Make bisque base ahead if possible (reheats well). Mix tomato-basil relish early so flavors meld. Prep cucumber-dill relish just before serving so it stays crisp.

• Sunday: Make corn puree first, keep warm. Pat scallops dry early and let them sit uncovered in the fridge until ready to sear. Make the gelato compote a day ahead if you can — it needs time to chill fully.

Worth Keeping

“There’s no dressing up fresh bluefish off an afternoon boat — it just needs a hot pan and someone who knows not to overcook it.”

Before You Go

Funny thing about a good weekend — it rarely needs a reason. Set the table, scatter some lemons, put a little music on, and suddenly a few pounds of bluefish and some clams from the dock have turned into a whole occasion. Nobody asked what we were celebrating. Nobody needed to.

That’s the part I keep coming back to: keep it simple, keep the people close, and just about anything can become the reason to gather. A Tuesday. A Wednesday. A weeknight with nothing on the calendar. Doesn’t matter. Pull up a chair, pour something cold, and let the evening do the rest.

See you next Friday. Bring your appetite.

— The Jersey Nonna

Preamble

I’ve noticed it these past few mornings — that cool, dry air slipping in before the day gets its bearings. It’s not fall yet, not even close, the afternoons still climb right back into summer’s heat. But those early hours have a different feel now. Energizing and soothing all at once, like the season is clearing its throat before it says anything. It’s a small thing, but it’s the kind of small thing that gets a day off to a good start. And this week, it had me reaching for eggplant — that late-summer Italian staple that always feels like it’s bridging one season into the next, same as these mornings are.

Farm Stand Report

I promised you an update on the beefsteaks, and here it is — patience is still the name of the game. The plants are covered in little yellow flower clusters, teasing tomatoes that haven’t quite decided to show up yet. Meanwhile, the plum tomatoes have no such hesitation — clusters of small green ovals are ripening away in the sun like they’ve got somewhere to be. Lesson learned: next season, I’m planting more plums. They’ve outworked the beefsteaks all summer, and there’s something to be said for a tomato that just gets on with it.

Weekend Menu

Friday

• Charred Eggplant & Roasted Pepper Caponata, served warm with crusty bread and olives

• Sausage, Peppers & Onions — This one’s been a hit at every family gathering. Hot and sweet sausage, seared whole in butter and olive oil with garlic, salt, and pepper until browned, then rested and cut into coins. Meanwhile, the peppers and onions are sautéed in the exact same pan to soak up all that rich rendered flavor, before the sausage coins are returned to cook through until no longer pink. Simple, no fuss, and the tray’s always empty first.

Saturday

• Friday’s leftover caponata, warmed over rigatoni with shaved Parmigiano

• Marinated Cherry Tomato & Cucumber Salad

• Roasted peppers on the side

Sunday

• Eggplant Involtini (Featured Recipe — full card below)

• Garlic bread

• Amaretti cookies

Featured Recipe: Eggplant Involtini

Ingredients

• 2 large eggplants, sliced lengthwise into ¼-inch planks

• Salt, for drawing out moisture

• Olive oil, for brushing

• 15 oz ricotta

• 1 egg

• ½ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus more for topping

• 2 tbsp chopped fresh basil

• Salt and pepper, to taste

• 3 cups marinara sauce (verify: homemade or store-bought preference)

• 8 oz fresh mozzarella, sliced or torn

Directions

1. Salt the eggplant planks and let sit 20–30 minutes to draw out bitterness; pat dry.

2. Brush with olive oil and grill or broil until pliable and lightly charred, about 3–4 minutes per side (verify: exact time based on thickness).

3. Mix ricotta, egg, Parmigiano, basil, salt, and pepper.

4. Spread a spoonful of ricotta filling on each eggplant plank and roll up.

5. Spread 1 cup marinara in the bottom of a baking dish — I like using my braiser for this, one of those pans I reach for more than almost anything else in the kitchen; it’s not cheap, but between searing, braising, and baking, it’s paid for itself many times over. Arrange rolls seam-side down.

6. Top with remaining marinara, mozzarella, and a dusting of Parmigiano.

7. Bake at 375°F for 25–30 minutes (verify: temp/time), until bubbly and golden.

Nonna’s Note: You’ll notice I still salt my eggplant before cooking, even though most modern varieties don’t actually need it to draw out bitterness the way older ones did. Old habits die hard — and honestly, salting still does good work pulling out excess moisture, which means a firmer roll and a better bite. Call it superstition, call it technique. I’m not giving it up.

Shoppable List

• Eggplant

• Hot and sweet Italian sausage

• Bell peppers

• White onions

• Cherry tomatoes

• Cucumbers

• Ricotta

• Fresh mozzarella

• Parmigiano-Reggiano

• Fresh basil

• Garlic

• Marinara

• Rigatoni

• Crusty bread

• Amaretti cookies

Cookbook Tie-In

If those beefsteaks are testing your patience as much as mine are, my cookbook Red, Ripe & Ready is full of ways to make the most of whatever tomatoes do come in — plum, beefsteak, or otherwise. Available now in the shop.

