I want to get into the habit of reviewing a book a week that’s just for moms. I’ve done that off and on, OK mostly “off,” over the past few years. I really want to be more consistent because I love writing all about my favorite books that enrich and help moms. So today I’m talking about this book before Thanksgiving has come and gone. It’s a cookbook by Susan Branch, called Autumn: from the Heart of the Home . I reviewed the same author’s Summer: from the Heart of the Home cookbook over here. I found Autumn at the Springville Deseret Industries thrift store for only $3! I feel so incredibly blessed to have found this gem! It is a treasure!

I’ll repeat what I put over on the review of her Summer cookbook here to give you a little introduction to Susan. Just who is she and why I am sharing her book? Susan is an author and illustrator who lived in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. I noticed on her blog that she recently moved back to California, where she grew up as the oldest in a big family of 8 children in the 1960s. Her mother taught her to bake, cook, sew, tend children, clean, wash, craft, and host parties, as well as all the other homemaking arts. Susan loved learning all of it. She dedicated her first book to her dear mother, who she says was the strong foundation of her life. (You can read about her mother here.) 

I’m sharing her book because even though it’s not carnivore, low-carb/keto, or even whole foods-y, it’s just beautiful and fun! She has illustrated all the pictures and written all the words in it by hand. It’s just so gorgeous! See below.

This book has the following recipes that are warm, cozy, and fall-ish:

-appetizers and finger food, like Garlic Shrimp, Spiced Pecans, and Red Chili Onion Rings

-side dishes like Acorn Squash, Roasted Fall Vegetables, and Potatoes Anna

-traditional Thanksgiving dinner foods of stuffing (her grandma’s recipe), gravy, and cranberry sauce

-main dishes like Touchdown Chili, Turkey in the Straw and Classic Tenderloin of Beef

-desserts, including Gingerbread Cake , Cinnamon Ice Cream, Indian Pudding, Pumpkin Cheesecake, and Molasses Cookies

-drinks like Hot Chocolate and Autumn Spiced Cider

-Halloween food

Reading this book just makes me happy! I don’t have any plans to make any of the recipes soon but if any of my children want to make any, they are welcome to it. I hope it inspires them. So I guess this isn’t really a review, it’s actually a preview. I don’t know if anyone else out there loves to read cookbooks for fun. If you haven’t you probably haven’t found a fun one like Susan Branch’s. She has others, so I’ve been collecting them from my thrifting jaunts. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have one called Winter or Spring. She says that the Summer book covers spring recipes and her Christmas cookbooks cover winter ones. Her little comments on each recipe simply entertain me. (Just like the comments that Serene and Pearl make on their recipes in the Trim Healthy Mama cookbooks.)

Interspersed between the recipes are lusciously decorated poetry pages, memories of Thanksgiving as a child with her big family and relatives, fun lists, and pages of tips for gardening, harvesting, food preservation, and having fun in autumn: fall decorating, entertaining with dinner parties, making your guest room more cozy, what to collect when you go antiquing and leaf peeping, homemade gift ideas, and quotes about harvest time and fall. This is just an autumnal homemaker’s heaven in between two covers of a book! It even has a ribbon bookmark. The dishes look like a feast, and the illustrations and words are a feast for the mind.

Reading this book is one way I delight and dazzle my life as Ramona Zabriskie of Wife for Life talks about. So…excuse me while I go fill up a tub for a hot bubble bath soak in the tub and drink in this book!