September came and went and not even one What I Wore post! I got some really cute ModCloth dresses for my birthday and wore them all over Virginia when we were on vacation, but I guess I just wasn't really in a blogging mood and didn't take any photos. I might be able to work a few in before winter comes, but for now it feels like autumn here and the sundresses have mostly made their way to the back of my closet.

It was rainy and cold last Sunday, and putting on jeans and boots was awesome. Until now, I don't think I've ever had a poncho. I also don't think I've ever loved a sweater as much as this new poncho. Here's to cozy fall weekends.

Poncho (in pink): c/o Jigsaw London | Hat: UGG Australia

Purple Tee: J.Crew | Black Tank: Express

Jeans: Miss Me | Watch: Fossil

Bracelets: Spiked bracelet (similar), Express bangle, Yurman knockoff

Boots (similar): J.Crew | Bag: Coach
Nail Color: OPI Yoga-ta Get This Blue

 

  

  

It's pumpkin time, you know? And while I can't say I'm a member of the Pumpkin Spice Latte craze, last year I made a Paleo version that was pretty damn tasty. The other day, I bought a little sugar pumpkin who thought he was mousse but had an existential crisis in the mixer and soon decided that he was actually cobbler. And who am I to judge? Pumpkin cobbler, it is.

Ingredients:

One sugar pumpkin

1/2 cup canned coconut cream

One to two tablespoons honey

One tablespoon maple syrup, optional

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ginger 

One egg

For the crumb topping:

2/3 cup almond flour

1/3 cup arrowroot powder

1/3 cup butter, cubed

Two tablespoons honey

For the cream topping:

1/2 cup canned coconut cream (cold--pop it in the freezer for a bit first)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon honey

1. Preheat oven to 350. Cut pumpkin into two or three pieces and remove the seeds.

(Set the seeds aside and roast them or I'll slap you.)

2. Add some butter to each section. Bake for 45 minutes or until the squash is tender (poke it with a fork).

3. Remove from oven and let cool before spooning out the pumpkin flesh into a mixing bowl.

4. Mix in egg, coconut cream, honey, maple syrup, cinnamon, and ginger.

5. In a separate bowl, mix together the almond flour, arrowroot powder, butter, and honey.

6. Pour pumpkin mix into a well-buttered baking dish and top with crumb topping. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

7. While the cobbler cools a bit, whip the ingredients for the cream topping together.

8. To serve, put a piece of cobbler on a dish and spoon the topping over it.
Sprinkle with cinnamon or unsweetened cocoa powder.

  

It's that time of year when I wake up with a shiver, giddy over the chill in the air and that smell of autumn that may or may not exist outside of my own imagination. I put on a scarf or a sweater, make coffee, and proceed to ignore the afternoon as it warms up, because it's still summer, but I'm ready for it to be fall.

I was running this morning and it was a damp and comfortable 60 degrees, but the sun was shining on parts of the sidewalk and I thought about how amazing it is that I could be running in Virginia (in Farmville or Roanoke or Charlottesville), or I could be running in Minneapolis, and although I am not the same person I was seven years ago, I can feel almost exactly the same at this moment that I did at that moment.

I made a turn on a new loop and was surprised by the smell of coffee coming from a shop on the corner. The coffee shop is right by our apartment building, but looking at it from a different angle; coming at it from a different street, startled me. It looked different, and I felt disoriented. I'm still getting to know my new neighborhood.

It reminded me of the time my old roommate Caroline, our friend Maggie, and I sat on the steps of a building on Longwood's campus before classes started our freshman year. I remember the cold roughness of the cement steps and the sort of horizontal platforms that jutted out on either side, and how later, one afternoon, I walked past that building on my way to something like I always did and realized that it was the same place we had sat that late summers night, weeks before.

I have moved almost every year since starting college in 2006, and each time, it has been at the end of a summer. August awakens a nostalgia in me, and I want to start over in some way every time autumn nears.

The promise of unfamiliar corners becoming ordinary fixtures is something I like. Settling in feels good.