What a difference a day makes! Here in northern California, we have been enjoying some pretty spectacular early fall weather. It’s been cool, breezy and clear as a bell. It inspired me to devote this week’s posts to fall comfort food, starting with a pot of beans and chili, then roast chicken and chicken stew, and then lentil soup.
All that gorgeous weather changed yesterday when the wind blew from the north, sending dense, acrid wildfire smoke from far northern California and southern Oregon down into our area. While here in our part of northern California, we’ve been mercifully spared a bad fire season so far, the poor folks up north have been battling these fires for more than a month. With the wind shift, the smoke very suddenly turned our skies an eerie tint of orange and gave those of us with sensitive systems headaches and allergy issues. I dislike air conditioning (and lived without it for the first 33 years we lived here) because of its bad effects on the environment and high energy expense, but I was grateful that we had had it installed a couple of years ago because of the worst fire and smoke year in our history, and I turned it on to avoid having to breathe in all that dangerous smoke.
Today, the air is slightly better, but still not good enough to open the house up or to venture outside for anything but essential needs. I had planned to make a dessert that would have made a trip to the store necessary, and instead, I looked around my kitchen to see what needed to be used up. I spied some peaches I bought at the market over the weekend that were on their last legs–a couple of them had some moldy spots and I was about to give up on them, but took a taste of the unblemished portion of one and was met with a silky smooth, sweet bite of juicy goodness. I had one with some yogurt for breakfast and then I used the rest of them to make a lovely peach crisp–a late summer/early fall comfort bonus.
Enjoy this late summer peach crumble
Please tune in again next week, I’ll be continuing to feature recipes that will let you “coast in the kitchen.”
Until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
