You really should go visit a local pumpkin patch. Don’t get lazy and buy a pumpkin at the grocery store. Go wander, and wonder at how many amazing shapes, forms, colors and aromas there are. Pumpkins aren’t just perfect orange spheres these days. There are white, green, grayish green, mottled tangerine, and warty beasties of pumpkins out there in the wild.

Last week I was shocked, shocked to see a family buying a pumpkin at Target of all places! Where is the magic? I had a charming morning encounter with a couple of sprightly old men when I walked into the Episcopal church pumpkin sale in our town. The pumpkins were grouped by size and shape on several of the flat gravestones in the 18th century churchyard. I strolled around, enjoying the views of exotic gourds and enormous squashes before I bought a couple of decorative white pumpkins to put on the kitchen table, and a small pumpkin for making my own pumpkin purée. I’m sorry, Libby’s, but we are going full tilt, homemade for baking this week.

Pumpkins are not just for Halloween decorations and Thanksgiving pie. It’s time to expand our repertoires and use some of our local produce with seasonal gusto. I love a nice spicy pumpkin cake, and even though I have it all gussied up as a fancy cupcake in this week’s illo, it tastes just as deelish when baked as a utilitarian sheet cake, slathered with un-photogenic swathes of cream cheese icing. Homely sheet cakes are every bit as wonderful as all those fancy shop cupcakes, and easier to pack in lunch boxes, too.

You will need to make pumpkin purée. It is messy and fun, and for your first batch you should employ child labor, if you can. After that they will be wise to your ways, so enjoy yourselves for an afternoon. It is an early lesson in farm-to-table. They can pick out the pumpkin, bring it home, carve it up, bake it, purée it, and bake a pumpkin cake. So artisanal!

While making your decision in the pumpkin patch be sure to choose smaller pumpkins, weighing 2 to 4 pounds, for making purée. Larger pumpkins tend to be dry and stringy. An ice cream scoop is a handy tool for removing the seeds and membrane from inside the pumpkin – but I once used an electric jig saw for jack-o-lantern carving (which was exhilarating), but use whatever makes you happy. You can store the purée in bags or in freezer-proof dishes, which means you can whip out homemade purée for almost any occasion.

Pumpkin Cake from Sally’s Baking Addiction

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1
1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1 cup vegetable oil
4 large eggs
1 cup packed light or dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 cups pumpkin purée
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Cream Cheese Frosting
8 ounces full-fat block cream cheese, softened to room temperature
1/2 cup butter, softened to room temperature
3 cups confectioners’ sugar, plus an extra 1/4 cup if needed
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease a 9×13 inch baking pan. I always use this glass pan.
Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and pumpkin pie spice together in a large bowl. Set aside. Whisk the oil, eggs, brown sugar, granulated sugar, pumpkin, and vanilla extract together until combined. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and use a mixer or whisk until completely combined. Batter will be thick.

Spread batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 30-36 minutes. Baking times vary, so keep an eye on yours. The cake is done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. If you find the top or edges of the cake is/are browning too quickly in the oven, loosely cover it with aluminum foil.
Remove the cake from the oven and set the entire pan on a wire rack. Allow to cool completely. After about 45 minutes, I usually place the cake in the refrigerator to speed things up.

Make the frosting: In a large bowl using a handheld or stand mixer fitted with a paddle or whisk attachment, beat the cream cheese and butter together on high speed until smooth and creamy. Add 3 cups confectioners’ sugar, vanilla, and salt. Beat on low speed for 30 seconds, then switch to high speed and beat for 2 minutes. If you want the frosting a little thicker, add the extra 1/4 cup of confectioners sugar (I add it). Spread the frosting on the cooled cake. Refrigerate for 30 minutes before serving. This helps sets the frosting and makes cutting easier.
Cover leftover cake tightly and store in the refrigerator for 5 days.

Sally’s Pumpkin Cake

Pumpkin cake from Martha – she calls for canned pumpkin purée

Grown-up pumpkin bundt cake (no frosting!)

Pumpkin cupcakes

I found this recipe at the Redman Farms Facebook page.

