Best time of year for me as regards cooking. I love to make soups (chicken, beef, lentil-pumpkin), casseroles, and especially pot roasts (my favorite since childhood -- oh! the smell of the kitchen when we came in after school!!). Somehow when the weather turns chilly and dreary, I get enthused about preparing meals again.

I find it to be a fun time to cook as people are stuck in the house more so I get everybody in on the cooking. At least on weekends :-).

Tomorrow we will have olive oil brushed eggplant with sliced garlic done in the oven and savoury chicken and sweet potato casserole. We will start off with a creamy soup. Probably tomato as that is my nephew's favourite soup. DS will probably make a fruit pie that is his favourite.

I love cooking with other people. I know it's not everybody's thing but I enjoy it.

Mr Jinx makes his signature dish ... cut up chicken with leeks, sun-dried tomatoes, penne pasta in a chicken broth/half and half/cornstarch based sauce (various seasonings, including minced garlic and red pepper flakes). It is soooooo good!

I do lots of soups, nothing exotic. Cowboy Soup (my own recipe), taco soup, potato leek soup, etc. And everyone wants my stuffed bell peppers, meatloaf, “Meatloaf Shepherd‘s Pie”, homemade baked mac n cheese, various casseroles. Lots of high calorie comfort foods, in other words! :D

I love to cook and especially love to bake! When the cool/cold/wet/snowy weather curtails my outdoor activities I have more time to cook/bake, I crave heavier foods, and I like the heat from the oven. :) Baking in autumn always includes apples for me, of course, and cranberries and pumpkin. I tried a simple new crisp recipe and my Lodi apples were so good that I made/ate 3 of them already. lol! My autumn food cravings always include soups! I love to make all kinds of soups so it's a regular seasonal thing, usually from Sept through March. My top two autumn cravings are always ham & cabbage w/ rye bread and a full sauerbraten dinner (I make sauerbraten w/ noodles and gravy, German potato salad, and red cabbage). Kielbasa & sauerkraut might be third if the mustard is good and beer is cold. lol!

“Meatloaf Shepherd‘s Pie”

Love the sound of that, Jinx!

I.m such a "meat and potatoes" person. For Fall/Winter I start thinking about pot roast. We're having one of my favorite versions tonight...Silver Palate Pot Roast.

Ahhh ... Soup Season! I have bags of tomatoes from the garden for vegetable soup or chili. Switching from Angel Hair spaghetti with fresh cherry tomatoes & olive oil to regular spaghetti with meat sauce. Any excuse I can find to turn on the oven!

Jinx, that would make me happy, for sure! Love meatfoaf...love shepherd's pie! :-)

A certain DH just requested Ina's Chicken Stew With Biscuits for dinner this week. It's a good one if you haven't tried it. This photo's from her website. Tastes as good as it looks.

Oh, wow. That looks amazing and I’ll bet it smells heavenly!

I too love this weather for making hearty meals. I especially like the extras to package up and freeze for future meals.

Love anything root veggie, lots of squash, soup of all kinds, meatloaf. Love the whole house smelling good the whole day. I like spending a Sunday afternoon cooking multiple things for football watching and the rest of the week. I usually make too much so. Freeze some and take some to the neighbor and to my in-laws. The neighbors and in-laws usually have something yummy to for either a weeknight dinner or the freezer.

I'm thinking Julia Child's Beef Bourguignon needs to be on my menu soon. Lots of work but totally worth it in the end.

Fall is almost imperceptible in Central Florida but on the days that feel like fall I think of soups, (especially minestrone, potato) gumbos. pot pies, pot roasts, chili, stews. One of my favorites is cabbage or kale, potatoes, carrots, rutabagas or butternut squash and some kind of smoked meat or smoked sausage, slow cooked in the oven. Chicken pot pie, oh, yeah. Bread baking. Any kind.

Agree, nancyjane. Soup and hearty flavorful meals to take the chill from the cold weather. So far, in the past few weeks I’ve made Multi Bean and Vegetable Soup with Ham (and ham broth base). Ham has all visible fat removed. Then Split Pea Soup with Ham and small dice veggies - onion, carrot, potato. Lean and low sodium.

Today I made my “Pot Roast Soup” — thin broth, low sodium, low saturated fat, lots of flavor, color and mouth feel. Angus chuck, defatted of all visible fat (given to birds or combined with powdered milk for opossum).

I made this in an Instant Pot on pressure cook mode. Potatoes, bit of canola or corn oil or EVOO, and extra carrots added later. A few chopped tomatoes, garlic, onion, celery, carrots, potatoes (skin on), parsley and seasonings (bit of thyme, sage, black pepper, seasoning de Provence.

Ahh.

ed to fix typos

Waaay too many things to mention! A few of my favourites are braised short ribs, a Moroccan lamb stew and "French Canadian Pea Soup". I dream about these all summer long! Anything that can be labelled as comfort food gets my vote.

I will soon be harvesting my Chocolate Habanero chilies to make my smoked Habanero chili sauce. As it turned out, a lot of the seeds I planted were Chocolate Habanero, and so I will have a good crop this year. I will harvest what is already ripe this week-end but I expect to have quite a few more chilies ripen in the next couple of months. Last year I did not have such luck with germination, and this year, I planted both seeds that I bought and seeds from chilies that I harvested, but I don't know which are which. I am afraid that the ones from chilies that I harvested may be hybrids and not have the correct flavor, but I will be able to tell once I taste them.