Chicken and Veggie Tater Tot Hot Dish

“Even if something is left undone, everyone must take time to sit still and watch the leaves turn”   ~ Elizabeth Lawrence

Brookside Park – October 19, 2016

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It's been a season of stunningly beautiful weather in Iowa.

The time of year when the days feel particularly precious, because we know the rhythm of the seasons all too well.  There won't be many more weeks like this one.  Pretty soon the landscape will be entirely different: white and frozen, dotted with snowmen

As I type, I'm sitting at a picnic table at the park eating my lunch, Sally at my feet chewing her stick.  Recovering after being spayed and a huge bump on her head; we've purposed a few days of quiet.  It feels peaceful to be in this spot, bathed in molten sunlight, with bright yellow leaves drifting down from the maple trees.  Even the ground seems to glow and burn with light.

For as long as I can remember, October has been my favorite month.

How I loved coming to this very park as a young mom, pushing two little ones through the leaves in their stroller.  As they grew older the days of fall were filled with pumpkins to carve, Halloween costumes to make, and trick-or-treating until the last porch light had gone dark

Back then we lived beneath the shade of a maple tree, and there were so many leaves to play in

“Dear Mom, can I help?” ~ Love, Sally

Admittedly, I've felt weary this week; and just like my old neighborhood, this park always been a place of refuge for me: a place to be still, and re-find my center.

I've been thinking a lot about parenting as of late.  Autumn was always a good time to be a mother, and it's during this time of year that I find myself missing my now-grown children as they once were.

How I would love to relive our old apple-picking and pumpkin choosing traditions.  Truth be told, those years gave me permission to be a kid again myself; to spend hours stirring pots of applesauce on the stovetop, gathering walnuts, and pressing perfect red leaves between sheets of wax paper tucked into our fattest books.

Those days are but a memory now.  Instead, I remind myself that the task at hand is to lean as deeply as I'm able into the place I am today.  A chapter where it seems the past and present are layered together; the sum of so many yesterdays making the present

that much better

In the evenings, smoke from our neighbor's fire pit brings back memories of gathering around our own backyard blazes.  Just as seeing tractors and combines in the fields brings me even further back in time, to Octobers as a child on our family farm.

I wonder, perhaps, if all autumn memories tend to be bittersweet?  Reminders that change is our only constant, and nothing lasts. That even the promises of unconditional love are subject to withdrawal, at a moment's notice.  In today's world, with a simple click of a mouse

“To everything (turn, turn, turn)

There is a season (turn, turn, turn)

And a time to every purpose, under heaven”   ~ The Byrds 

Here, in the middle of my forties, these words have taken on a deeper kind of truth.  There's no holding onto the things of the past, no grasping for that which has already slipped away, along with summer's long warm days.

“There's only here

There's only now”     ~ Van Morrison 

I'm always a bit greedy when it comes to fall.

Just one more trip to the farmer's market, a final bag of tomatoes, picking the last of the produce from the garden.  Visits with my grandchildren. A full harvest moon hanging in the sky.  A house filled with summer's final flowers

Most of all, long golden walks with my husband and the puppies at the park.

I'm so thankful to have gotten my wish

Tater Tot Hot Dishes

They were one of my favorite things to eat as a kid.  Over the years they've maintained a soft spot in my heart.

To page through an Iowa country church cookbook, and you'll find a few different versions of this quintessential comfort food.  It's a staple at church basement potlucks.  Many would argue that one isn't a Midwesterner until you're able to properly apply a layer of tater tots to a 9×13 casserole dish of creamed soup.

A typical tater tot hot dish is made of ground beef and cream of something soup, along with peas or green beans under a bed of store-bought tater tots.

This version adds a healthier twist.  Inspired by Cook's Illustrated's recipe for chicken pot pie; it's made with from chicken, béchamel, and veggies.

Enjoy!

xoxo

~ Adapted from Cook's Illustrated