October Kick-Off Meals

It's October and the weather has finally - FINALLY - shifted into fall mode. It was too rainy this weekend to have a decent outdoor fire (we tried, but it wasn't that successful). It wasn't too rainy, though, for a whole lot of fall food.

Starting with a creamy butternut squash soup, served on Saturday with sauteed apples and grated smoked cheddar, then again on Sunday with chopped chives:

Prettiest soup color ever.

On Saturday, the soup was accompanied by salad and sandwiches made with rotisserie chicken, havarti and my very own approximation of The Cheese Shop's famous house dressing. Everyone who went to William & Mary knows what I'm talking about when I say that house is the most delicious condiment ever. It's recipe is a closely guarded secret, but using suggestions from this blog post, I created a mixture of Duke's mayonnaise, Kosciusko spicy mustard and steak sauce with a Worcestershire base. Next time, I might use Maille mustard instead because I feel like real cheese sauce has more visible mustard seeds.

Even so, it tasted right, and that's what's important. I played with the amounts quite a bit, but I think in the end I probably used 4 parts mayonnaise, 1 part mustard and 1 part steak sauce. The result looks boring in a photo, but believe me when I say it's anything but boring in the mouth:

Add bread, rotisserie chicken and cheese and you will be in heaven.

We finished off dinner with an apple crisp, courtesy of Kyle, and warm spiced cider with Captain Morgan's, thanks to our friends Jen and Mark. The house smelled amazing and everyone was in a fantastic mood because fall is finally here.

Mary and Dixon were in especially high spirits, since they spent the whole night building the LEGO police station Mary and Kyle gave Dixon for his birthday. It's a masterpiece. That took hours.

True love. Especially since Mary did all the heavy lifting on this particular build.

Yesterday I made use some of the leftover chicken to make a chicken pot pie. Recipe to follow - I made this one up myself...and it was good:

Gooey. Comforting. Completely unhealthy.

It's still cold in our house this morning, though I hear it'll be back up in the seventies tomorrow. In the meantime, though, it's warm fall drinks and comfort food for the Pollard clan.