Decorative Gourd Season

Everything you need for autumn. Recipes, music, ghost stories, and much more.

[mrautumnman]

It was a day in late September, as fragrant and shapely as an apple.

John Cheever, "The Country Husband"

[mrautumnman]

Goulash (Ghoulish)

Our first recipe of the season is the first autumn recipe I used this season! Goulash, one of my favorite ways to take advantage of the incredible bounty of these early autumn harvest days.

Goulash, of course, is the name for a Hungarian dish of stewed meat and vegetables flavored with smoked paprika, but as with all stew dishes recipes vary across the different regions in which it appears in Europe, and can look vastly different in the United States. As a rule then, I don't conform to any specific vegetables, and you can if you like but something about looking at the farmers' market stalls makes me wonder why I'd discriminate between veggies. So I throw in whatever looks good, and hope for the best! And I have yet to be disappointed.

Season and brown in olive oil, in a wide-bottomed, high stew pot over medium high heat,

3-4 medium-sized chicken breasts with skin.

Once browned, but not cooked through, remove from oil and transfer to a plate. Meanwhile, coarsely chop:

2-3 large carrots,

1 large onion, and

3 bell peppers of any color (I used red, yellow, and orange)

and sautee them, until they become soft and slightly charred, in the oil. As they finish, add in 

3-4 large cloves of garlic, smashed and skins removed

and let them begin to become fragrant. Next, add

1 or more tablespoons smoked paprika,

1 teaspoon dried marjoram, and 

1/2 teaspoon carraway seeds (these last two are optional and, as with all my recipes, seasoning measurements are unscientific and you're better off going by feel or taste)

and stir to coat. Next, add to the pot and stir in 

thickly-sliced chunks of half of a green cabbage and

chunks of 2-3 large tomatoes, peeled and seeded.

Return the chicken to the pot, and fill with enough water or broth so that about a quarter inch or more of the pot's contents remain uncovered, bring to a boil, and simmer for about a half hour, stirring occasionally. After a half hour, add to the pot

One medium zucchini, coarsely chopped or sliced into semicircles

and let them cook till they have started to soften, about ten minutes more. 

At this point, you can remove the chicken and shred it coarsely (everything should be coarse with a stew: that's part of its charm after all!) before returning it to the stew, or you can leave the breasts as they are and enjoy them as a separate piece of the stew. Up to you.

Also up to you: what you serve it with - because now it is ready! Egg noodles, mashed potatoes, dumplings, whatever your favorite starch is! I got ambitious and made gluten free dumplings from a gf biscuit mix, eggs, milk, and salt and pepper (I cannot remember the proportions and I am the worst!), then rolled them and dropped them into boiling water for about five minutes. They turned out well. 

So, that's one way to do it. Goes great with a nice amber or dark beer (and for those gf-ers out there, I heartily recommend pairing with Two Brothers' Prairie Path. Though be warned, it is "crafted to remove gluten," and not 100% gluten free, but for those, like me, with a high tolerance, it's your best bet), but can be quite elegant with a red wine as well.

[mrautumnman]

AUTUMN POEMS: SESTINA

by Elizabeth Bishop

September rain falls on the house.  In the failing light, the old grandmother  sits in the kitchen with the child  beside the Little Marvel Stove,  reading the jokes from the almanac,  laughing and talking to hide her tears.     She thinks that her equinoctial tears  and the rain that beats on the roof of the house   were both foretold by the almanac,  but only known to a grandmother.  The iron kettle sings on the stove.  She cuts some bread and says to the child,     It's time for tea now; but the child  is watching the teakettle's small hard tears  dance like mad on the hot black stove,  the way the rain must dance on the house.  Tidying up, the old grandmother  hangs up the clever almanac     on its string. Birdlike, the almanac  hovers half open above the child,  hovers above the old grandmother  and her teacup full of dark brown tears.  She shivers and says she thinks the house  feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.     It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.  I know what I know, says the almanac.  With crayons the child draws a rigid house  and a winding pathway. Then the child  puts in a man with buttons like tears  and shows it proudly to the grandmother.     But secretly, while the grandmother  busies herself about the stove,  the little moons fall down like tears  from between the pages of the almanac  into the flower bed the child  has carefully placed in the front of the house.     Time to plant tears, says the almanac.  The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove  and the child draws another inscrutable house. 

[cozyautumnchills]

Fall by drhrbac on Flickr.

[autumn-children]

autumn.

[mrautumnman]

aaaaaannd here we go.

