I love summer…the food, cookouts, ice cream, warm weather, beach trips, pool days…all of it. Given the choice, I will always choose sweating over freezing. I swear, I am like a reptile and I need to soak warm sun into my body.

So it’s a little surprising that I’ve kind of been getting into the idea of fall in the last week. I bought pumpkin beer, enjoyed a short streak where temps were in the low 60s at night, have been baking and cooking with apples and two cans of pumpkin made it home with me from the grocery today. I blame it on the start of football season!

What better way to welcome fall and football season than with a pumpkin beer? I had my first one of the season last night and it was so tasty. I feel like all I’ve been hearing about the past couple of days is the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte. I’ll take a pumpkin beer over the latte any day! 😉

My friend Sarah challenged me to come up with a recipe featuring pumpkin beer. I’m thinking pumpkin beer bread, pumpkin beer chili or some kind of pumpkin beer braised chicken. I’ll let y’all know what I come up with. If you have suggestions, please share!

I bypassed the bananas this morning in favor of apple cinnamon oatmeal. It was gray and rainy out and it seemed like a great breakfast option. I sauteed half of a diced apple with cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice and a pat of butter and then added in a mix of quick cooking steel cut oats, oat bran and quick oats, ground flax, almond milk, water, golden raisins and a pinch of salt. I topped it with a swirl of apple butter and salted creamy peanut butter.

I am in a very, very bad habit of picking up salads from the specialty market across the street. They do built-to-order salads for $7.99/lb and that includes unlimited toppings and proteins. They also have the most addictive honey balsamic dressing and candied pecans. Today’s salad included mixed greens, spinach, artichoke hearts, beets, candied pecans, dried cranberries, salmon and goat cheese.

I wasn’t especially tired, sore or busy today but I took a rest day and walked with Sullie when I got home from work and listened to an audio book. It was relaxing and felt good to my body. I have a hard time counting walks as exercise but we did walk for about 45 minutes and I definitely broke a sweat so at least it was something and Sullie loves it!

I have been craving Thai food lately so I made my own not so authentic Pad Thai for dinner. I started with Harris Teeter’s Peanut Noodle box that has rice noodles and a peanut seasoning and added in tofu, a scrambled egg, some Asian stir fry veggies, a spoonful of peanut butter, Trader Joe’s Soyaki sauce and Sriracha. It hit the spot!

I was flipping through Cooking with Paula Deen while I was at my grandmother’s house last weekend and was shocked to find that I wanted to make everything in the magazine. I took a picture of the recipe for Applesauce Bundt Cake with my iPhone and I’m so excited to report that it’s in the oven now. It was so easy – no mixer required! I can’t wait to see how it turns out!

How are you getting into the idea of Fall?