Nonna’s Notebook

You know how it goes at the garden center — everything looks so lovely, so full of promise, that you start believing you could grow anything. That’s exactly how I ended up walking out with what I thought was a Meyer lemon tree. I use lemons constantly, I told myself, why not grow my own? Home it came.

Except now, months later, I’m having my doubts. Four walnut-sized green orbs have sat on that tree, unchanged, since early summer. No growth, no color, nothing. I’m starting to suspect I didn’t bring home a lemon tree at all — I think it might actually be a lime tree.

I’ve done this before, in fairness. When I lived down south, I had a lemon tree in a container on the deck that grew beautifully and gave me real, usable lemons — I wasn’t trying to start a lemon grove, I just wanted fruit I could actually cook with. So I know it’s possible. Which makes me wonder if this one simply isn’t suited to the growing zone I’m in now.

For the moment, my plan is to bring it inside at the end of summer and see what happens. Maybe it just needs warmer, steadier conditions to finally do something. Maybe it never will, and I’ll have a very confused little lime tree living in my kitchen all winter. Either way — to be continued.

Around the House: The After-School Landing Zone

Last issue I teased the Sunday Reset — that 15-minute head start on the week. This time, let’s talk about what happens the second the front door opens after school.

You know the scene: backpack drops wherever it lands, shoes end up in two different rooms, a half-eaten snack wrapper somehow makes it to the couch, and by the time you’re looking for tomorrow’s signed permission slip, it’s nowhere to be found. The fix isn’t more rules — it’s one landing zone that does all the work automatically.

Here’s what a good after-school landing zone actually needs:

• A hook or bin at kid-height for the backpack — not a closet, not “put it away,” just one spot it always goes

• A shoe spot right there too — a mat, a basket, anything that isn’t the middle of the floor

• A small snack station nearby so they can help themselves without raiding the whole kitchen

• A charging spot for devices, away from the bedroom

• A “tomorrow” tray or clipboard for anything that needs to leave the house again — permission slips, library books, forms

Set it up once, and the chaos has somewhere to go instead of everywhere.

Grab the free printable below — a simple one-page checklist to help you set up your own landing zone this week. [Get Your Free Checklist]

Nonna Explains

Eggplant has been carrying some baggage for centuries. Its Italian name, melanzana, actually comes from mela insana — “mad apple” — because Renaissance-era Europeans were convinced this nightshade cousin of the tomato was either poisonous or would drive you insane if you ate it. Meanwhile, the name we use in English has nothing to do with any of that drama: early European varieties were small, white, and genuinely egg-shaped, which is exactly where “eggplant” came from — long before the deep purple version we know today took over. And here’s the fact that surprises most people: botanically speaking, eggplant isn’t a vegetable at all. It’s a fruit — a berry, technically, same family as tomatoes and peppers. So somewhere between mad apples and misnamed eggs, we ended up with one of the most useful “vegetables” in the Italian kitchen.

Worth Knowing

The mosquitoes have been atrocious lately — those teeny little black buggers you swat at without even realizing you’ve been bitten until later, when the itching starts. We’ve had a lot of rain this season, and that’s exactly why: standing water is prime breeding ground. The good news? This one resolves itself. Mosquito activity drops off sharply once nighttime temps consistently dip below the mid-50s, which typically starts in October, and a hard frost — usually late October or early November — ends it for the season entirely. No repellent negotiation required. Fall’s got this one covered.

Weekend Kitchen Planner

Friday

• Salt the eggplant planks for the Involtini early in the day (20–30 min), even though it’s for Sunday — makes for stress-free advance prep

• Char the Roasted Pepper & Eggplant Caponata; let it cool and sit so the flavors meld

• Sear the sausage whole in the braiser with butter, EVOO, garlic, salt, and pepper

• Rest the sausage, then slice into coins while the peppers and onions sauté in the same pan

• Set aside extra caponata for Saturday’s pasta

Saturday

• Warm Friday’s leftover caponata and toss with cooked rigatoni and shaved Parmigiano

• Marinate the cherry tomatoes and cucumbers early in the day

• Roast the peppers for the side

Sunday

• Grill or broil the eggplant planks for the Involtini

• Mix the ricotta filling, roll, and assemble in the braiser or baking dish

• Bake until bubbly and golden

• Warm the garlic bread

• Set out the Amaretti cookies

This week’s standing invitation: check on the beefsteaks one more time before the weekend’s over — they might just surprise you.

Worth Keeping

“Cool mornings ... the season clearing its throat before it says anything.”

Before You Go

Some of you have already sent your children back through those doors; others still have a week or two of summer stretching out in front of you. Either way, I have found there’s no wrong time to start practicing the new rituals — the landing zone, the tomorrow tray, all of it. Get the habits in place now, before the real rush hits, and the whole year gets off to a steadier start.

See you next Friday. Bring your appetite.

— The Jersey Nonna

Preamble

There is something almost embarrassingly satisfying about walking out my back door, scissors in hand, and cutting herbs I grew myself. Not the sad, wilted plastic-wrapped kind. Not the ones that go limp in the crisper drawer three days after you buy them. Mine. Lush, green in six different shades, so fragrant you can smell the basil before you even touch it.

No black thumb here — not this year, anyway. (More on that another time.)

