One of the best parts of the changing seasons is seasonal food choices. It is easy to pack on a few extra pounds in the winter that can be hidden under Knit sweaters and bulky parkas. Foods are dark, rich, spicy, buttery, and sweet this time of year as we embrace heavier servings during mealtime.

Winter and fall foods are warm and comforting. They make shorter days and long, cold nights feel more manageable.

Seasonal vegetables, like squash, pumpkin and yams, are very appealing, while baked pumpkin seeds and roasted walnuts taste good sprinkled on almost anything.

Pumpkin dishes are by far my favorite. Pumpkin soup, pumpkin pie, pumpkin rolls, pumpkin muffin and pumpkin spice coffee are all so delicious.

I’ve been trying recently to recreate Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte at home, with little success. Pumpkin flavored coffee was a complete bust, because the brew was too light.

Adding pureed pumpkin was just messy. Even after boiling milk and pumpkin together I found that the puree did not blend well into the coffee, and I can never manage just the right amount of pumpkin flavored coffee syrup to make it taste very good.

Although it tastes nothing like the famous coffee shop’s pumpkin spice latte, the tastiest I’ve made at home is also the simplest. Coffee-Mate releases a pumpkin flavored liquid creamer this time of year that is delicious.

Some of my most vivid childhood memories are rooted in family holidays and the spread of delicious foods we feasted upon. My mother cooked a huge dinner for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Turkey, stuffing, sweet potato casseroles with marshmallow toppings, butter melting atop corn on the cob, shuck beans and cranberry sauce.

Desserts were abundant, as well. My mother always makes a smorgasbord of deserts, including chocolate cakes, pudding pies, pumpkin pies, fruit pies, cookies and brownies for holiday feasts. The array of foods for a winter feast is as colorful as the leaves blowing around outside.

Often on Thanksgiving my Great Aunt Vernie, my paternal grandmother’s sister, Mamaw, my mother‘s mother, and Papaw, my father’s father, would dine with us. It was an interesting mixture of people from different sides of the family. They each shared memories and made observations about how my sister and I reminded them of far-flung relatives we may have never otherwise heard of.

Then, a month later, my mother’s family held an annual Christmas Eve party, which often occurred at our house. My mother trimmed every little detail of the living room, even going so far as to wrap the exterior of every framed portrait on the wall with shimmering red, green and gold garland.

Extended family gathered to our house and a host of first and second cousins played freeze tag outside until the sun dropped out of sight behind the mountains. Then everyone would huddle into our bedroom and play games and watch television as the adults mingled in the living room.

The spread was always amazing with my aunts bringing a covered dish to add to the array of food my mother had been preparing all day. My parents’ small house was full of the smell of sweet foods and joviality.



Now the flavors of winter bring me back to those simpler childhood days of merriment, and I savor every bite of winter comfort food.