Results tagged “fall”

"Leaves with intensity." by Elliot Norwood, from our Flickr pool

Soup season has officially begun, and we couldn't be more excited. The simplicity of throwing all of your favorite ingredients into one meal, and the quick and easy cleanup from cooking everything in a single pot is enough to keep a smile on our face all winter. Especially when you're full and drowsy and the last thing on your mind is doing the dishes.

To help welcome the beginning of fall last night, we chose to make one of our all-time favorite recipes--hearty potato soup. The recipe was our mother's, something she would make for us when we were sick as a kid--and even now it's something we make for close friends who are laid up with a cold or the flu, and definitely a recipe we'll someday make for our own children. To us, this soup represents the warmth and comfort of being home. And we can honestly say, it's from this soup that we first taught ourselves how to cook.

Up the street from the old Redhook along Leary, and long since relocated from its old stomping grounds (Kirkland and Colville), is Hale's Ales. Featured within its fully operational brewery is a restaurant and a warehouse that has played host to both performers and the winter beer fest. Hale's is open for breakfast and runs on into the night with a wide range of beers, including the Harvest Ale.

Fortunately, for those intending to put an apple-cinnamon dish on the fall menu, the Washington apple harvest begins in mid-August. Don’t confine apple-cinnamon pairings to dessert menus, though. One savory pairing that works well is apples, cinnamon, and foie gras. Unfortunately, just as the apple has historically symbolized sin, foie gras carries a stigma amongst a certain Seattle group.

You would think, from reading bulletins about the stock market's drop today--about how the Dow Jones decline rate mimics the Great Depression--that Western civilization was on the brink of extinction. To someone who hasn't bought stock or mutual funds (securities of any kind, for that matter) for at least a decade, this doesn't make sense. The closely followed Dow is an average of the prices of thirty stodgy, old-line industrial companies (out of tens of thousands of publicly traded enterprises). An artificial indicator like that is bound to fluctuate, and consider this: No one is forcing anyone at gunpoint to buy or sell anything; for every seller, there's a willing buyer. The Market goes up, the Market goes down. Don't let it get in your head.

Seattlest has been obsessed with soups lately (it's not quite cold enough for stew). Today we tucked into Than Bros. chicken pho (small, $4.75). Tuesday it was Von's Three Meat Soup (a hearty, verging-on-stew bowlful, $6.95).

Traffic was snarled on Aurora for about two hours this morning, as police closed lanes to try to talk down a man threatening to jump from the Aurora Bridge. The P-I says he is in his mid-30s, fell 150 feet into a parking lot, and survived the fall. He was alive when taken to the hospital--probably Harborview, we imagine. This local blogger saw the traffic jam and wondered how hard it would be to justify increasing mental health coverage, given the cost of the stalled commute. But we seem more likely to build a fence instead.

Daylight Savings Time ends this Sunday, so don't forget to set your clocks back on Saturday night before you go to bed. Then sleep in an extra hour on Sunday. You'll want to, anyway, because it's going to be raining like the dickens. Also, the extra hour of sleep will help to keep you from having a heart attack after all that beer and crap you put in your body on Saturday night.

fall or winter? by M P G

This photo from the Seattlest Flickr Pool reminded us that autumn is the perfect time to buy fresh office supplies, a new soft sweater or jacket, or a smart new pair of jeans. We've never seen the point of waiting until New Year's Eve to make positive resolutions, especially not when autumn is a time of such drastic change in nature. This fall, why not reinvent yourself as a person who has it all together? Even the leaves are changing colors! (Perhaps your resolution this year could be to take more photos and upload them to the Seattlest Flickr Pool....You know you want to.)

We were sitting in Liberty last night having a gin and tonic, when all of a sudden we felt like we were wearing white after Labor Day. The g&t has been a wonderful, refreshing summer drink, but it's probably time to move on. To what, though? Irish coffee? A Manhattan? Hot buttered rum is too mid-winter. What's a good autumnal drink? Maybe something that goes with a earth-toned scarf or a green cap, if we're not getting too specific.

Today, we celebrate the end of summer. The autumnal equinox (actually, technically tomorrow) is one of two days in the year where the sun spends exactly the same amount of time above and below the equator. To honor the divine balance of nature, we suggest starting your day with coffee and ending it with beer. It is the way of our people, after all. In the meantime, this and many other stunning images can be seen throughout the four seasons in our Seattlest Flickr Pool!