“Like many indelible family memories, carving a pumpkin begins with someone grabbing a really sharp knife.”
– Dana Gould

I love this idea and plan on swiping it for a Thanksgiving centerpiece: Pumpkin Marigold Centerpiece

Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

On a recent dark and stormy night I was about to go through the motions of whipping up an uninspired stir fry of chicken, peas, onions, carrots and some celery for crunch, but it didn’t seem like a warm, inviting meal for a soon-to-be-fall night. It’s not that I harbor any illusions that coming home to our house every night is a journey to Martha-in-Wonderland, but a big part of welcoming a seasonal change is making seasonal meals. Fall demands comfort from the kitchen – and chicken pot pie is nothing but warm comfort.

Here is something to keep in your freezer at all times of the year – a package of puff pastry. This is essential, Home Ec 101 information. Write it down. In cursive! Or tell Alexa to remind you the next time you go to the Trader Joe’s: “Buy puff pastry.”

I have used store-bought pie shells in the past because I am hopeless at home made. Everyone at our table would politely shovel the chicken concoctions into their hungry little mouths. But the puff pastry makes this pie an occasion! Especially when I fashioned cunning fall leaves out of the extra dough. Sometimes the details matter. It was spectacular! It was as if Jiffy Pop Pop Corn had waved a magic wand over my chicken pie ordinaire, and puffed it upward and outward with importance and historical significance. Well, it looked very pretty when it came out of the oven, and was warmer and more presentable than that pedestrian chicken stir fry would ever have been.

I used the same ingredients that would have gone into the stir fry, with the addition of the puff pastry, and some chicken broth. And a little flour. I’ll trot out some other recipes for you later – but you need to keep it simple, for your own sanity. I read one recipe that wanted me to weave strips of pastry into a latticework on top of the pie. That was sheer foolishness. The puff pastry rises and looms like ocean cliffs – do not diminish that drama by getting all mimsy and crafty. Use that time you would have been weaving pastry strips (like those long ago camp pot holders) wisely. Dig out the latest Colorblends catalogue and start figuring out your daffodil planting strategy. Spring is coming.

I poached a boneless chicken breast, although if you have a leftover roasted chicken, you can pull off enough meat for a pie for two people. After poaching the breast, I chopped it up and shredded it – then I chopped up a couple of carrots, some celery, and half an onion, and tossed them into a frying pan with some butter for a few minutes. The onion should be translucent and fragrant. Then I added a handful of flour and 2 cups of chicken broth for the roux, and then the chicken. (Shhhh! Sometimes I skip the flour and the broth and just add Campbell’s Cream of Chicken Soup and a little milk. Campbell’s version) After everything heated up and bubbled along nicely, I poured the mixture into my cute little Le Creuset baking dish that I scored when trolling through Homegoods one day. It’s amazing what you can find sometimes… But a pie pan works just as well. I almost forgot, again, that the pastry dough needs to thaw first. So put that at the top of your list – THAW PASTRY!!! It takes about half an hour, at least at this time of year.

Roll the thawed dough out on a floured surface, just to take out the creases. Then lay it on top of your pan, and with kitchen shears, or even your office Fiskars, trim the excess dough, leaving about half an inch hanging over the edge of the pan, for drama. And if you feel so inclined, cut some autumnal leaves out of the pastry remnants. Don’t forget to wash the top of the pie with a little egg and water mixture – you will get a nice glossy top. IG perfect! Then remember to cut a few slits in the dough to let steam escape during the baking process.

Put the pastry-topped pan on top of a cookie sheet, and pop in a 375°F oven for about 30 to 35 minutes. See – you didn’t need to waste your time basket weaving at all. And now you have an extra moment to fiddle with Wordle, or chill the wine, or to watch last night’s Jimmy Kimmel.

Here’s Martha’s take, although she spends quality time worrying about the crust. “Pshaw!” I say! Martha’s Chicken Potpie

This chicken and leek pie reminds me of the time I lived in London, when I would order an individual pie at Porter’s Restaurant in Covent Garden. It seemed so novel, and so sophisticated, to my frozen Stouffer’s Chicken Pot Pie-trained palate. Ah, youth! Pardon Your French

“Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.”
-Jonathan Swift

Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

We have just moved into temporary quarters – a place too small for our many boxes of books, the hats, the scrapbooks, the baby treasures, our clattering miscellany of pots, pans, racks, roasting pans, wine glasses, salad bowls, platters, the KitchenAid mixer and the Dutch ovens. We hadn’t yet packed up our knives, scouring pads, shrimp de-veiner, can opener, the brownie pan and the Champagne flutes before the packers came – so everything we hold dear – they wrapped in miles of paper, and stashed away in a mountain of boxes, now squirreled away in storage. The packers were more efficient than we were – and were faster and lighter on their feet, too. How could they expect us to live someplace for three months without cookie sheets? All the tablecloths and napkins are snug in boxes packed under our own personal Rosebuds. But somehow, amid the chaos and welter and reams of crisp packing paper, Mr. Sanders had to presence of mind to guard the Crock-Pot®. Thank goodness. And soon we will be able to prepare for fall.

It’s the beginning of October, for heaven’s sake. It’s still hot. Candy corn and Halloween candy have been displayed at the grocery store since August, when the children went back to school! It should be cold by now! At least sweater weather. Please don’t let this be a Halloween when we have to worry about the chocolate candies melting in the neighbors’ Trick or Treat buckets. (Let us pause for a minute and give thanks that the Hurricanes Humberto and Imelda are dancing a pas de deux out in the wide Sargasso Sea instead of along the east coast. Amen!) Let’s enjoy some coolth with our ghoulies and ghosties and long leggedy beasties.

I am ready now to break out the slow-cooker, and rummage around the internet for warm, comforting, homey recipes, since the cook books are God knows where. Every seasonal change brings a different view of what we should be cooking for dinner while breakfast never seems to vary much: a bowl of sticks and twigs livened up with some blueberries or bananas seems fine 12 months out of the year. Maybe we substitute hot oatmeal on snow days, and pancakes for weekends, but otherwise breakfast seems boringly and comfortingly consistent. We do like to vary our dinner prep. In my annual summer project to foist most of the cooking off on Mr. Sanders, I am doing my best to stay out of the blazing hot kitchen. The more grilling he can do, the better. But once the cooler weather rolls around again, I am excited about spending hours puttering, stirring, chopping, flouring, browning, tasting, and imagining warm, candlelit dinners. Maybe with a cheering glass of red wine, and a little Red Garland playing in the background.

We are adrift this year, between homes, and need a little cosseting. But we also have a new town to explore; we’d like to be a little more foot loose and fancy free, and don’t want to be stuck in a pokey apartment all day long – so a Crock-Pot® is the answer. We can load it up with tasty ingredients, run out for a few hours to case the new neighborhood, and come back to the apartment, that for an evening, will smell like home, and our dinner will be waiting for us. Genius.

Our smart friends at Food52 have the answer, as usual: Chicken Parm Soup

Slow Cooker French Wine and Mustard Chicken

55 Slow-Cooker Recipes That Will Warm Up Your Fall

Slow-Cooker Recipes

Slow-Cooker Beef Stew

Sweater weather shouldn’t be too too far away. Go out to a harvest festival this weekend, buy a pumpkin and an armful of mums. Make hay while the sun shines!

“If you are careful,’ Garp wrote, ‘if you use good ingredients, and you don’t take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.”
― John Irving

Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

The Spy Test Kitchens have been enjoying a breath of fresh fall air. We have flown the coop for a few days, so this is a column from our own Way Back Machine.

The days have been beautiful with bright azure skies, brisk zephyr breezes, and I can imagine a touch of frost on the windshield in the morning. It is a good time for walks with Luke the wonder dog, who was heartily tired of the hot summer. The brown, fallen leaves make poking his nose in every bush an even more intriguing activity, from his point of view, while more annoying to my end of the leash. I do enjoy trailing a curious, buoyant dog, happily trotting ahead of me, than the pokey puppy I was hauling through the neighborhood all summer long.

Luke is also fond of taking car rides. He likes going along on short excursions to the farm stand for various seasonal purchases. In the past couple of weeks we’ve taken trips to buy chrysanthemum plants for the front porch, pumpkins that we will never carve, and the most recent excursion was to acquire more than enough apple cider to make a batch of apple cider doughnuts. There is nothing more tempting than a clutch of home-made doughnuts over a weekend. We have no steely resolve in this house as we prepare for our annual doughnut nosh.