This week’s Gathering is all about what happens when herbs actually work — and then keep working, and working, until you’re standing on your deck wondering what on earth to do with all of it. A good problem to have. Let’s get into it.

Farm Stand Report

You can tell the season is turning. The farm itself looks a little tired — fewer plants left for purchase, the summer rush winding down — and the stand is already getting ready for early fall, with chrysanthemums starting to arrive. Inside the general store, there were still a few weighty Jersey beefsteak tomatoes to be found, but the shelves have mostly shifted over to pickled vegetables, preserves, relishes, and chutneys — all put up from the abundant harvest just a few weeks ago, as if inviting us to carry summer with us into the next season.

Speaking of gardens: my own beefsteaks are still playing hard to get. More on that next time.

The Weekend Menu

Friday

• Herb Garden Gin & Tonic

• Baked Ricotta & Herb Crostini

• Whipped Feta with Dill & Chives

• Grilled Rosemary-Lemon Chicken Skewers — cubed chicken breast, olive oil/lemon/garlic/minced rosemary marinade, soaked wood skewers with whole rosemary sprigs tucked in

Saturday

• Herb-Marinated Warm Olives & Goat Cheese

• Grilled Swordfish with Mint-Parsley Chimichurri

• Lemon-Herb Orzo with Butter & Chives

• Charred Corn Salad with Lime & Herbs

Sunday

• Savory Herb & Ricotta Cheesecake served with crusty bread and crackers

• Marinated Zucchini Ribbons with Mint

• Lemon & Lavender Olive Oil Cake

Featured Recipe: Savory Herb & Ricotta Cheesecake

Serves 10–12 as an appetizer • 9-inch springform pan

Ingredients

For the crust:

• 1½ cups finely crushed crackers (buttery round crackers or water crackers)

• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

• Pinch of salt

For the filling:

• 16 oz whole-milk ricotta, well-drained

• 16 oz cream cheese, softened

• ⅓ cup grated Parmesan

• 3 large eggs

• Zest of 1 lemon

• 2 tablespoons fresh basil, finely chopped

• 2 tablespoons fresh chives, finely chopped

• 1 tablespoon fresh dill, finely chopped

• 1 tablespoon fresh curly parsley, finely chopped

• 1 teaspoon kosher salt

• ½ teaspoon black pepper, freshly cracked

To finish:

• Drizzle of good olive oil

• A few whole herb leaves for garnish

• Flaky salt and extra cracked pepper

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325°F. Wrap the outside of a 9-inch springform pan in foil (to guard against leaks) and lightly grease the inside.

2. Combine crushed crackers, melted butter, and a pinch of salt. Press firmly into the bottom of the pan. Bake for 8 minutes, then set aside to cool slightly.

3. In a large bowl, beat the ricotta and cream cheese together until smooth. Add the Parmesan, eggs, lemon zest, herbs, salt, and pepper. Mix until just combined — don’t overbeat, or the cheesecake can crack.

4. Pour the filling over the crust and smooth the top.

5. Bake for 50–60 minutes, until the edges are set and the center still has a slight jiggle. Turn off the oven, crack the door open, and let the cheesecake cool inside for 1 hour.

6. Remove from the oven and let cool completely to room temperature, then run a knife around the edge and release the springform ring.

7. Just before serving, drizzle with olive oil, scatter a few whole herb leaves on top, and finish with flaky salt and cracked pepper.

Notes

• Can be made a day ahead — cover and refrigerate, then bring to room temperature for about 45 minutes before serving.

• Serve with crusty bread and crackers, not crostini, to keep it distinct from Friday’s starter.

• If it cracks slightly while cooling, don’t worry — a drizzle of olive oil and a few herb leaves on top will cover it beautifully.

• Leftovers keep well covered in the fridge for up to 4 days.

Nonna’s Note: A savory cheesecake sounds like a trick until you taste it — creamy, herb-flecked, and the perfect answer to a garden that gave you more basil, chives, dill, and parsley than any one dish could use.

Shoppable List

From your herb garden (no need to buy): basil, rosemary, mint, dill, chives, curly parsley, oregano, culinary lavender

Produce

• Lemons (6–7, for zest and juice across multiple dishes)

• Limes (2–3, for corn salad)

• Garlic (1 head)

• Zucchini (2–3, for ribbons)

• Corn on the cob (4–5 ears, for charred corn salad)

• Red onion (1 small)

• Jalapeño (1)

Protein

• Chicken breast (2 lbs, for skewers)

• Swordfish steaks (4, about 6 oz each)

Dairy & Cheese

• Ricotta, whole-milk (2 containers — one for crostini, one for the cheesecake, ~16 oz each)

• Cream cheese (16 oz, for cheesecake)

• Feta (for whipped feta starter, plus optional for zucchini ribbons)

• Goat cheese (for marinated olives)

• Parmesan, grated (small amount, for cheesecake)

• Butter, unsalted (for orzo, cheesecake crust)

• Eggs (3, for cheesecake; check pantry for cake eggs too)

• Heavy cream or milk (for olive oil cake, to steep the lavender)

Pantry & Dry Goods

• Buttery round crackers or water crackers (for cheesecake crust)

• Orzo pasta

• Olives — Castelvetrano and/or Kalamata

• Olive oil (good quality, you’ll go through a lot this issue)

• Red wine vinegar (for chimichurri)

• All-purpose flour, sugar, baking soda (for olive oil cake — verify exact cake recipe quantities when drafted)

• Wooden skewers

Bakery

• Crusty bread (for the cheesecake course)

• Baguette (for crostini)

Bar

• Gin

• Tonic water

A little preview: the next Jersey Nonna cookbook, The Summer Table, is shaping up to be just as herb-happy as this issue — more on that soon.

