Last weekend, we drove out west for a long-awaited camping weekend with our dear friends from college. We met up in Monterey, Mass., at a state forest called Beartown, and there we set up camp on a lake and enjoyed a weekend of sleeping under the stars, building campfires and other such camp-like activities.

Andreas and I went camping this summer by ourselves (bought the tent, the air mattress, the cooler, the fire grate, etc.) and I have to say I like fall camping much better. For one thing, no bugs. For another, sweatshirts and cozying up and actually appreciating the fire’s warmth. But we did severely underestimate how low the temp would drop at night and how grossly inadequate sheets and a single old blanket would be.

On Saturday we had a big breakfast at a diner in Great Barrington and then continued on to Goshen for some climbing near D.A.R. State Forest. One of the couples in our group climb quite often and had all the gear. They were nice enough to guide us through the whole process, set up the line, loan us their gear, and talk us out of a panic when we reached a spot and began shrieking “BUT THERE’S NOTHING! NOTHING TO HOLD ON TO!”

After climbing, Andreas and I headed over to Pittsfield to visit Dick’s Sporting Goods and bought ourselves some good old fashioned sleeping bags! I couldn’t believe it when I woke up and asked everyone if they were just as frozen as we were the night before and they weren’t.  The secret? Sleeping bags! DUH. For some reason I didn’t realize that you were supposed to use sleeping bags with the air mattress. I thought sleeping bags were for the ground. Rookie mistake. Anyways, we picked up some super discounted mummy sleeping bags from Marmot and they were a DREAM to sleep in!

Now Ava, I’m not so sure how much she loves camping. I know she loves the fact that we let her sleep with us when we’re camping (well, she pretty much insisted on it and since she so rarely insists on anything, we relented). I know she loves any kind of hiking or walking in the woods, especially when she can be off leash. I’m not sure how much she loves campfire time. There’s no real place for her to curl up when the ground is all cold and wet and muddy. We try to pull her up on our laps but she’s a bit too big for that to be really comfortable for anyone involved. Plus I think she’s just kind of scared of the fire. She was shaking the whole time we were sitting around it.

But when we got home, she curled right up on the blanket we had brought with us and refused to budge. So who knows!

We had such a great time hanging with everyone at this beautiful spot. And now that we have everything we need to be comfortable, we want to go camping one more time before it gets too cold.

I woke up this morning to just the most beautiful day I could imagine. My favorite kind of day. Cool and clear and sunny. Slight breeze, bird song. The calm after the storm. What we would have called at camp, a zip-pi-dee-doo-dah day. These are the kinds of early fall days that made me fall in love with Boston (and yes, late August usually feels like early fall up here). That first time I feel the chill of fall in the air brings me right back to roaming Commonwealth Avenue, sitting in coffee shops with friends, rushing off to class, books in hand.

I’m fairly certain it was a day like this when we first pulled up to west campus in my parents’ van, packed to the gills with “dorm stuff,” got one of those ancient, big blue move-in carts, the kind with the wheels that go every which way but straight, and settled in to my first dorm room overlooking Boston University’s Nickerson Field. The walls were dingy beige cement block, the gray mattress long since worn flat, and I couldn’t have been more happy to be there.

It really felt like the beginning of something. Everything was new to me. The city, the school, the freedom to go wherever, do whatever. One of the girls who lived on my floor used to get on the T (back when it only used to cost a dollar! And going outbound above ground was free!), pick a stop to get off at, and just walk around and explore. This was in the first week of school. I marveled at her independence but in time I’d come to know the city too. I’d learn how to get myself practically anywhere, becoming much more familiar with Boston than my hometown.

College was a revelation. You could reinvent yourself, become a better version of yourself, even if for those first few years you acted more like the person you thought you should be, while you discovered the person you really are. It’s days like this that allow me, if only momentarily, to experience again that current of electric excitement I felt as college began, and then felt each September returning back to school, the promise of the unknown ahead of me, and now every fall, every time the air turns. It no longer means trekking to the bookstore, getting that first glimpse at my workload for the semester, or reuniting with friends on the street. Now we mark fall in other ways, the annual trip to the apple orchard and bag of cider donuts, the first beef stew and chai latte of the season.

There’s a lot I miss about college and a lot I don’t miss too. I don’t miss living in small, cramped spaces, don’t miss the constant shadow of schoolwork haunting my nights and weekends, but a few times a year, the breeze and the sun and the trees conspire to make me ache for what seems like a much simpler time. And momentarily, I go back.

I made this cake on Tuesday night. This majestic and moist honey cake I happened across on my all-time favorite food blog, Smitten Kitchen, when I was actually searching for a recipe for applesauce cake.

