Since we had bowls of steaming hot lentil soup served with warm cheesy-sesame-seed croissants for dinner yesterday, I decided to make a small eye-of-round roast today, with a Yorkshire pudding, accompanied by acorn squash. One of my most favourite soups. Irving prefers split-pea soup but they're on the agenda too, as we move into winter fare and an increase in the number of meals featuring soups 

The thing about lentil or other types of pulses made into soup, you always add vegetables to add vitamins and minerals and texture and colour, too. This lentil soup had red lentils, garlic clove, onion, celery, carrot, yam and tomatoes included as well as Marsala for special oomph so it  had plenty of character, not to mention flavour. I always blend these soups with an immersion blender so the contents are well integrated and the texture dense.

I had planned days ago for that meal, and so had made a bread dough and set it aside in the refrigerator. Which was an efficiency I often rely upon when time is tight. The bread dough had sesame seed added to it and I grated sharp cheddar into the flattened dough, preparing it for croissants. The fragrance of the soup along with the baking croissants certainly stirs up an appetite.

Today, another busy day of house-cleaning. We had an afternoon ravine hike with Jackie and Jillie, hardly believing how balmy the atmosphere was, with a slight breeze, beaming sun and 18C. It's a bonus that there remains colour on the trees in some areas of the forest, while others have been drained of their colour, the high winds of the previous days ripping foliage from their perches.

Though the wind was light while we were out, it still stirred through the almost-denuded trees bringing down leisurely drifts of floating confetti-leaves. Some areas of the forest landscape look sere and colourless with blacks and greys of tree trunks prevailing, their green crowns entirely absent. It takes some getting used to.

Until snow begins to fly in about three-four weeks or so it's what the landscape will look like; sere, and bleak, the conifers offering the only colour to relieve the monotones of grey-black. It's when you begin longing for snow to make its presence to lighten the landscape.