Pumpkins? Already?

The apples were eclipsing the peaches and tomatoes at the farmers market this weekend, but there were still peaches - even apricots - so it was hard to be too unhappy about the changing seasons. Then I spotted the first of the pumpkins.

"Go away!" I wanted to shout at them.  I'm not ready to wake up in the dark at 6 a.m., not prepared for crisp cool evenings.  I want summer to linger a little longer.  But that crowd of plump orange pumpkins made it difficult to ignore that fall is coming.  Too soon. 

Then, as if to underline reality, I opened a vintage issue of Gourmet from 1977, and the first photograph to leap out at me was this pumpkin souffle.  There is some consolation: it is, at least, cold. 

Recipes may be little time machines, but it's the ads in these old issues that prove how much our food (and wine) have changed.  I'd almost forgotten there was a time when I thought of Chianti as a thin, harsh wine that came in rustic straw-covered bottles.

 

And finally.... I thought home mushroom farms were a new-fangled notion.  But I was wrong.