Since we aren’t frying the doughnuts, we can enjoy the first tastes of fall without worrying about fats and all of the cardiac dangers associated with fried foods. I love the silicone doughnut molds we have, which are bright Lego colors. These molds are doughnut-shaped so we don’t have the added temptation of orphan doughnut holes, sitting sadly on the kitchen counter, warbling their alluring siren songs. I love the genius of reducing the cider on top of the stove to concentrate its flavor. This is why we like to read recipes, to wallow in the vast and varied experiences of the home cooks who have cooked before. These doughnuts taste like a visit to the farm stand, without all the car windows wide open to give Luke the cheap breezy thrills of a car ride to the country: Baked Apple Cider Donuts

If you do want the experience of frying doughnuts, à la Homer Price , please take a look at Mark Bittman’s recipe for fried apple cider doughnuts. I haven’t tried this recipe, but I bet it is deelish: Apple Cider Doughnuts

Apple cider doughnuts only require about a cup and a half of cider. Whatever should we do with the rest of the half gallon? We are concerned about food waste, and apple cider is so delicious! Naturally our thoughts first turn to cocktails: Apple Cider Smash

Spiked Hot Apple Cider Punch

But life is not a big cocktail party, sadly. We do need to eat dinner and be civilized for the greater part of the day. This is an ingenious way to use up some cider, and do something different with sausage: Sausage and Apple pie

It is a good time for change. It’s nice to wear sweaters again. Socks! What a novelty! I know in January that a 66°F morning would seem positively balmy, but today I watched mist rising from the grass where the sun was burning off the dew, and it felt good to bundle up a little bit. It will be divine to sink our teeth into warm, sweet apple cider doughnuts, too. Welcome, fall!

“Two sounds of autumn are unmistakable…the hurrying rustle of crisp leaves blown along the street…by a gusty wind, and the gabble of a flock of migrating geese.”
― Hal Borland

Contributor Jennifer Martella has pursued dual careers in architecture and real estate since she moved to the Eastern Shore in 2004. She has reestablished her architectural practice for residential and commercial projects and is a real estate agent for Meredith Fine Properties. She especially enjoys using her architectural expertise to help buyers envision how they could modify a potential property. Her Italian heritage led her to Piazza Italian Market, where she hosts wine tastings every Friday and Saturday afternoons.

This is an updated version of a column from last year. Mr. Sanders and I are moving, and taking care of packing and being appalled by the number of dust bunnies we keep discovering has left me little time for cooking. Let’s enjoy the good old days!

Tailgating season has begun, and the Spy Test Kitchens have been busy testing and tasting, planning and plotting, shopping and schlepping. It is a wonderful time of year, with the changing seasons, exciting sporting events, and all sorts of socializing which still feels like a huge relief after the COVID years. (But be sure to get your boosters and your flu shot – you don’t want to get sick and miss the big game.)

Some folks go to great lengths to have an Instagram-worthy tailgate event. Think Martha. Think color coordination. Think branding. I’d rather focus on some delicious food to share with friends. You’ll have to decide if you will prepare your foods in advance, or if you will be cooking on site. It’s tricky to pack all that grilling equipment, but experienced season ticket holders have personal systems for packing the car with all their food, grill, ice, cups, corn hole board and dog bowls. I admire their organizational skills.

The week before a tailgate I have Post Its sticking up everywhere, reminding me what I need to bring: cups, table cloth, paper towels, Wet Wipes, Off, plastic ware, plates, nibbles, buns, beer, fizzy water, Cokes, cupcakes, a pop-up tent, table, folding chairs, blankets, picnic basket, raincoats… It is an endless, ever-changing list.
Here is a more definitive check list of tailgate necessities:
Ice – in a cooler (which doubles as extra seating)
Folding table & camping chairs
Tablecloth (if you have a long table, consider using a fitted bed sheet)
Grill and lighter fluid (check the rules – be sure you can have an open flame)
Matches
Grilling utensils
Paper plates
Plastic utensils and cups
Napkins
Wipes and paper towels
Bottle opener and koozies
Trash bags
Beverages and mixers
Condiments
Water

Our Luke the wonder dog is always up for an outdoor adventure. He tried to figure out how to chase after a frisbee at a University of Florida tailgate, but he is more adept at, and much prefers, chasing his favorite ball, so I have to be remember to pack his Chuck-it ball and launcher. And his bed – Luke is 15, and likes his canine comfort.

