I really want some rain..

The baking season is upon most of the country, but not San Diego. It is sunny and warm here every day as of late and that my friends, is not conducive to making me want to heat up the kitchen and turn out tasty treats. This is the time of year I miss my farm in Montana the most..standing in that farm kitchen with an amazing view of the Bitterroot valley baking and baking for days.
I have big plans for Christmas baking and I need to practice/test some new recipes but I am so uninspired. How do you work through a lake of inspiration?
This week is Halloween...I will be baking cookies for a mock "bakery" that is part of my office halloween decor but they will just be basic peanut butter, oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip, and snickerdoodles (assuming I can garner up the energy to bust them out and don't cop to buying blah cookies at the store.)
Normally the onset of fall has me making this amazing Pumpkin Applesauce bread, the recipe and pictures will be posted when I get around to baking it.
I think I just want to complain about the weather. I so desperately want a rainy weekend. I want to spend some time at my house alone - no roommate..just some down time.

Feel that Chill????

San Diego may not have seasons like the rest of the country but we do have a distinct change from summer to fall/winter and it has started. A chill in the morning; cool enough at night to start a fire in the old hearth, but absolutely perfect for baking.
It's early October and so begins the testing of holiday cookies. Today's option was a "hermit" cookie - there would be a picture but I thought about it (err, was encouraged to think about it) after the fact. This particular hermit had something of a bread quality to it, very cakey texture with cinnamon, walnuts, raisins, brown sugar and nutmeg. When they first emerged from the oven they looked and tasted a little blah.
Think think think.. I had some 60% cacao bars, some heavy cream and some corn sryup...within minutes I had a fabulous ganache to dip the cookies in, low and behold...DELISH! well not earth shattering but good. They were consumed by the end of the day and now I have an empty tin to fill again.
I have been off blog for a while..updates.. I got the job and have been working for 2 months.. the boy..he is once again off..too many issues there..