I love our kitchen during the cooler seasons.  In the autumn the sun shines slanted rays into the South facing window in the afternoon, casting a glow over everything. It gives our kitchen a magical feel.  I love to linger in there, either to simply hang out or to cook something wonderful..There are many times I've had and many times I look forward to spending a long time creating the season's comfort foods.  This is the ideal way we like to enjoy our kitchen, but often it is not the reality!

Lately the Palouse has started to feel like fall. It is not completely obvious yet, but I have been noticing that the mornings are getting darker, the nights are becoming cooler (I finally broke down and turned my heater on the other night), I now have a stockpile of preserved summer foods to take me through the winter, and last weekend I spent my Saturday perusing our county fair and admiring all the preserved and prepared goods made by other residents of our industrious little community. Most years about this time, I naturally gravitate towards warmer and heartier soups and stews that feature those few final highlights of the farmers market. This year however, summer came so late, I found I actually needed a little nudge to transition my food fare towards the new fall season. The nudge came when Brennus, the co-op Meat Department Manager, suggested I feature a boneless chuck pot roast from Country Natural Beef in my newsletter article. Since my thoughts were so far from fall, this suggestion struck me as an unusually good idea.

What could be better than a sweet or savory pie made with summer's bounty? We don't bake a lot in the summer, but we make an exception for pies! This is a challenge for a gluten-free vegan such as myself since pie crusts are made from flour and butter.

I am glad I found Earth Balance vegan sticks to help me. I was reticent to try them because I had assumed they were hydrogenated fat the way most margarine are. Earth Balance is made has no trans fat or hydrogenated fat. It is made from a blend of soybean palm canola and olive oils. On the front of the package it says "great buttery taste."

Many of you may have noticed that in the last month or so some things have been happening in the southeastern corner of the co-op. The cut and wrap cheese has been moved to a new location by the salad bar, and the meat department has expanded into the cooler where the cut and wrap cheese used to be. As a result of this expansion, the meat department has added quite a few new products, which of course made it very difficult for me to decide which one I should sample.