Weekend Kitchen Planner

Friday
☐ Snip herbs from the garden — rosemary, mint, lavender for tonight’s round
☐ Soak wooden skewers 20–30 minutes before threading the chicken
☐ Marinate chicken in olive oil, lemon, garlic, and minced rosemary
☐ Whip feta with dill and chives; chill until serving
☐ Assemble and bake the ricotta and herb crostini
☐ Cut lemon and mint for the gin & tonics

Saturday
☐ Make the mint-parsley chimichurri a few hours ahead so the flavors meld
☐ Marinate the olives and goat cheese in herb oil
☐ Cook the lemon-herb orzo
☐ Char the corn, toss with lime and herbs
☐ Grill the swordfish just before serving

Sunday
☐ Bake the Savory Herb & Ricotta Cheesecake the night before — it needs time to set
☐ Marinate the zucchini ribbons with mint
☐ Steep the lavender in warm milk before mixing into the cake batter
☐ Bake the Lemon & Lavender Olive Oil Cake
☐ Slice the cheesecake, set out with crusty bread and crackers

This week’s standing invitation: cut a few extra sprigs and tuck them in a jar by the sink — you’ll use them before Monday, I promise.

Nonna’s Notebook

Growing up, herbs came from a jar. Dried, dusty, the kind you’d shake out over the sauce and hope for the best. My mother didn’t grow herbs — nobody I knew did, really. That’s just how it was done.

When my own turn came to feed a family, I graduated to those little plastic snap-top cases from the supermarket — fresh basil, fresh parsley, a small victory over the spice jar, though I didn’t know yet how small a victory it really was. I used them for years. Never questioned it. It was fresh, wasn’t it? That’s what the label said.

This year, for the first time, I grew my own. And I have to tell you — I get it now. I finally get it.

The basil off my own plant doesn’t taste like the basil from the plastic case. It’s not close. There’s a brightness to it, a freshness that doesn’t survive a truck ride and a grocery store shelf. The mint doesn’t just smell like mint — it smells like it means it. I’ve become, without meaning to, a total convert. I’ll never go back to the jar. I’m not sure I can even go back to the plastic case.

Here’s my dilemma now: the herbs I planted this year are perennials, which means most of them could simply stay outside, tucked in for winter, and come back on their own next spring. But I don’t want to wait for spring. I want them now, in February, when I’m standing at the stove wishing for something green and alive on the counter. So I’m bringing them in — attempting to keep this little herb garden going right through the winter, indoors, windowsill and all.

I’ll let you know how it goes. (I’ll also tell you, one of these days, about the lemon tree. That’s a whole separate saga.)

Around the House

Sundays have become my quiet weapon against Monday mornings — even now, as a nonna with no school-age kids of my own underfoot. I learned that trick years ago, and here’s what I’ve noticed: it still works at this stage of life. Fifteen minutes, that’s it — whatever’s pending gets sorted, tomorrow gets a head start, the week ahead gets a quick once-over. Turns out you don’t age out of needing a calmer Monday. I’ll be sharing more of these small systems in the weeks ahead — the kind that make the house run a little easier, no matter what your Sunday actually looks like.

I've put together a free printable version of my Sunday Reset — grab it here: The Sunday Reset

Nonna Explains

A little herb garden secret: “barbecue rosemary” and “mojito mint” aren’t special varieties — they’re just clever names. Barbecue rosemary is still rosemary (though some cultivars do have those thicker, sturdier stems good for skewering). Mojito mint is simply spearmint, dressed up for cocktail hour. Don’t let the label talk you into paying extra for something your regular rosemary or mint can already do.

Worth Knowing

How to prep wood skewers before grilling: soak them in water for 20–30 minutes beforehand so they don’t scorch or catch fire on the grill. A small step, but it makes all the difference with tonight’s chicken skewers.

Worth Keeping

“There is something almost embarrassingly satisfying about walking out my back door, scissors in hand, and cutting herbs I grew myself.”

Before You Go

The school supply aisles are already full, and somewhere out there a kid is picking out a first-day-of-school outfit with entirely too much confidence. There’s something about that particular chaos — new shoes, new backpacks, the nervous excitement of it all — that gets me every year, even now. Here’s to the new-year energy, however far removed we are from actually going back.

See you next Friday. Bring your appetite.

— The Jersey Nonna

The signs are there. Not just the back-to-school sales advertised all over, not the date on the calendar, but the sense that summer is ending. For me, there’s always a certain melancholy that comes with it — a leaving-behind feeling. The shore is still there. The days are still hot. But there’s something undeniably fleeting about the approach of Labor Day, a sense that the clock has started running even though nothing around you looks any different yet.

