Ahhhh Fall!

Fall is my favorite time of the year. I love the colors. I love the smell. I love football. I love the temperature (I mean it's called sweater weather for a reason).

Plus, I love the taste of fall.

Cooking this time of year is one of my favorite things. The seasonal vegetables this time of year are my favorite. I'm a big apple fan. Not just fresh crisp apples, but I love them baked. I love them sauted with pork. I love them roasted.

I'm also a big soup fan and it's soup season again. Butternut squash. Black bean. Chicken n dumplings. All good stuff.

Mostly I love the baked goods. I love the spices that dominate fall flavors. Cinnamon, ginger, allspice. All those yummy fall flavors.

Sadly, I don't bake much anymore. I love to bake cakes and cookies and such. Mostly because I love eating them, but I love the smell of freshly baked cakes and cookies. The house always smells so warm and inviting when you have something full of spice in the oven.

Baking was on of the first things I gave up when we started our healthier lifestyle. The fat and calories had to be cut and it was an easy solution.

Every once in a while I still bake, just for the pleasure of it. Since yesterday was the first football Sunday of the season, I felt we should celebrate in style. Black Bean soup and a spice cake (both Cooking Light recipes).

I found a great sounding recipe at Cooking Light for an Espesso Spice cake. Sounded perfect. So I whipped it up, and it was good. The calorie/fat count was within reason and so we enjoyed a cup of decaf and a slice of cake last night after dinner.

Emphasis on the decaf coffee. The cake was not decaf and I paid for it last night. It kept me up most of the night. Duh! I didn't even think of that.

So the weekend was a mixed bag of trying to be healthy and a couple of splurges (went out to lunch with friends. It's so hard for me to make the right choices when a menu is placed in front of me).

Today is treadmill day. I will become a jogger one of these days. One day I might even bring that 20 minute mile down to 18.