[mrautumnman]

First some music. I've been in a "creepy things" sort of mood lately, so here's a folksong. This one, "Reynardine," has some uncertain origins and meaning, but it seems pretty clear that it had become popular in both Europe and the United States by the early 19th century and may have been (or based on) a much earlier ballad. Whatever its origins, the atmospheric ambiguity of its narrative certainly stands out: the narrator observes as a young woman, walking through the woods, meets the notorious figure Reynardine about whom we are told little (other than that he is sly and bold, and the interesting physical characteristic that "his teeth did brightly shine"). Reynardine flirts, she refuses but then seems to give in, and once she has come to he simply smiles and indicates that she'll find her way to him sooner or later: "I'll be in my green castle, / Inquire for Reynardine." A final verse eerily depicts the girl, as though stripped of her own will, being led almost mindlessly across the mountains by Reynardine towards some uncertain, foreboding fate.  Upsetting, right? Pair that with the repetitive guitar strumming and deep-throated, clarion-clear vocals of Buffy Sainte-Marie (one of the great unsung performers of the days of Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, and notable as one of a very few celebrities of Native American origin even to this day) of this version, and it's three minutes of unsettling ambiguity and great, understated musical power. 

And, if that weren't enough, there's even some more ambiguity at play here. Although it is never explicitly stated, there are many who contend that there is something supernatural about this tale, and that Reynardine is some kind of mythical creature. Keith Reins at Folksongs You Never Sang In School  makes a pretty good case for the most popular interpretation of Reynardine as a were-creature, specifically a were-fox; to summarize, the name Reynardine is similar to that of Reynard, the fox character of French folklore, the descriptions of him as sly and bold with shining teeth are common in literary descriptions of foxes, and Reynardine has a stated interest in "concealment," being hidden: "foxes are too clever to make themselves public," Reins observes.

Other arguments hinge around Reynardine as a wood sprite (like Tam Lin or others who meet maidens in the woods in these sorts of songs), and Sainte-Marie seems to have her own idea, giving the track the subtitle of "A Vampire Legend." Which, absolutely: the girl realizes something is up when he tells her he is hiding himself from "pious men," and the description of the trance he puts her into as she follows him across the mountains has echoes of classic vampire mythology. 

Whatever the answer here, and however it might have been known to singers and listeners of two hundred or more years ago, today it plays as a song keenly invested in its own atmospherics and ambiguity more than it is interested in telling us what's up - and in some ways, that's the scariest thing of all.

[mrautumnman]

We Back

From an equinoctial standpoint, we are just about to transition into the autumnal season, although despite today's warm Chicago forecast, it's been relatively autumnal here for the last two weeks or so. All this means is that I've had some time to dream ahead to the autumn: and so, here we are again.  Stay tuned for the next two or three months for music, recipes, reading, and beautiful landscapes! Fingers crossed that Chicago autumn doesn't turn into Chicago winter quite so quickly as it did last year.

[beatonna]

I figured out your sexy halloween costume for you

[mrautumnman]

This might be acceptable.

[mrautumnman]

HALLOWEEN READS: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Chicago got pounded by some winter weather this past week, which coupled with my new job (!) slowed Mr. Autumn Man down a bit from delivering recipes and solid autumnal recommendations. But it's coming to my attention that Halloween is just around the bend, and the last thing Mr. Autumn Man wants is for you to be totally lost as you try to figure out how to celebrate! He would hate for you to end up drunk at some terrible party in a sexy bodybuilder outfit. However rockin' your bod is, there's so much more. 

In addition to the other things, I'm gonna make an attempt to share a great Halloween story each day. No better place, then, to start than with my personal favorite, the story that haunted my own childhood & shaped this Mr. Autumn Man figure from an early age, and one of the great classics of American Horror (or just American!) literature, Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

The thing about Sleepy Hollow is that it's only about 25% ghost story. That last 25% is so suspenseful and satisfying that there's no questioning why it's found its way into the horror canon, but it does lead to some head-scratchingly peculiar modernizations and retellings capitalizing on the greatness of the mythology and action that Irving's laying down here (Fox's Sleepy Hollow, I'm looking at you). But Irving is doing something greater here: he is first, and always was, a satirist and a cultural commentator, and his story tells us just as much about the undergirded narratives that center a community, be they superstitions or social norms about gender and marriage, as it is about a particularly (particularly!) scary night.

