Fall Drinks (Unlocked)

and a blue-green coat

Originally published for paying subscribers October 16, 2022. Unlocked now!

It’s a blue-green coat with brass buttons down the front, and we searched for it all over town. We went from consignment store to consignment store, feeling fabric, comparing colors, and questioning if garments could be tailored to match the vision.

We first saw the coat in an episode of “Gilmore Girls.” Rory wore it with denim-blue cords and fluffy robin’s-egg-blue gloves. She wore it while she walked arm-in-arm with Lorelai through the town square.

We watched this episode in the fall, when crisp breezes were just starting to bookend steamy, southern days. We watched it while we decorated. We’ve never been an all-out-holiday-decorating sort of family. But we’ve always had a few things that make the seasons feel right. Like a twiggy wreath on the door in October. A few colorful gourds arranged artfully on a table. And, my personal favorite, the Fall Scene.

On a long, antique buffet lined with soft green velvet, I set the small ceramic buildings, these meticulously detailed miniatures with raised ceramic bumps painted red, yellow, and orange to mark leaves on thatched roofs. I place the tiny horse sculptures next to the little brick barn, set the bales of hay that look like mini-wheats next to the horses’ mouths because they’re hungry. I set the woman sweeping leaves off her stoop in front of the building whose sign reads “Saddle Shop” and pile a handful of orange fabric leaves next to her broom because she’s been sweeping for a while. I set the Church building, with its dangling bell hanging out of its bell tower, in between the Saddle Shop and the Bakery because that’s how I’ve done it since I was six.

On the screen, sixteen-year-old Rory Gilmore walked through the square in her light-blue coat. She was exactly my age. She was growing up. I was growing up.

That color is incredible, my mom and I said to each other, looking at the coat. We’ve got to find it, we said to each other, adding another of those delightfully impossible tasks to our day-off list.

We liked tasks like this. Searching through racks of fine vintage garments in stores that smelled like cinnamon. Walking down the street, past the bakery and past the bookstore, to the saddle shop to feel the leather and keep track of how many luxury Stübben saddles that we would never, ever buy they had in stock. Retracing our steps to walk through the worn lintel into the bookstore to pass over the same creaky wooden floor boards we’d passed over a thousand times before and see if they’d gotten the one book we’d been looking for that we could’ve very easily ordered weeks ago. Or we could’ve called and asked the kind old man who owned the bookstore if he’d gotten it in yet.

But that wouldn’t have been as fun.

I was in high school. I caught myself holding on more tightly to things like that Fall Scene. Things I’d held hundreds of times, that I associated with slower speeds and home. As I carefully placed the horses by the barn and looked through the brick gate in front of the tiny town to make sure it was right in front of the fountain, because that was what I did every year, I watched Rory walk around her tiny town in that blue-green coat. I watched her pick up and hold her stuffed animals, saw them still sitting in pride of place on her bookshelves as her time at home came to a close.

The pace of life was speeding up rapidly, and we were desperately trying to slow it down. Rory was taking her SATs, and so was I. She was sorting through college brochures, and so was I. The time when I would have to leave home was approaching too quickly. We needed to keep track of my credits as I neared graduation. We needed to schedule campus tours and document my volunteer work on my college resume.

But in the meantime, we needed to find that coat.

We could’ve looked online for that blue-green coat. We never did find it in the stores. But how many lovely, slow Saturday mornings did we find between the clothing racks as we searched for it?

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As I watch Lorelai and Rory walking around town with their mugs of coffee, I find myself craving pumpkin spice lattes. Pumpkin spice lattes are always deeply disappointing to me. There have been a very few in my life that have actually found the mark, and every other pales in comparison. This pumpkin spice drink mix is the result of a lot of fine-tuning. I hope you enjoy it along with these other classic warming drinks!

“Perfectly Pumpkin” Paste

You will need:

1 can pumpkin

1/2 cup honey

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp allspice

1/2 tsp vanilla

What to do:

Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Microwave for 1 minute. Stir again. Store in the refrigerator for up to 10 days. Add 2 heaping spoonfuls to your favorite cup of coffee along with an optional Tablespoon or two of milk and enjoy!

Magic Sleeping Draught

You will need:

1 cup milk

1 Tbsp honey

1 tsp cinnamon

What to do:

Heat the milk in a small saucepan (or a mug in the microwave) just until a few light bubbles start to form. Pour into a mug, and stir in honey and cinnamon. Fall asleep immediately.

That’s it for this week! Come back later this month for more story-recipes, and in the meantime, you can access the entire backlog of “Food & Fodder” here!

I realize there’s quite a few new folks here, so I want to say hi! and direct you to where you can find some of my other work. My book, “No Regrets,” which follows the children of two immigrant families in Chicago from the 1930s to the early 2000s, was published through an Independent Publishing House in NYC last year. It’s available through Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Bookshop, and so many other places! If you’re like me and prefer audiobooks, you can find the audiobook version of “No Regrets” on Audible.

Looking for something spooky to read this October? Check out these three stories of mine!

Thanks, as always, for reading,

Juliana

PS —

Have you guys heard about Bookshop?

If you love supporting smaller, brick-and-mortar bookstores but love shopping from the comfort of your home (or, like me, you live in a teeny tiny town with a lovely but sometimes limited book selection) you’ve got to check them out. 10% of their sales go to local book stores, and 10% goes to their affiliates (like me!) every time you buy a book. They’ve got all the selection of a big online bookstore, and they’ve donated $20 million and counting to bookstores!

I now have a little “storefront” on their site, so if you’re wanting to see or buy some of my favorite books, head on over to my Bookshop site! Right now, my Bookshop lists include my Cookbook Collection, My Work, My Top 10 (always changing), and My New Foray into Scary Books.

You can find a favorite cookbook of mine, “Half-Baked Harvest: Super Simple,” there!

If you’re looking for newsletter recommendations catered to your interests, I highly recommend The Sample. They send you a curated sample of newsletters once a day that you can subscribe to in one click! Plus, clicking on this link can help more people find “Food & Fodder!”