I don’t bake all that often and never on weeknights. I felt a bit like a mad scientist in the kitchen there (coffee and whiskey AND orange juice? What the cake?), but it filled our apartment with the most glorious, fall-ish smells (and you know how I feel about fall).

But you see the problem is, this recipe makes a lot of cake. As in, one whole 9×13 pan and that thing is thick. And even though I substituted 3/4 olive oil and 1/4 melted butter for vegetable oil (no vegetable oil in the house, evidence that I don’t bake enough) and used pumpkin pie spice instead of the allspice and the cloves, and totally winged it in terms of bake time, this cake came out perfect. I mean, it had plenty of opportunities to go wrong and it simply refused.

And that’s the problem. This cake is freaking perfect and there’s so much of it. I know, boo hoo, right? But even with one consistently hungry husband on hand, I’m finding myself eating a lot of it. Like approximately, err, two slices per day. For three days. And it’s only half gone. And I’m really trying not to be one of those girls who gets married and just lets herself go but I’d pretty much take a bullet for this cake it’s so moist and velvety and cinammony and oh my god, you need to go make some right now.

Or come have some of mine, please. Cake? Anyone? No? Cake?

The reason for this wondrous occurrence is that the ever-lovely Ms. Pamela Seiple tagged me in a photo meme. Since we all know what a fan I am of memes (and I think this one works well because it’s so simple), I decided to join in.

This one, called the “sixth photo meme,” has participants go to the sixth page of their Flickr photostream, find the sixth picture, and post it to their blog. Maybe make a little reflection.

For me, this is a photo of the sugar pumpkins we bought back in October for the social media risotto I made.

Not the most exciting photo in the meme to be sure, and not my best work either. Plus I must have been in a particularly devilish mood when I titled this photo on Flickr, “Like Lambs to the Slaughter.” Still, for me, it’s apt. If you’re reading this right now, you probably know that I love fall.

Like, a lot. Really really.

And I’m minorly devastated that it’s almost over. So, it’s only appropriate that my submission to this meme would be a picture of some pumpkins and another little tribute to to the season I love most.

Can we have a moment of silence for fall?

…

Thank you.

Now, on to the fun part – tagging others to keep the meme going (yes, it’s so high school chain letter and you LOVE IT). For this meme I’m going to go ahead and tag Matt Knell, Gradon Tripp, Mike Davis, Meg Fowler, Alana Taylor and Whitney Hess.

Go meme, go!

And so, in the spirit of paying homage to my most favorite season of all, I give you some of my best pictures from this fall.

White Mountains, NH

Wagon wheel. Berlin, MA.

Apple picking in Stow, MA.

Park. Clinton, MA.

Steeple. Clinton, MA.

Sun peeping through trees. Brookline, MA.

Charles River. Cambridge, MA.

Homemade apple pie.

Fall shadows. Brookline, MA.

Griggs Park. Brookline, MA.

Larz Anderson Auto Museum Park. Brookline, MA.

Larz Anderson Auto Museum Park. Brookline, MA.

So I sent a message on Twitter to my new friend Bryan Maleszyk (he is a serious foodie and turned me on to Russo’s in the first place).

My plea to him: “I need recipe ideas for tomorrow’s dinner – using Russo’s best!”

He replied immediately and suggested a pumpkin and sage risotto with crumbled amaretti (Italian cookies). Cue angelic choir – I was heaven. But it got even better. Bryan was kind enough to “live tweet” the entire recipe for me (including a side pear and gorgonzola salad) all of which, even more amazingly, was entirely off the top of his head.

The tweeted recipe went as follows:

Let me tell you: the meal came out absolutely delicious. The risotto had a rich creaminess that was balanced by the little kick from the cayenne pepper. I did have way more pumpkin than was necessary but that’s okay – I’m going to freeze it and make a fresh pumpkin pie soon.

Some photos to make you jealous:

The final verdict:

Yet another example of how social media makes my life better.

Many thanks to Bryan!

But considering the fact that it’s after Labor Day, and considering that I live in Boston and the morning air is already crisp around the edges, and especially considering that fall is hands down my favorite season, I’ve decided to go all Meg Fowler Friday Love List today and give you a whole slew of reasons to get excited about fall.

So without further ado…

Fall love list or Things I associate with Fall and am excited for:
apple picking
scarves as accessories
mountains of foliage
chai tea
crunchy leaves under my shoe
Pumpkin Delights
sleeping with the windows open
boots
nutmeg
jeans and a sweatshirt as an acceptable outfit
hearty soups and stews
Halloween
Thanksgiving
tights
hot beverages in the cool air
butternut squash on restaurant menus
cool bike rides
leaf piles
the smell of burning firewood in the air
hoodies
apple pie
pumpkin pie
months that end with -ber
going home

What do you love about fall?