For those who've been too clouded by Fox or Tim Burton to remember, it's like this: Ichabod Crane is a schoolteacher, late from Connecticut, who has arrived a quiet rural hamlet along the Hudson River to run the local schoolhouse, teach signing lessons to the ladies of the town, and perhaps most importantly (to him) find a rich wife. Irving paints Crane in broad, hilarious strokes, depicting him in what was then a common archetype, the citified, sissified Dandy Gentleman. He's well-dressed, sensitive, awkwardly-shaped, calculating, charming with women but hopeless with other men. For their part, the women adore him, but in a way that resembles their concern over a precocious, poorly-fed child. He is more effeminate than masculine, and Irving milks humor - and eventually terror - out of this brainy, physically-slight man's interactions with another broadly-sketched caricature of masculinity, the virile, arrogant, mischievous Brom Bones, for whom Crane becomes a threat to his long-foretold coupling with the strong-willed Katrina Van Tassel, daughter of a prominent landowner. 

Throughout, Irving is pretty clear that Katrina has no real interest in Ichabod Crane beyond his use as a pawn in some larger courtship jealousy game she and Brom Bones are engaging, but the schoolteacher and the brute turn out to be surprisingly well-matched rivals. Crane calculates, using his position as rival to worm his way into Katrina's life, which sets off Brom's single-minded jealousy, and ultimately the only person who wins is Katrina, using her femininity to get everything she wants out of these silly men (I am sure someone could make a pretty compelling argument about the gendered politics of this story, I am trying but it's also not really the point unfortunately).

Ultimately it's a very different kind of masculinity that disrupts and resolves this conflict, and brings Katrina & Brom together once and for all: our favorite, the Headless Horseman, the ghost of a Hessian (German) soldier killed during the Revolutionary War. It's a figure with more power than these men, even the hyper-masculine Brom. He's dangerous, because he's professional fighter, a foreigner (foreigners are never NOT dangerous in most early American literature, though they rarely have as much masculine power as this), and HELLO HE IS A GHOST, or a reanimated corpse, or something like that. Irving cleverly builds this mythology in throughout the story, such that as Ichabod rides home (on a comically ineffective borrowed mule) from the Van Tassell's Halloween celebration through these haunted woods in the autumnal dark, the appearance of the Headless Horseman himself is, in fact, a moment of actual terror. It's the kind of story, set in the kind of physical and historical landscape, where anything can happen. And while Irving never explicitly confirms the explanation he hints at as he abandons the narrative of the wild chase and wraps up the story, it's just as fun to think of a real horseman as it is to think about how Brom finally gained the upper hand in his and Katrina's game. 

Wherever a person comes down on what kind of story this is - satire or horror - it's impossible to read without experiencing a certain joy for the many elements on display. Passages are terrifying, passages are hilarious, some are both, and all are suffused with a wry sense of possibility that the many stories and superstitions that center us can become physically true at any moment. 

(The full text of the story is available here. Also be sure you have watched the Disney animated version, which is the best thing in the world and nails not only the terror-humor tension of the story masterfully but also gets the look of the lower Hudson Valley in autumn like nothing else ever. It is probably the most important thing you will watch this Halloween season, so just do it, go ahead, please.)

[mrautumnman]

CIDER-BRAISED CHICKEN & VEGETABLES WITH SMASHED POTATOES

In my pre-gluten free days, this recipe was made with hearty dark beer to magical effect - but I have to say, replacing the beer with a dry, tart apple cider is somehow an improvement! This is a simple, stew-like meal with lots of opportunities to do it however you like: it's one of those recipes where there's no reason at all for you to do it exactly the way I did, other than the fact that it turned out delicious.

Here is what you do. You begin by assembling a variety of hearty seasonable vegetables. For my purposes, I used

one large yellow onion, chunked,

three large carrots, washed & chunked (don't worry about peeling), and

about a half-pound of brussels sprouts, trimmed & quartered.

In a large skillet with olive oil over medium-high heat, salt & pepper and brown the vegetables until the carrots & sprouts start to develop a nice char and the onions are fragrant & crisp, maybe ten minutes. About halfway through, add in

a few sprigs fresh rosemary, thyme, sage leaves, or any other combo of herbs you fancy.

When browned appropriately, transfer vegetables to a dish and add

a half-pound of mushrooms, washed & quartered (these will cook in the stew later).

Next, lightly dredge

1.5 - 2 lbs chicken thighs (boneless is good; if bone-in, use more than 2lbs) through

a couple tbsp's of flour (rice flour or a gf baking mix is fine too)

and gently brown in the skillet with more oil over medium-high heat, 2-3 minutes per side. Next, return the vegetables to the skillet, mix together, salt & pepper a bit more, and pour in

about 20oz hard cider. I used Angry Orchard's Traditional Dry - typically I prefer to cook with Angry Orchard than drink it, but this is actually a nice one to drink as well which makes it all the richer in the end. I recommend something dry and tart rather than sweet, as that will make for a more complex gravy ultimately.

With the cider in, not quite covering the chicken & vegetables, let the liquid boil and then turn down the heat to a rolling simmer and cover for about 45 minutes. You'll want the carrots soft but not too soft, and the liquid to reduce and thicken just enough to function as a gravy. 

I served this over some simple smashed red potatoes - boiled potatoes stirred up with salt, pepper, and a bit of butter - but it's just as delicious over rice, noodles, or any other starch you could think up. Pair with more cider, a whiskey cocktail, or a red wine, and this is about perfect for the slow march of beautiful crisp days and chilly evenings.

[mrautumnman]

New Pumpkin Spice Channel To Offer Fall-Themed Hardcore Pornography

NEW YORKAccommodating their viewers nonstop demands for seasonal hardcore porn, Spice Networks has rolled out their new Pumpkin Spice Channel, offering 24-hour autumn-themed pornographic films and videos.

[mrautumnman]

I've been known to collect these 1960s/70s-era Signet Classics paperbacks for the awesome art work, and right now I'm displaying a few in celebration of autumn.

[mrautumnman]

AUTUMN BEGINS IN MARTIN'S FERRY, OHIO

by James Arlington Wright In the Shreve High football stadium, I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville, And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood, And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel, Dreaming of heroes.   All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home. Their women cluck like starved pullets, Dying for love. Therefore, Their sons grow suicidally beautiful At the beginning of October, And gallop terribly against each other's bodies. 

[mrautumnman]

Bare ruin'd choirs (snapped from the Green Line el train, approx. 30th & Michigan)

[mrautumnman]

A slight change of pace for today's music: and this one takes a bit of explaining! So go ahead and click play, perhaps you'll enjoy the explanation a bit more as you listen.

In 1955, Alfred Hitchcock made a film called The Trouble With Harry, widely acknowledged as one of the few straight-up comedic films in his catalogue, and perhaps as such not very well-known (though I suspect Hitch himself would have been one of the first to describe himself as a humorist at heart). The film, set & filmed on location in stunning autumnal New England and starring a young, fresh, lovely Shirley MacLaine in her first film role, begins with the discovery of the corpse of a wastrel named Harry and details the efforts of four people, each believing they had an accidental role in his death, to hide the body. Because it's Hitchcock, the chief source of comedy comes from the many re-do's as the four bury and dig up and bury Harry again, until at last they're hiding him in a bathtub as the sheriff noses around MacLaine's house. Morbid objects providing humor, repetition coalescing into suspense: Hitchcock uses the film to do a lot of familiar things in unfamiliar, frequently delightful ways.

Harry also marked the beginning of what was to become a fruitful, iconic collaboration between Hitchcock and composer Bernard Herrmann, who would later go onto compose scores for later classics such as Vertigo and Psycho, films whose music is as evocative and memorable as the images they underscore. Where those scores are dark and complex, however, Harry's is written in a lighter tone as befits the film. It's jaunty, romantic, a little ominous (sometimes a lot) and full of unresolved, just-slightly-off-chords, but ultimately as bright and sardonic a comic piece as the film itself. Herrmann doesn't simply bring to life the burying & unburying, he brings to life the autumnal rambles and the gentle love stories that emerge from the film's sticky situation. Hitchcock himself is said to have thought this was the best score of all of his films.

Some years later, as his compositions began to be considered high art, Herrmann used the film's music to create an orchestral suite in tribute to the aging director, titling the piece "A Portrait of Hitch." Pulling out the score's dominant themes and motifs - the suspenseful, the unresolved, the romantic, the jaunty & humorous - Herrmann may well have captured the many sides of the man and his work.

This is today's pick: "A Portrait of Hitch," here presented in an arrangement for piano written & performed by concert pianist John Ogden. This always makes me think of apple orchards and the ghouls lurking in the woods just beyond them - I hope you encounter something as evocative in your imagination as you listen.

[blastedheath]

Albert Goodwin (English, 1845-1932), Whitby Abbey, Twilight. Pencil and watercolour with scratching out, 9½ x 12 in. (24.6 x 30.5 cm.) 