I try to keep the food simple, and make sandwiches ahead of time. Luke still dreams about the giant 8 ounce bacon burger he had at his Florida game. But we were all younger then, and foolish, and thought nothing about calories and cardiac health. Now is the time (for us humans, at any rate) to modify our behavior. One of my faves is a French ham and butter sandwich on a fresh baguette: baguette, ham, and lotsa good butter. What more could you need?

Perhaps a Pan Bagnat. I substitute chicken in mine, not being a huge tuna fan.
 Pan Bagnat

We have even been known to stop by the grocery store deli counter to pick up a few ready made sandwiches before a game. So easy, so deelish. Food prepared by other people always seems to taste better. More tailgating sandwich ideas: Tailgate Sandwiches

Martha always has wonderful presentation, but Martha also has a staff of ambitious and talented Martha Wannabees. I do not have the stamina for a fully thematic tailgate. I might bake some football-themed cupcakes, but that is where my cleverness end. My energy wanes, and truly, my ideas for tailgate foods are the sorts of things we prepared for little boy birthday parties, not this sort of grand bon vivant gesture: Martha’s Game Day Recipes

I will pack up a warm platter of pigs-in-blankets and stuff it into a thermal bag, so they are still warm-ish as we socialize. Fresh, warm, soft pretzels are always gobbled up. Apples, veggie platters, charcuterie boards, barbecued chicken, cookies and Doritos all go with us to the game, but very few ever come home again. The playful outdoor atmosphere leads to healthy appetites at a tailgate: Rule of Thumb – always bring more than you think you will need. And don’t forget your tickets to the game!

“I think baking cookies is equal to Queen Victoria running an empire. There’s no difference in how seriously you take the job, how seriously you approach your whole life.”

—Martha Stewart

Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

Crunch! Give me crunch. Walking through piles of leaves. Eating apples. That little bit of tooth that defines the perfect French fry. Bacon. The delicious snap of a thin, carmelized-along-the-edge chocolate chip cookie. To intone Martha, these are good things.

It is still pretty warm out there. The sun is still shooting death rays at us and I am still slathering on the sunscreen, but the shadows are growing longer and the sun sets earlier. There was a wind out of the north yesterday that teased us with an exotic tinge of coolth which Luke the wonder dog and I enjoyed as we trotted through our daily paces.

Apples always remind me of brown-bagged lunches, with warm, wax paper-wrapped cheese sandwiches. And they make me think of Jo March, scribbling in her cold New England attic, her inky fingers clutching apples as she gnawed away, reviewing her latest lurid tale. Apples bring knowledge and comfort, and at this time of year, there is a profusion of reasons to eat them often.

It’s still a early for the strolls through crunchy leaves, but the autumnal yen of eating crunchy apples can be indulged right now. You need to motivate and travel to your favorite farmers’ markets this weekend and stock up on freshly picked treasures, because there are so many good things you can make! Of course, it is always gilding the proverbial lily to do anything to an apple but wash it and take a bite. Even pies seem unnecessarily vulgar. Does an apple really need brown sugar, cinnamon and dabs of butter to taste better? Of course not! But any iteration of an apple is a good thing!

It is apple time now. And different dishes call for different kinds of apples. How do we pick them? Do we need baking apples or eating apples? What is a baking apple? I tend to pick the biggest, shiniest apples I can find, much to Joni Mitchell’s consternation, I am sure. Bon Appétit magazine says there are three good baking apples: Honeycrisp, Mutsu and Pink Ladies. But they also like Granny Smiths. They are nice and crisp, and are not prone to mushiness or graininess. They hold up to the heat, and your creation is not reduced to glop.
Baking Apples

The Farmers’ Almanac has a handy-dandy chart for which apples are best suited to various dishes: sauces, cider, pie and baking. Best Apples

