With pumpkin spice season upon us, we did the usual thing middle-aged, once upwardly mobile professionals with a young child do and headed out of the city to pick apples in the fields of the Hudson Valley. I grew up a few miles from the Warwick, New York, the center of autumnal activities. There are plenty of u-pick apple orchards to choose from here. In recent years, traffic overwhelms the narrow roads on weekends as urban dwellers flock to nature.

Subscribing to the Rancho Gordo bean club can sometimes feel oppressive when you are sitting on a stockpile of beans and know another box just around the corner. I knew we needed to use up some of the beans we’d been accumulating so I pulled out the box of white beans to assess what we had. Sure enough, a full bag of cassoulet beans ready and waiting.

I wanted to save the rabbit meat for easter dinner. Nobody else was really into that idea.

What is it about putting food on a stick that always makes it taste better?

This is not an empanada, the sign warns.