[mrautumnman]

Whitby Abbey is Count Dracula's first point of contact with England in Bram Stoker's novel. That section, as the count begins to make his presence known, is terrifically creepy and somehow manages to improve on the stellar previous section detailing Jonathan Harker's oddly homoerotic imprisonment in Transylvania. Afterwards the book kinda falls off, which is a real bummer guys.

[mrautumnman]

DRINKS: Infused Whiskey

Okay boozehounds, you're right, the best part of autumn is infused whiskey. Next to a crisp cider it's possibly the best thing you can drink, thus sayeth I, and having said, it is so. Also, it's easy. Observe:

So you need about three things for an infused whiskey. First, whiskey. I'm using a bourbon here, which... well use what you like, especially depending on what you're planning to flavor it with. The real reason for using a bourbon, and THIS bourbon, is that it's a cheap one. The kind you use doesn't really matter because in the end it's the infused taste you want out of it, and using a good whiskey might actually just ruin some good whiskey. This is how you make mediocre whiskey better. (That said, do what you feel! No need to be constrained by my miserly grad student/non-profiteer/educator budget.)

Next, figure out what you're infusing. You want something with an autumnal flavor palate, something to match the dark warmth of your whiskey. I mostly use herbs, and the real woodsy ones, for autumn infusions - rosemary here, graciously contributed by the potted rosemary bush on my windowsill. Thyme is also perfect, and sage is a miracle - just be sure you're using fresh - you'll need a couple sprigs, depending on how much you're infusing. Fruits work as well - I have done pear successfully in the past though it was best when infused alongside sage or mixed in a simple cocktail with a herbed simple syrup (recipe to come), and I suspect that apple would turn out well too. If you want to go spiced, try some whole cloves or cinnamon sticks, and there's ALWAYS bacon. But if you want my opinion, it's the woodsy herbs that are the best, and the most worth your time.

Finally, you need a jar or container of some kind - I'm using a mason jar, but all you need is something that can be covered. And from here, it's simple. Combine everything:

And then close up the jar, and store in an out-of-the-sunlight spot (your liquor cabinet, perhaps?). Depending on what you're infusing, you'll want to let it sit a few days. The herbs will probably need at least 2 and up to 4, while fruits may take shorter or longer - just be sure to check in once a day or so. Once it's finished, either remove the infusers by hand or spoon, or you can run it through a coffee filter or some cheesecloth to strain it in the case of something like cloves or thyme.

And so, there you have it. You can drink this stuff neat (highly recommended!) or on rocks (if that's more your speed!) or in an old fashioned with some of your infuser as garnish (or don't & save that for the simple syrup recipes to come). Either way it'll be like you're drinking down autumn, and it'll be delicious.

[mrautumnman]

Today's song, Neko Case's easy, melancholic "Magpie to the Morning" from her Middle Cyclone album. Though the lyrics peg this as a song for a slightly earlier moment in the season (or at least, appropriate to last week's sudden unseasonable warmth) - "don't let this fading summer pass you by," warns the titular magpie - this song, and whole album, is indelibly rooted in my mind as a staple of early autumn. This is thanks, in part, to the fact that my first listens occurred once upon a September & an early October, but Neko's whole tone here and throughout the album is one of autumnal sorrow, regret, and self-reflection. Here and throughout, Case masterfully suggests these things with allusions to the natural world: here, a magpie warns you that summer is ending, a plagiarist mockingbird sings away your fear of the dark, a vulture laughs "because you thought that you could outrun sorrow." As always, she's as much a poet as she is a singer, and here's she's damn good at being both.

(SPECIAL BONUS NEKO AUTUMN SONG: "Magpie" isn't the the only seminal autumnal song for me on Middle Cyclone, and although it's the one that most speaks to this time of year & my own personal feelings about that, equally brilliant and appropriate is her later track "Prison Girls," which is probably at or hovering near #1 on my personal favorites list. It's a very different kind of autumn song, one that's in touch with the more supernatural aspects of the season. It's a surreal piece ("Who am I tonight? My hotel room won't remember me"), crowded with figures who might be ghosts, memories, or real people ("In darkness enter prison girls, / pushing mops and kicking pails"), ghostly moans, and contains one of the most chilling, brilliant, and evocative lyrics in her entire catalog: "I love your long shadows and your gunpowder eyes." And just listen to the key change midway through, as the music goes firmly into horror-story haunted-house territory. Freaky. The video here is a live performance, assisted by Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve on Spectacle in 2010 - just watch how freaking awesome this woman is, how she doesn't even play her guitar just sits and sings, how much of a terrifying mess her amazing mane of hair is - it's entirely possible that Neko Case is a witch, people. It would make sense.)