There is romance and poetry in the kabillion known varieties of apples: Adirondack crab-apple, Albermarle Pippin, Allen’s Everlasting, Ambrosia, American Mother, Annie Elizabeth, Cameo, Captain Kidd, Cellini, Coeur de Boeuf, Gala, Granny Smith, Maiden’s Blush, McIntosh, Red Jonathan, Rhode Island Greening, Winesap, and Zuccalmaglio’s Reinette. You should go to this site and read some of the apples’ characteristics. The Zuccalmaglio description reads: “Flavored with tones of wild strawberry, quince, pineapple, ripe ear and a fine floral touch. Rough sticky skin flushed brown-red with faint red stripes and some russeting. Fine grained flesh.” Sheer poetry.
Orange Pippin

Our first world problems include having very few varieties of apples at the grocery store. Which is why you need to get to your farmers’ market. I would rather rummage through 19 varieties grown locally, than choose from 5 kinds shipped 2,000 miles across the country – fruits chosen for their long shelf life and bruise resistance. Here is an interesting article about testing 10 different kinds of apples to see which is the best for pie: Apples for Pies

Now here are just a few ideas of what you can do with all those delicious apples: applesauce, apple butter, apple fritters, apple cobbler, apple cookies, apple fritters, apple jelly, candy apples, apple crisp, mulled cider, apple cake, apple chutney, apple-tinis, cider doughnuts, apple pancakes, apple turnovers, apple stuffing, Waldorf salad, apple tarts, baked apples, apple brown Betty, apple muffins, and, of course, apple pie (deep-dish or regular).

This Apple Crumble is easy peasy and so good!

6 Golden Delicious or Braeburn apples, peeled, sliced into ¼ inch pieces
4 tablespoons sugar
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Grated zest of one orange
2/3 cup melted butter
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup uncooked oats
Preheat oven to 375°F.

Mix apples, sugar, lemon juice and orange zest. In another bowl combine flour, oats, brown sugar, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Toss with butter. Combine with apple mixture in a buttered baking dish.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes. Cool 10 minutes before serving. Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a nice big splotch of whipped cream. Yumsters. All of the taste of apple pie with no fragile or temperamental pie crust to contend with.

For a boozier cream try this:
Bourbon Cream
1 cup heavy cream
¼ cup confectioners’ sugar
1 tablespoon good bourbon

Appletinis:
This is a serious treatise on the awful syrup-y sweet cocktails of the 90s. It treats apples with respect and good vodka: Appletinis

“Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard.”
― Walt Whitman

Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

My favorite meal of the day is lunch. Let’s go out for my favorite lunch, which is a BLT sandwich, with a scalding hot pile of crispy French fries. BLTs are reliably delicious and always seem celebratory.

No matter who makes the BLT, it will always spark joy. Miss Dee’s snack bar during our Washington College days offered an excellently greasy BLT, which was quite the perfect hangover cure. As I remember. Even if she was a little cheap with the potato chips. A large fountain Coke, with pearly pebbles of ice, helped cut through the extra bacon grease, as it refreshed and rehydrated. Ah, youth. Resuscitated and ready for more.

Post-grad, I would order club sandwiches when I was out for a grown up kind of luncheon, trying to signal familiarity with club life. Club sandwiches, with those extra layers of bread and turkey and fancy ruffled toothpicks, are just too baroque for purist me. I realized that club sandwiches didn’t signify sophistication, they were just unwieldy. They are not first date material. The bread would slide, mayonnaise would ooze, turkey was slimy and slippery, and where did the used toothpicks go on my plate? Simple is better.

During this summer tomato season I have been enjoying some delicious tomato sandwiches. Who doesn’t love thick slabs of tomato, carefully coated with a thick impasto of creamy mayonnaise, lightly salted with a cloud of Maldon, and a swift grind of fresh black pepper, on a raft of lightly toasted Pepperidge Farm white bread? But you know what would make a tomato sandwich even better? Of course you do. Bacon. Oooh. And some French fries. The potato chips will keep until cocktail hour.

Food52’s latest on BLTs

This is the Spy Test Kitchen’s favorite time of the year – when we pull out our annual sandwich ingredients list. Have an excellent school year!

I always loved that first day of school: new shoes, new notebooks, new pencils, and a pristine box of still-pointy, aromatic crayons. Though I always forgot about about my crippling anxiety about my locker combination. I never recalled the social implications of lunchroom seating during my leisurely summer, either. When I was a responsible parental-unit, I loved shopping for school supplies, and shoes, and new lunch boxes. It was only after the sun set on the night before school started that I confronted the horror: the woeful lack of organization in our lives.

