There is a particular stillness that settles in on the first day of fall. Not a big shift, not yet, just a quiet acknowledgment that something has turned. The light comes in lower now, more amber than gold, and it lands differently on everything it touches.
As I sit here in Vermont on a chilly, rainy day, the kind that makes you want to stay in your socks and not commit to anything productive, I have a pot of black bean soup bubbling in the slow cooker. It felt like the only right way to welcome the season. Something warm working away in the background while the rain does its thing outside.
If you have been here a while, you might remember the black bean soup I shared a few months back, inspired by Jacques Pépin. I am making it again today, but have adapted it for the slow cooker. I boiled the dry beans in a pot of water for about 10 minutes first, then rinsed and drained them before adding everything to the slow cooker. It gets you nearly all the way to that same rich, tender pot without needing to babysit it on the stove all day. You can find the full recipe here: Jacques Pépin’s Black Bean Soup.
It is soup season now, officially and unofficially. The kind of season where the best plans are the ones that require the least of you. A pot on low. A good book nearby. Something simmering that will make the whole house smell like it in an hour.
Setting the Table for the Season
A few weeks ago I mentioned that our Juniper brown and Talelayo brown prints kept finding their way into our fall daydreams, and now that autumn is officially here, I wanted to share how simple it can be to bring that feeling to your own table, wherever you are.
There is something about brown as a base color that people underestimate. It reads as neutral, but it is not flat. It has warmth built into it already, so the table does half the work for you before you add a single thing. Lay a Talelayo brown cloth down and let it be the quiet part of the story. Then bring in whatever fall is offering near you right now. Small apples with a blush still on one side. A few sprigs of goldenrod or dried grasses from a walk. Candles in a dull brass or warm amber tone.
The napkins in Juniper brown go beautifully at each place, folded simply, no tricks needed. Some tables want a flourish. This one wants restraint. A wooden bowl of walnuts still in their shells makes a lovely centerpiece, mostly for the sound they make when you move them, and partly because they look like they belong there in a way nothing store bought quite does.
If you are setting your own table this weekend, my advice is to resist the urge to overdo it. Fall gives you so much good color and texture for free. A few apples. Some dried grasses if you have access to them. Candles in a warm, low tone. A pot of something good on the stove or in the slow cooker. Let the rest take care of itself.
Wherever You Are This Season
Maybe your life feels settled right now, and fall gets to be purely about the joy of it. The candles, the soup, the slower mornings. Or maybe, like so many of us at different points, you are in the middle of something. A move, a transition, a season that has not quite resolved itself yet. Life rarely waits for the tidy moment to hand you a new chapter.
Either way, I hope you still find a reason to set the table this week. Not because everything is finished or figured out, but because a good meal and a beautifully set place have a way of making even an in between season feel a little more like home.
If the Juniper or Talelayo prints are calling to you, you can find them at augusttable.com. Wherever you are this week, I hope your first days of fall feel just as good as they smell.
With warmth,
Carrie