I find myself searching for summer songs and blasting them as loud as I dare whenever I’m in the car, like I can hold the season in place a little longer through the radio. I’ve got at least one more shore day planned — lunch on the porch at Amelia’s By The Sea in Spring Lake — and I intend to enjoy every minute of it.

It makes me a little sad, if I’m honest. I sometimes wonder if that’s part of why fall is so cool and crisp, why the leaves turn such lovely colors — maybe it’s nature’s way of distracting us from what we’ve left behind, and easing us toward wherever we’re headed next. I don’t know. I just know the end of summer always makes me a little sad.

This weekend, though, is still ours. Corn on the grill, watermelon the size of a bowling ball, and as many hours outside as the daylight will give us. Dog days, but the good kind.

Farm Stand Report

The farm stand is starting to show its late-summer age this week — a little droopy, a little faded, plenty of plants that have gone to seed and are calling it quits for the season. But there’s still good stuff if you know where to look. The beefsteak tomatoes are holding on beautifully, and the peaches were surprisingly sparse — grab them while you can, that window’s closing. But the real showstoppers this week were the watermelons. Dark green orbs, perfectly round, heavy and solid in your hands like an old-school bowling ball. These are Jersey Sugar Baby watermelons, grown down in South Jersey, and once I picked one up I had to know more.

Turns out Sugar Baby earned its nickname “the icebox melon” — it was bred back in 1959 to solve a very practical kitchen problem: regular watermelons were too big to fit in a standard fridge. At just 6 to 10 pounds, about the size of a bowling ball, a Sugar Baby slides right onto a single shelf. That deep, almost-black rind isn’t just for looks either — it soaks up heat on the vine, which is part of why these ripen in a speedy 75 to 80 days, nearly two weeks faster than the bigger heirloom varieties. And despite the compact size, the flesh is deep red, fine-grained, and packed with sugar. South Jersey turns out to be practically built for growing them — the sandy loam soil down in Cumberland, Gloucester, Salem, and Atlantic counties drains beautifully so the roots never sit in water, and that same sandy ground heats up fast in spring and holds its warmth into late summer, exactly what watermelons want for converting starches into sugar. The drier soil as the fruit ripens keeps them from taking on excess water too, which is why they taste so concentrated and sweet. If you’re picking your own, look for the field spot — where it rested on the ground — to have turned buttery yellow, and check that the little curly tendril near the stem has gone completely brown and dry. And don’t toss the rind: it’s thin enough to pickle, and one melon gives you 4 to 6 servings, so nothing goes to waste sitting in the fridge.

Worth Knowing

Update from my tomato plants: remember I mentioned needing to give them more room to spread their roots? Well, I did it — and now I’ve got big, healthy plants covered in yellow blossoms, fingers crossed they turn into tomatoes. One thing I’ve learned along the way: eggshells are a wonderful natural source of calcium carbonate, which supports root growth and helps neutralize soil acidity. The catch is they take forever to break down on their own, so I’ve started making an eggshell “tea” — steep crushed eggshells in boiling water, let it cool, then water your plants with it. Bonus: whatever eggshell bits are left over double as a natural deterrent for slugs and snails.

The Weekend Menu

Friday — Arrival / Happy Hour

• Charred Sweet Corn & Goat Cheese Crostini

• Grilled Corn on the Cob, Three Ways — herb compound butters (Basil-Parmesan-Garlic / Chive & Lemon Zest / Rosemary-Honey or Thyme-Honey)

• Simple antipasto board — prosciutto, melon, olives

Saturday — Full Table

• Grilled Corn, Tomato & Watermelon Salad

• Grilled Chicken Tacos with Sweet Corn & Peach Salsa

• Zoodles in Light Olive Oil-Butter, Salt & Pepper

Sunday — Featured Recipe

• Blueberry, Corn, and Basil Salad with Lime-Jalapeño Dressing (Featured Recipe)

• Grilled shrimp or fish with lemon

• Store-bought gelato

• Chilled Sweet Corn Agua Fresca with Lime & Mint

Featured Recipe: Blueberry, Corn, and Basil Salad with Lime-Jalapeño Dressing

Serves 6 as a side

Ingredients

For the salad:

• 4 ears fresh white corn, husked

• 1 ½ cups fresh blueberries

• 1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved

• ⅓ cup fresh basil leaves, torn

• ¼ cup crumbled feta or goat cheese (optional)

For the lime-jalapeño dressing:

• 3 tablespoons olive oil

• 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice (about 1 large lime)

• 1 teaspoon lime zest

• 1 small jalapeño, seeded and finely minced (leave a few seeds in for more heat)

• 1 teaspoon honey

• ½ teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

• Freshly cracked black pepper

Instructions

1. Cook the corn. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the corn and cook for 4–5 minutes, until just tender. Drain and let cool enough to handle.

2. Cut the kernels. Stand each ear upright in a large bowl and slice the kernels off with a sharp knife, letting them fall into the bowl.

3. Make the dressing. In a small bowl or jar, whisk together the olive oil, lime juice, lime zest, minced jalapeño, honey, salt, and pepper until well combined.

4. Assemble the salad. Add the blueberries and halved cherry tomatoes to the bowl with the corn. Pour the dressing over the top and toss gently to combine.