While the young ’uns were setting out their new sneakers for the morning, and frantically paging through books that should have been read weeks before, I was peering into the fridge and taking stock of our jumble of foodstuffs. What nutritional and tempting combinations could I conjure that would actually be eaten? Once, when Mr. Sanders had been out of town for a very long business trip, we attempted to set a world’s record for eating pizza for every meal, for many days in a row. I understand that that sort of tomfoolery doesn’t set a good example nowadays with iPhones and social media.

Now all the cool kids carry cute, eco-friendly, bento box lunch boxes. There are cunning little compartments for vegetables, for fruits, for proteins. Some people cut vegetables on Sunday afternoons, and put them in the fridge for easy access on school mornings. They roll up lettuce wraps, dice carrots, prepare tuna salad, bake muffins and stack little cups of applesauce. These people also involve their children in the lunch assembly process. Loathsome creatures… The despair I often felt in those dark, early mornings racing to get lunches made before the school bus arrived no longer exists, because now those people are grown up and organized and thorough. And they use a lot of Door Dash.

While we are still leftover-dependent in this house, these folks know what to do about school lunch organization: Make Ahead Lunches
A handy guide to Sunday night preps: Make Ahead Prep And at Food52, the ever-clever Amanda always has some really fab lunch ideas. Amanda’s Clever Lunch Ideas

And now, with shameless drumroll, is the Spy Test Kitchen lunch list, which I haul out, shamelessly, every fall. Feel free to make your own spreadsheet, Google Doc or PowerPoint deck so you never have another moment of lunch ennui. The Test Kitchen came up with this flexible list of ingredients for packing school lunches a few years ago.
It is just as timely today:

Luncheon Variations

Column A
Let’s start with bread:
Ciabatta bread
Rye bread
Whole grain breads
Hard rolls
Portuguese rolls
French baguettes
Italian bread
Brioche rolls
Flour tortillas
Croissants
Bagels
Challah bread
Crostini
Cornbread
Naan bread
Focaccia bread
Pita bread
If storing overnight, layer bread with lettuce first, then add the spreads, to keep sandwich from getting soggy.

Column B
Next, the spread:
Mayo
Sriracha
Ketchup
Dijon mustard
Honey mustard
Italian dressing
Russian dressing
Cranberry sauce
Pesto sauce
Hummus
Tapenade
Sour cream
Chutney
Butter
Hot sauce
Salsa
Salsa verde

Column C
Cheeses:
wiss cheese
American cheese
Mozzarella
Blue cheese
Cream cheese
Havarti cheese
Ricotta cheese
Cheddar cheese
Provolone cheese
Brie cheese
Cottage cheese
Goat cheese

Column D
The main ingredient:
Meatloaf
T
urkey
Chicken
Corned beef
Bacon
Crumbled hard-boiled eggs
Scrambled eggs
Corned beef
Salami
Italian sausage
Ham
Roast beef
Egg salad
Tuna salad
Ham salad
Crab salad
Shrimp salad
Chicken salad
Turkey salad
Lobster salad
Tofu

Column E
The decorative (and tasty) elements:
Tomatoes
Lettuce
Basil
Onion
Avocado
Cucumber
Cilantro
Shredded carrots
Jalapeños
Cole slaw
Sliced apples
Sliced red peppers
Arugula
Sprouts
Radicchio
Watercress
Sliced pears
Apricots
Pickles
Spinach
Artichoke hearts
Grapes
Strawberries
Figs

Column F
Finger foods:
Cherries
Carrots
Strawberries
Green Beans
Broccoli
Celery
Edamame
Granola
Rice cakes
Apples
Bananas
Oranges
Melon balls
Raisins
Broccoli
Radishes
Blueberries

And because we live in a time of modern miracles, there are even apps for your phone so you can plan lunches ahead of time. Ingenious! LaLa Lunchbox and Little Lunches are among many apps.

“ ‘We could take our lunch,’ said Katherine.‘What kind of sandwiches?’ said Mark. ‘Jam,’ said Martha thoughtfully, ‘and peanut-butter-and-banana, and cream-cheese-and-honey, and date-and-nut, and prune-and-marshmallow…’”

—Edward Eager

Lunch ideas

Lunch Box Ideas

Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.