Do you have one seasoning that you use in almost every dish you make? My favorite seasoning during the holiday season is my blend of Mulling spices. This seasoning contains whole allspice, cloves, cinnamon chunks, and dried orange peel. I make a mulled wine for cozy adult evenings, a much loved mulled cider that I serve at all family gatherings. My favorite use of my mulling spices is an incredible brine that I use on pork, chicken and most importantly my holiday turkeys. Brining the turkey for 24 hours makes for an extremely juicy and flavorful turkey.

Fall is a busy time. We get to deal with all those veggies and fruit you grew or was given to you. I also have black walnut treas in abundance around my property and this year I actually want to get as many nut meats as I possibly can. So I currently have a long list of chores to get done before everything rots. The first was to process the incredibly abundant Concord grapes and I think I ended up with about 3 gallons of grape jelly. Between that and the several gallons of strawberry preserves I made this spring and my kids should be set with PB&J for the next year.

Life is trying really hard to keep me from posting but today I am bound and determined that I am going to get it done. Fall officially arrived and this weekend I harvested my grapes and got almost 2 bushel of huge concord grapes. This was a wonderful year for grapes and I have never had my vines turn out such large and sweet grapes. My pumpkins and winter squash are still going very strong but they are forecasting a frost for tonight and if it is cold enough to kill my plants I will have to harvest the bumper crop of squash hiding among the 40x40 square that is currently just a sea of plants.