What one fall food are you most looking forward to?

One daughter and I finished picking the apples from our three trees on Monday afternoon. It's actually kind of fun to pick apples -- like a game, trying to snag apples high in the branches using a picker tool without knocking them to the ground. We knocked 2 out of the trees, which I chopped up promptly and put in a bag in the freezer for making crisps, pies, cobblers, and spiced apple chunks later this fall or winter. We now have a produce drawer that is completely full of apples for cooking, baking and fresh eating.

While we were harvesting the apples, my daughter asked me what fall food I am most looking forward to. Hmm, that's a hard question to answer. Fall offers so many great flavors. Choosing just one fall food is difficult. There's pumpkin-spice everything, hot apple cider, roasted squash cubes, beef stew, chili con carne, gingerbread cake, pecan pie -- I couldn't decide what I want most.

Then this afternoon (Tuesday), I was taking a short walk with my other daughter and we both noticed the beautiful palette of colors on the trees' leaves in our neighborhood. This is my artist daughter. She and I often notice colors and patterns when we go for walks. The talk of fall foods came up with this daughter as well. Again, the consensus -- so many delicious foods to enjoy in fall. After all of this fall food talk, I decided the one food I am most looking forward to this fall is apple pie.

How about you? What one fall food tops your must-eat list this year?

Not having the right tools can make chores so much harder

I needed to clean the dryer lint chute this morning. Loads seemed to be taking longer to dry. And I know it can be a fire hazard to have a build-up of lint in the chute. We clean the screen with each load, but lint falls down beneath the screen. Speaking as a non-contortionist, that fallen lint can't be easily seen.

Anyway, I need to buy the right tool to make this job easier for me. But for today, the "tools" I had to work with were a wire coat hanger, lots of duct tape, a cardboard pasta box, and the vacuum cleaner. I improvised an extension for the vacuum hose with the pasta box and some of the duct tape. And I made one coat hanger/duct tape attracting tool after another to pick up loose lint and dust that the vacuum attachment couldn't reach. I did get the job done, but it took me about an hour and a half and lots of frustration.

Now on the flip side, having a good tool will make a job go so much more smoothly. After about an hour I grabbed a good flashlight so I could see down the chute and identify the remaining pile of lint/dust that was within my primitive tool reach.

An interesting thing -- we had been thinking the element on our 28 year old dryer was wearing/burning out, as loads were taking longer to dry. After cleaning the chute today, I put a load of sheets into the dryer, went to heat up a bowl of soup for my lunch, took my lunch break (which is only long enough to eat a bowl of soup), and came back to the kitchen to wash my bowl. Was I ever surprised when I couldn't hear the dryer operating! My load of sheets finished drying in about 3/4 of the more recent dry time.

I will be ordering the proper tool this very week. I could have used that hour of work time on a different project. Sometimes being cheap costs more in other areas.

Because a photo of my dryer is not terribly interesting, I also thought I'd show you one of my other projects from today -- a plum coffee cake for my family. I'm told it is delicious (contains milk, so I'm abstaining).