Ultimate kitchen hacks: Autumn recipes » Your palate will never be ready for these fall-inspired masterpieces Caroline Ho Web Editor he leaves are turning red, the windshields are icing up in the morning, the Christmas displays are making their embarrassingly premature appearance, you know what that means— autumn is definitely here! Of course, along with all of the delights of fall and the impending holiday season, autumn also heralds the impending winter. This means you need to start bulking up in preparation for the cold and, like a hibernating grizzly bear, storing energy for those two months where you dont leave your house except to fight fellow holiday shoppers in poorly designed parking lots. To this end, the Other Press has assembled several classic recipes to both get you in the autumnal mood and start pre-stretching your stomach and waistline for those upcoming holiday feasts. What are you waiting for? Why are you still reading this preamble? Come on, youre wasting precious calories here! Pumpkin spice white rice Cooking time: 30 minutes Serves: 4 Ingredients: 1cup uncooked white rice 4cups ground cinnamon 2cups ground ginger 1cup ground cloves 1cup ground nutmeg Ah yes, pumpkin spice, the quintessential flavour of autumn. We figure there are a million recipes for hot drinks, buttery pastries, and everything else under the sun featuring pumpkin spice. It belongs in literally every single dish imaginable, so why not try it on the simplest, most inoffensive dish possible: White rice. 1. Prepare rice according to package instructions. 2. Contemplate how much you hate it when recipes tell you the above because no duh, youve going to follow instructions, youre not a total fool. 3. Realize you are a total fool and bought cloves of garlic instead of cloves-cloves. Whoops. It’s all the same stuff, right? 4. You also bought whole cinnamon sticks instead of ground, so throw them on the ground and step on them a bit to properly, um, ground them. 5. Mix all spices together in a bow] that’s too small because your roommate used all your larger bowls. 6. Discover that you burnt the rice because you cannot, in fact, follow package instructions. (You've never done this without a rice cooker before, okay? Rice is hard!) 7. Decide to omit the rice because those carbs are just getting in the way anyway. Instead, pour spice mixture directly into mouth. Better yet, just use an IV drip. Organic autumn tea Cooking time: 2.5 hourws Serves: 12 Ingredients: 1 large bucket 1 smaller bucket 1tsp chamomile flower Good job, you messed up making rice. Well, at least you can’t mess up tea, right? A hot cuppa is the perfect thing for this miserably cold weather and your shot nerves. We guarantee this will be the freshest brew you've ever brewed. 1. Place large bucket outside, uncovered, to accumulate rainwater. Leave for about two hours. 2. If not currently raining, check to make sure your'e in the right city, then reapply bucket. 3. Meanwhile, use smaller bucket to gather fallen tree leaves. Unlike mushrooms, the more colourful, the better! Aim for a variety of different species to really enhance the body of your tea. 4. Once you've accumulated a respectable number of leaves, bring collected rainwater to a rolling boil. Add leaves, then reduce heat to a simmer for three minutes. 5. Add chamomile flower for its calming properties. 6. Remember that you hate chamomile (it smells so good, but it tastes so YUCKY!) and become irrationally angry instead of soothed. 7. Serve lukewarm because frankly that’s how you feel about this whole cooking thing at this point. Halloween basket extraordinaire Cooking time: About two weeks, give or take a year Serves: 1 Ingredients: 200g leftover Easter chocolate 50g leftover Valentine’s Day chocolate 30g mints pilfered from various restaurants thandful last year’s questionable Halloween candy 0.75 0z self-control (Optional) Like a responsible neighbourly adult, you bought a big box of Halloween candy to hand out to trick-or-treaters. Unfortunately, like an irresponsible child you appear to have eaten it all yourself already. (You had to cleanse the chamomile taste somehow.) Luckily for you, this recipe contains a decadent blend of complex flavours that are guaranteed to be a hit among the kids. 1. Ina large bowl (did your roommate do the dishes yet?) assemble the first four ingredients. Toss well to mix. 2. While the candies marinate, dig through every desk drawer and every winter jacket you own in case you missed one or two candies. 3. Stir the mixture periodically to ensure all pieces are evenly coated in the atmosphere of Halloween spookiness. Don't be afraid to taste as you go to ensure you have an optimal balance of flavour profiles. 4. Once thoroughly mixed, store in a cool, dry, childproof place until ready to serve on October 31. 5. Spend Halloween sitting by your door wondering why you haven't had a single trick-or-treater, then remember at 1 pm that you live in a basement and no one knows youre here. Bonus: If you play your cards right, your basket extraordinaire can also serve as your contribution to your next holiday potluck. And next year’s Valentine’s, Easter, or Halloween. The feast never ends! Yikes, you acknowledged that person you only vaguely know » Panic tangible as you attempt to navigate social situation ——_—— =_— ce Michele Provenzano Staff Writer t started out like any other day. You were minding your own business, strolling across campus to class when it happened. Down the hall, you saw that guy from one of your classes. Luke, you think his name is. Okay, who are you kidding? You know his name is Luke. But he never actually personally told you that his name is Luke—you simply heard the professor call him by his name. You feel weird knowing this. Are you allowed to know this? More precisely, are you allowed to admit that you know this?! ‘You two don’t know each other very well; you have only spoken once when you were placed into the same discussion group in class. Would he remember you? Surely, if you recognize him, he must recognize you... right? As you both walked in each other’s direction, you kept looking at him—waiting for him to look back at you so that you could gauge his reaction. Maybe you'd see that spark of recognition in his eyes. He just kept on looking down at his phone. Crap. You had nothing to go on. You kept debating whether you should follow the standard social protocol of pretending you don’t know people who you actually know. You didn’t have much time; you were mere feet away from each other. You don’t want to seem rude, but you don’t want to seem— “Hey!” You just went for it as you came face-to-face with the guy you barely know. He kind of looked up at you, confused, but didn’t say anything before you passed each other. Yikes. Just keep walking and don’t look back, you told yourself. He must not have known who you were. It was so naive of you to think someone would know you just because you know them. You should have acted distant and detached, like every normal person does! The situation forced you to decide between authenticity or putting on a facade. ‘You chose the more sincere (and therefore, less cool) option, which led to an awkward situation. ‘You wondered whether he, upon seeing your face, went through the exact same train of thought. Wondering if you recognized him, debating if he should acknowledge you or if that would seem weird—only to decide to bury his face in his phone so as to avoid the decision altogether (lluminating the harmful and isolating effects of the dominant social norm of acting aloof which is possibly to blame for high rates of loneliness and lack of strong social connections among young people today.) Or maybe he just didn’t recognize you. Yeah, it was probably that.