Since the Popover recipe was such a huge success, I thought I’d share this variation. Toad In The Hole is British comfort food at its best. It’s simply browned sausage with popover batter poured over it. I rarely eat pork as I can’t condone the practices at the production facilities. However, I do purchase pork sausage from local farmers who pasture their pigs. The pigs have very good lives and good food. The end of their lives is as important as their daily care. The pigs are taken to a local slaughterhouse where they go from the truck to the processing stage with no wait. Animal agriculture is an integral part of farming here in New England, where we have rocky pastures. Pigs make use of land that can’t be farmed in other ways. In any event, the sausage itself is fresh and delicious, and in a recipe like this, with few ingredients, each one has to be special. If you can’t get good pork sausage, there are some regional and national brands of organic chicken sausage that can be substituted.

Toad In The Hole

2 eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour|
1 cup lowfat milk
¼ teaspoon salt
1 pound sausage
1 to 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium red onion, sliced
1 long stem fresh rosemary

1. Whisk together the eggs, flour, milk and salt. Refrigerate while doing the next steps.
2. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. If using uncooked pork sausage, put 1 tablespoon of oil in a 9 by 9-inch baking dish (2 ½ quart casserole.) If using a drier, precooked chicken sausage, use 2 tablespoons of oil. Distribute the onions in the pan and add the sausage. Bake until browned, turning several times (large pork links will take 20 minutes total.)
3. Carefully remove the pan from the oven (the fat might splatter) and pour in the batter. Lay the rosemary on top. Return to the oven.
4. Bake until browned and puffed up, about 25 to 30 minutes. Like a popover, this will collapse.

4 large servings, leftovers can be reheated for breakfast

Lily sleeps in a crate. If let loose in the house, she paces to protect us from burglars, raccoons, distant trucks, falling branches and coyotes. No one gets any sleep. When Scooter was little, he slept in a crate, too. Then he told us that there was absolutely no way that he was going to continue to sleep in that box. Not that he wanted to be a watchdog; he wanted the cozy comfort of the couch by the fireplace.

He sleeps through everyone waking up, having breakfast, and the boy catching the school bus. Lily goes outside and checks the perimeter of the property. Scooter sleeps.

While I work at my desk, Lily watches out the window. She checks for UPS trucks, loose dogs, and hawks. Scooter comes upstairs. He doesn’t check for anything.

Finally, he deigns to go outside. He pees. It’s cold. His feet are wet.

He comes back in. Scooter has a snack. He’d prefer steak but he gets kibble.

Scooter goes back to sleep. This time he is on the living room couch.

I take him for a walk. He struts. He prances. He hates his harness.

We come home and he goes back to sleep.

Sometimes in the afternoon, he gets the zoomies and the two dogs play. But if anyone should be on the couch watching television, he drops everything and plasters himself to their side.

Around eleven pm, when we are all either in bed or heading there, Scooter decides that we should be rolling his ball down the hall to chase. Play time! Lily ignores him. I ignore him. Scooter gives up. He makes a big scene of arranging his blanket just so. He goes to sleep. Goodnight, Scooter.

I started this week doing the quintessential New England activity. A friend came over and taught me how to make Concord grape jelly. I live next door to the town of Concord, where that variety of grape was invented and so named, but, this is the first time I’ve ever made jelly, or canned anything! It’s now cranberry season and I have a basket of local pears on my kitchen counter. I’m thinking that will be a good combination. Have you canned anything this week?

I bought a huge 48 star flag at a country auction. After washing and airing it out, I hung it in the the hallway. It will remain there long after this drawn-out election season is over.

We were invited to a neighbor’s annual cider pressing and pig roast. We drank his homemade hard cider and ate and ate. I brought popovers. I baked them in a sunflower patterned muffin tin. Look how charming they came out!

The Gems finished their pumpkin.

Buffy rebounded from her last health crisis. She’s behaving like her old self and she’s part of the flock. But I notice her having difficulty getting up on the roost at night. I think that this will be her last winter. Of course, I’ve said that before and she’s proved me wrong. Meanwhile, Betsy is molting. Her tail is gone. New feathers are erupting on her neck. She’s feeling quite sorry for herself.

The weather was glorious. Stepping outside was like stepping into a gem-studded kaleidoscope.

At the end of the week the weather took a turn towards winter. Freezing temperatures were predicted for Friday night. I harvested the last of the green beans and gave the vines to the goats and chickens. I brought in the lone, small zucchini and a few tiny peppers. The ground was white in the morning. The zinnias died.

But a few raspberries remain.

Today it has warmed up a tad. It’s raining. This is the most dangerous time of year for chickens – much more so than when it is dry and freezing. They get wet and cold and that brings on respiratory disease. There’s mud so they can’t dust bathe (which is why I give mine a tub with sand and food-grade DE in their run.) Most of the hens are molting. Florence looks like a discarded feather duster. Here she is eating the green bean vines in the compost pile.

Not everyone is molting. Amber, the I never go broody Orpington, continues to lay!

Candy is waiting out the weather. She’s already wearing her thick fur coat. She knows that winter, her favorite season, is right around the corner.

I’ve lived in New England for over thirty years, and so I’ve seen the seasons come and go. I’ve seen the leaves change. I go through my days saying, “oh, pretty” and then moving along. Yet every October there’s one day that stops me in my tracks. The beauty of it all can not be ignored. It is so gorgeous that it affects me physically, like a musical passage that goes straight from your ears into your core. Yesterday was one of those days.

The field across from my house doesn’t have sharp, brilliant colors, but it does have light that comes in low and warm.

The path into the woods is lined with pine needles.

Further in the trail is carpeted with fallen leaves.

Look around at your feet and find moss and fungus.

The woods glow in the afternoon light shining through the leaves, like stained glass.

Look up.

Not too long ago these woods were fields, with grazing animals. The trees are not that old, some fifty, some eighty years old. But a few pines have been here longer than that.

Walk out along the stone wall, a remnant of those farming days. Now ferns and wild grapes soften the edge of the field.

It was a short walk and we are back home.

Today it is clouding up and the light isn’t glowing through the leaves. The wind is blowing and a freeze is expected. This landscape is ephemeral. Still, it is lovely out. I’m going to declare today a “too beautiful to work” holiday and take the dogs  far into the woods all the way to the Hemlock Forest. When I come home I’ll get down the box of winter gloves and scarves. We’ll be needing those soon.