5. Finish and serve. Fold in the torn basil just before serving. Top with crumbled feta or goat cheese, if using. Serve at room temperature or lightly chilled.

Nonna’s Note: This one’s as pretty as it is easy — the kind of dish that looks like you fussed over it when really it just needed good produce and five minutes.

Shoppable List

Produce: Corn, blueberries, fresh basil, fresh chives, fresh rosemary or thyme, beefsteak tomatoes, Jersey Sugar Baby watermelon, zucchini, limes, jalapeño, peaches, cilantro, fresh mint

Dairy/Pantry: Butter, Parmesan, goat cheese, honey, garlic

Protein: Chicken thighs, shrimp or white fish

Other: Corn tortillas, rustic bread, prosciutto, olives, melon, store-bought gelato

A little something from Jersey Nonna Publications: if corn season has you cooking every night this week, my Red Ripe and Ready cookbook has a few more ways to keep it going past Sunday.

Nonna’s Notebook

My love affair with gelato started on a boat. We were pulling into Montreux, Switzerland — a lovely little resort town on the eastern shore of Lake Geneva, in the French-speaking part of the country. Old, charming, the kind of place that feels like it hasn’t hurried in a hundred years. We landed right at the town’s market square, the Place du Marché, where — of all things — there’s a ten-foot bronze statue of Freddie Mercury. Turns out he lived in Montreux for a time, right along the lake, and fans still make the pilgrimage to leave yellow flowers at his feet, his favorite color. It’s a strange and wonderful detail for a place that quiet.

But if you ask me, Montreux deserves to be famous for something else entirely: pistachio gelato.

Up a steep little walk from the market square sits Ristorante La Rouvenaz, and tucked beside it is a small window shop called La Gelateria, serving traditional, rich Italian gelato and sorbet — the kind meant to be savored slowly on the restaurant's patio, with its view of the lake. That's where I had my first real pistachio gelato. Not the fake-green, candy-flavored kind — this tasted like actual, freshly shelled pistachios: cold, creamy, and somehow completely fresh all at once. I remember sitting on that patio, the lake stretched out before me, thinking: this is what gelato is supposed to taste like.

Around the House: Compound Butter Make-Ahead

Soften butter and mix in fresh herbs — plus garlic and Parmesan, or lemon zest, or a little honey, depending on which direction you’re taking it. Roll into a log using parchment or plastic wrap, twist the ends, and freeze. Once firm, slice into rounds and keep them in a freezer bag so you always have a pat ready to melt over corn, grilled meat, fish, or warm bread. It’s also a great way to use up garden herbs before the heat makes them bolt — nothing wasted, everything ready when you need it.

Weekend Kitchen Planner

Early in the week (Mon–Wed): Make the herb compound butters — roll into logs, freeze.

Thursday: Shop for produce. Make the peach salsa (holds well, improves overnight). Pull one butter log from the freezer to soften slightly.

Friday: Prep and toast crostini, char corn for topping. Grill all corn for the three-ways; slice butter fresh at serving. Set out the antipasto board just before guests arrive.

Saturday: Cube watermelon and prep tomatoes in the morning; make Sunday’s lime-jalapeño dressing now too, since it holds. Grill corn for the salad and chicken for the tacos. Zoodle the zucchini just before serving so it doesn’t turn watery.

Sunday: Cook the corn for the salad the night before if you like, chill; toss everything else fresh. Grill shrimp or fish just before serving. Agua fresca can be blended the night before. Grab the gelato ahead of time so it’s not a last-minute errand.

Worth Keeping

Food and memory are more tied together than we give them credit for. A single bite — a spoonful of pistachio gelato, a peach still warm from the sun — can hand you back a whole afternoon you thought you’d forgotten. That’s the real reason we keep cooking, keep gathering: not just to eat, but to make something worth remembering later.

Before You Go

There’s something I’ve noticed about Labor Day that goes beyond just summer ending. It’s when everything starts back up. School, activities, volunteering, routines — it all clicks back into gear at once, and with it comes that same itch we usually save for January: the urge to start fresh. Join the gym, eat better, finally read that book. I’ve been feeling it too — flipping through adult course catalogs for classes starting after Labor Day, looking for something to learn, not too ambitious, just enough to challenge me a little and maybe meet some new people along the way. Turns out you don’t need a new year to want a new start. Just a school bus and a little cooler air will do it.

See you next Friday. Bring your appetite.

— The Jersey Nonna

We’ve arrived at about mid-summer, and it’s already given us a bit of everything — storms, heat waves, and those awesome, absolutely #10 days in between. Thoughts are starting to turn toward grabbing the last of vacation time, back-to-school planning, and enjoying the very best of what this season’s produce has to offer.

I’m relishing all of it. The eating right now is so easy, so light — I genuinely wish I could carry it into the colder months.

And then, earlier today, wandering through the supermarket, I got stopped cold by a display of Halloween candy. Halloween. Already. I mean — can you believe it?

Enough of that. I’m leaving myself to enjoy the rest of my summer, and I invite you to do the same.

