I’m never quite sure when Autumn properly begins, but I can confidently state that somewhere between the first day of September and the first day of October, the leaves begin to turn.  And so, too, do our tastes: hearty dishes, stews and soups start making an appearance in the kitchen. Whenever we have a spare fall weekend and a glut of late-summer produce, we’ll try to can it for storage over the winter. This year, the bulk of our large tomatoes never got much of a chance to ripen before the end of warm weather, so we made jars of green tomato chutney. 

But we don’t give up on the garden. Garlic goes into the soil around mid-October. For any vegetables still developing, we become mindful of frosts: sweet potatoes need to be dug out before that happens, but parsnips, among other things, sweeten after freezes.

Autumn in the US culminates in the big feast of Thanksgiving, essentially a harvest festival for the dinner table. Here are our recommendations for this Autumn and Thanksgiving: