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Boy! All of a sudden it feels like winter! I could have sworn that October was just yesterday, but I realized today that we’re more than half way through November! How did that happen? October is one of my favorite months. The weather is great, the food is great, the trees outside look so pretty. It’s a pretty great month here in Pennsylvania. Here are some of the foods I enjoyed this October.

First of all, you can still get great tomatoes in October and that’s the perfect time for slow roasting them. It’s too hot to slow roast tomatoes in the summer, but in October, you can leave the oven on for 5 or 6 hours and let the tomatoes fill the house with a delicious aroma.

October is also the month when I like to start having soups again. I really enjoyed this Roasted Cauliflower and Leek Soup, which was so easy to make using my Vitamix blender! I just cut up the leeks and cauliflower, tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted them in a 400º F oven until the cauliflower was just starting to turn brown. Then, I put it all into the Vitamix and blended it up with some water. The garnish is a little chili oil and fried leeks!

October is also the month of Canadian Thanksgiving. I love having Thanksgiving in October. It’s just far enough away from the Christmas holidays that it feels a little more relaxing to me than American Thanksgiving. I had some friends down from Canada and we roasted a turkey and had a fantastic meal. We weren’t the only ones who ate well that night, however. My lovely Golden Retriever, Ruby, was eyeing the turkey the entire afternoon. Below is a photo that I posted of her on my Facebook page. What I didn’t tell everyone was that Ruby actually did a little agility performance later on and managed to get an entire turkey leg off the platter that I had diligently prepared! It took three of us to pry it away from her! Rascal!

Finally, late in the month I found myself in a pizza frenzy (it’s still going on)! I sought out thin-crust pizzerias all over town and also made my own. I love making pizza on a stone in my oven, but I also love a wood-fired pizza. Maybe one day, I’ll have a wood-fired pizza oven outside. If only we sold THOSE on QVC.

Check out some more delicious recipes on my newly re-designed recipe page!