By The foliage has passed. The trees are bare, the leaves are on the ground, and Vermont has shifted from its October costume back to its real self: gray, brown, honest. I prefer it this way, if I'm being truthful. October Vermont is a performance. November Vermont is the thing itself. The bones of the landscape — the hills, the stone walls, the skeleton trees — are visible now, and they're beautiful in a way that doesn't need color. Beauty without decoration. Hemingway would approve.
I raked leaves all day Monday. Five hours of raking, which my leg informed me was three hours too many, but the yard needed it and the compost pile needed feeding and I'm not the kind of man who hires someone to rake when he owns a perfectly good rake and two arms that still work. The leaves went into the compost — oak, maple, birch, a few stubborn beech leaves that curl instead of laying flat, because beech trees are contrarians and their leaves reflect that.
I made lamb stew. It's an October dish — hearty, warm, the kind of food that earns its calories. Lamb shoulder, cut in chunks, browned in the Dutch oven with a kind of aggressive intentionality. Onions, garlic, potatoes, carrots, turnips. A pint of stout, because lamb and stout belong together the way Frost and the woodstove belong together — naturally, inevitably, without requiring explanation. Two hours in the oven. The lamb softens, the vegetables absorb the dark broth, the stout gives everything a depth that water can't provide. You serve it in bowls, big ones, with bread to soak up the liquid.
Helen asked where I learned to make lamb stew. I said I made it up. She raised an eyebrow. I said I adapted it from a recipe in a cookbook she bought in 1990. She said, "So I taught you." I said, "You provided source material. I provided interpretation." She said, "You're impossible." I said, "Thank you." This is how we communicate. It works.
The blog is at a hundred and forty readers now. Growth is slow, which is fine. The blog is not trying to grow. The blog is trying to be honest, and honesty grows slowly, like maple trees, like marriages, like the ability to make a stew without looking at the recipe. You get there. You just don't get there fast.
Leaves raked. Stew made. November approaches. The woodstove calls. We answer.
The stew takes two hours, which means there’s time to do something useful with a wheel of brie and whatever’s in the cabinet. Helen and I have an unspoken agreement that a day involving raking and Dutch oven cooking is also a day that earns a proper table — not a fussy one, but a complete one. Baked brie is fast enough that it doesn’t feel like additional effort, and warm enough that it belongs alongside the stout and the bread and the gray November light coming through the window. The recipe below is what I made while the stew finished. Start it about twenty minutes before you plan to eat.
Baked Brie
Prep Time: 5 min | Cook Time: 18 min | Total Time: 23 min | Servings: 6
Ingredients
- 1 wheel (8 oz) Brie cheese
- 2 tablespoons honey
- 1/4 cup roughly chopped walnuts
- 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
- Pinch of flaky sea salt
- Crackers or sliced baguette, for serving
Instructions
- Preheat. Heat oven to 350°F. Line a small baking sheet or oven-safe dish with parchment paper.
- Score the rind. Place the Brie wheel on the prepared pan. Using a sharp knife, score the top rind in a crosshatch pattern, cutting just through the rind without going deep into the cheese. This lets the heat penetrate and gives the toppings somewhere to settle.
- Top it. Drizzle the olive oil over the top, then scatter the walnuts and thyme evenly across the surface. Finish with the honey and a pinch of flaky salt.
- Bake. Bake for 15–18 minutes, until the cheese is visibly soft and beginning to bulge at the sides and the walnuts are lightly toasted. Do not overbake — you want it molten inside, not collapsed.
- Serve immediately. Transfer the pan to the table (or carefully move the brie to a serving board) and serve at once with crackers or thick-sliced bread. It sets up fast once it cools, so don’t let it sit.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 185 | Protein: 9g | Fat: 14g | Carbs: 8g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 250mg