Fall Menu: Brisket Braised in Stout, Green Tomato Gratin.

I wish you could smell my kitchen. I've been braising a six-pound beef brisket for a couple of hours, and the stout, bay leaves, homemade chicken stock, homegrown thyme and sage, mustard, and 2 1/2 pounds of onions and six prunes create just the perfect heady richness for the first crisp day of "fall." (Well, it's not really fall. Yet.) Here is the recipe, from Epicurious. I confess a great, unrequited crush on prunes, and these six prunes are such winsome little fellows, like the seven dwarfs. How can you resist a huge recipe for brisket that calls for six prunes?

What else to serve? Because I took down a couple of tomato plants to make room for lettuce, I now have a bag full of green tomatoes. So I looked on the friendly old internet and found this recipe, which I'm tripling. I've made the mornay sauce ahead of time, and I've delegated tomorrow's actual slicing to Mr. Dream Kitchen, who will enjoy using our new kitchen scale to measure the three pounds of green tomatoes. Yes, I got tired of estimating the weight of produce and finally bought the scale. It's like getting a GPS; every little thing is quantifiable now. In a world gone daft, politically (not going to get more specific . . .), it's nice to have a few things that make sense, no matter how small. Little kitchen scale, you make me happy.