Farm Stand Report

This weekend’s visit to the local farm stand told its own late-summer story. It’s a small suburban plot with a history worth knowing — the farmer worked this same land as a kid, years before he was ever able to buy it from its original owner. Now this farmer and his wife have taken it over, and the business is thriving in a way that’s genuinely heartening to watch.

The produce itself is starting to thin out. Strawberries were scarce and surprisingly expensive. Zucchini is still going strong (no surprise there). Corn — both white and bicolor — is beginning to slow down. Salad greens were thin on the ground too, which tracks with everyone’s continued caution around the ongoing bacterial contamination concerns. On the other end, basil is absolutely overflowing, and fruit bushes were on sale for anyone thinking ahead to fall planting.

But the real standout this week wasn’t produce at all — it was the farm itself. This little cottage operation has grown into something more: a general store, a petting zoo, a birthday patio, tractor rides. Saturday morning had it overflowing with young families, kids everywhere, the whole place buzzing. And threaded through all of it, zinnias in an absolute profusion of color — the kind of abundance that stops you for a second on your way to the car.

The Weekend Menu

Friday — Happy Hour

• Elderflower Spritz (or a gin and tonic with basil)

• Shaved Raw Zucchini Salad — lemon, Parmesan, cracked pepper, served as a light bite

Saturday — The Full Table

• Heirloom Tomato and Burrata Platter, basil and good olive oil

• Grilled Herb Chicken (or swordfish)

• Shaved Raw Zucchini & Mint Salad — mint-feta variation

• Grilled Corn with lime and Parmesan

• Crusty Bread, olive oil for dipping

Sunday — Slow Morning to Simple Supper

• Iced Peach or Lemon Tea

• Chilled Zucchini and Basil Soup (Featured Recipe)

• Nonna’s Zucchini Fudge Loaf with Simple Glaze (dessert)

Featured Recipe: Chilled Zucchini and Basil Soup

Nonna’s Note: This is the kind of recipe that came from not wanting to turn the stove on in August — a “use what’s too much of it” soup, meant to be made ahead and pulled from the fridge cold, no fuss. A good use for the zucchini nobody claimed from the counter pile.

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp olive oil

• 1 small onion, chopped

• 2 cloves garlic, minced

• 4 cups zucchini, roughly chopped (about 3-4 medium)

• 2 cups vegetable or chicken broth

• 1 cup fresh basil leaves, packed

• ½ cup plain yogurt or light cream

• Juice of half a lemon

• Salt and cracked pepper, to taste

• Olive oil, for finishing

• Extra basil leaves, for garnish

Method

1. Heat olive oil in a pot over medium heat. Add onion and cook until softened, about 4-5 minutes. Add garlic and cook 1 minute more, until fragrant.

2. Add chopped zucchini and broth. Bring to a simmer and cook until the zucchini is fork-tender, about 10-12 minutes.

3. Remove from heat and let cool slightly. Stir in the basil leaves while the mixture is still warm — this helps the basil blend smoothly and keeps its bright color.

4. Transfer to a blender (or use an immersion blender) and blend until completely smooth.

5. Stir in yogurt or cream and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

6. Chill for at least 2 hours, ideally overnight, before serving.

7. Serve cold, finished with a drizzle of good olive oil and a few fresh basil leaves on top.

Shoppable List

• Zucchini (several, mixed sizes)

• Fresh mint

• Feta cheese

• Lemons

• Parmesan

• Fresh basil

• Heirloom tomatoes

• Burrata

• Corn

• Chicken or swordfish

• Crusty bread

• Olive oil

• Plain yogurt or light cream (soup base)

• Vegetable or chicken broth

• Onion and garlic

• Dutch-process cocoa powder

• Madagascar vanilla extract

• Sour cream

• Instant espresso powder

• Eggs

• All-purpose flour

• Granulated and light brown sugar

• Vegetable oil or butter

• Powdered sugar and milk (glaze)

Looking for more ways to use up your zucchini overflow? A full zucchini-forward collection is in the works — more to come.

Nonna’s Notebook: The Zucchini That Wouldn’t Quit

Everyone thinks bigger is better with zucchini. Let one go a few extra days on the vine and you’re not harvesting a vegetable anymore — you’re pulling out something that belongs in a Flintstones cartoon, a club Fred could sling over his shoulder.

Which is exactly what happened in my house. A family member walked in recently, practically glowing, holding out a genuine club of a zucchini — a gift, proudly delivered, from a “gentleman farmer” he’d met somewhere along the way. I took it the way you take these things. Gratefully. And with the faint sense of what I was in for.

Because that’s the trap of zucchini. It’s the easiest thing in the world to grow — it was actually our first real gardening success with the kids, because it forgives almost everything. Low maintenance, practically no attention required, and prolific almost to a fault. Which is exactly the problem.

Then comes the overflow. The dreaded overflow.

I don’t like to waste what I’m given, so I got to work. A chocolate chip zucchini loaf. A sautéed zucchini and yellow squash side, just the two of them together in a pan. A zucchini and corn salad, bright and simple. One by one, I worked that club of a zucchini down to nothing.

And I mean nothing — I had just finished the very last of it, feeling rather accomplished, when he walked back in.

With another one.

Here we go again.

So when I saw a chef on TV make a chocolate cake with zucchini folded into it, something clicked. Aha. Maybe. Because here’s the thing about my house: I have eaters who will not touch a food if they know what’s in it — and it doesn’t meet with their approval, or it’s not a brand they trust, or it just looks suspicious in that particular way kids and picky adults decide things look suspicious. So I did what any Nonna worth her salt would do. I got quiet about it.

Cocoa. Zucchini. Chocolate chips. And a secret ingredient I’m not giving up here — you’ll have to make the recipe below to find out. I baked a loaf, sliced it simply, and said nothing. Not a word. Just a plate of chocolate loaf set out like it was any other treat.

Nobody asked. Nobody suspected. Nobody knew the difference.

And to this day? That is my story, and I’m sticking to it.

(Recipe for Nonna’s Zucchini Fudge Loaf with Simple Glaze below — the secret ingredient included.)

Nonna’s Zucchini Fudge Loaf with Simple Glaze

The secret’s in the espresso — nobody will ever guess.

Ingredients

• 1½ cups shredded zucchini, lightly squeezed of excess moisture

• 1¾ cups all-purpose flour

• ½ cup Dutch-process cocoa powder

• 1 tsp baking soda

• ½ tsp salt

• 1–2 tsp instant espresso powder (dissolve into the wet ingredients)

• ¾ cup granulated sugar

• ¼ cup light brown sugar

• 2 large eggs

• ½ cup vegetable oil or melted butter

• ¼ cup sour cream

• 1 tsp Madagascar vanilla extract

Simple Glaze

• 1 cup powdered sugar

• 2–3 tbsp milk

• ½ tsp Madagascar vanilla extract

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and line a standard 9x5-inch loaf pan.

2. Whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk eggs, both sugars, oil, sour cream, vanilla, and the dissolved espresso powder until smooth.

4. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet just until combined — don’t overmix.

5. Fold in the shredded zucchini last, gently, until evenly distributed.

6. Pour into the prepared pan and bake 50–60 minutes, until a toothpick comes out mostly clean (a few moist crumbs are fine — this is meant to stay fudgy).

7. Cool completely in the pan before glazing.

8. Whisk glaze ingredients until smooth and drizzle over the cooled loaf. Slice and serve without a word.

Nonna’s Note: This is a one-bowl kind of loaf — nothing fussy, nothing that needs a stand mixer. Sour cream keeps it tender for days. And yes, the espresso powder is doing exactly what you think it’s doing — deepening the chocolate without anyone ever tasting coffee.

Around the House: My Go-To Tools for Zucchini Season

A few simple tools do most of the work once zucchini starts piling up:

• A wide-mouth peeler — creates thin, even ribbons of zucchini (also works beautifully on cucumbers, yellow squash, or carrots)

• A mandoline — same effect, much faster, especially useful when you’re working through a whole club-sized zucchini at once

• A spiralizer — a fun twist of the handle turns zucchini into thin, spaghetti-like threads, and cleanup afterward is genuinely easy

The spiralizer is my favorite trick on a hot summer night, when a real bowl of pasta feels like too much. Zoodles cook fast — the biggest mistake is treating them like real pasta and boiling them, which turns them watery and limp in minutes. Instead: heat a splash of olive oil and a few pats of butter together in a wide skillet over medium-high heat until the butter is melted and just starting to foam. Add the spiralized zucchini and toss constantly for 1–2 minutes, just until bright green and slightly tender, still with a little bite. Off the heat, season immediately with cracked pepper and sea salt, then toss with a generous shave of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Serve right away — zoodles don’t hold well.

Nonna’s Note: If your zucchini “noodles” seem watery after spiralizing, salt them lightly and let them sit in a colander for 10 minutes first, then pat dry before cooking. That one step makes the difference between a light dish and a soupy one.

A caprese salad on the side, a glass of chilled white wine, and dinner is done.

Weekend Kitchen Planner

Friday

• Shave zucchini for the happy hour salad

• Mix the evening’s drink

Saturday

• Grill the protein and corn

• Assemble the tomato and burrata platter

• Shave zucchini for the mint-feta salad

Sunday

• Bake the fudge loaf in the morning so it has time to cool before glazing

• The soup can be made ahead and chilled — just stir and garnish before serving

Worth Keeping

The joy on a child’s face at a Saturday morning tractor ride costs nothing and lasts longer than almost anything you can buy. Some of the best traditions aren’t handed down — they’re just a farm stand, a petting zoo, and a family who showed up.

Before You Go

I’ve noticed something this summer — the frenzy of activity, the must-do’s, aren’t crowding in the way they usually do. I’ve taken to having my coffee with my dog in the early morning, before everyone’s up and the day is fully underway. I like sitting among my veggie, herb, and flower containers, checking in on how they’re doing, deadheading a bit here and there. Just tending.

Being attentive to tending.

Everything doesn’t have to be a big, grand doing. Small doings are good too. For me, they’re calming — I can feel my breathing slow down, I notice more as I take the time to actually see things, and I find myself more appreciative without trying to be. That wasn’t the plan. It’s kind of serendipitous how this has happened.

I like it. I hope you’re finding it too.

The Jersey Nonna — Weekend Gathering No. 6