A taste of autumn

Today I had the opportunity to attend a taping of Cook's Country over in Rupert, Vermont. They weren't quite ready to let the audience in when we first got there, so I took a few pictures while we waited outside.

I'm not sure what birds these are perched on the steeple of the church across the street (although I suspect they're swallows), but I still liked the way the shot turned out.



Some of my fellow audience members hanging out on the porch:



Once we got inside, we were all given three samples of four different foods to taste test: long-grain white rice, black forest ham, reduced-fat potato chips, and yellow mustard—foods that had all previously been taste-tested by their group of 20 or so experts. Not exactly the type of food I'm looking to eat at 8 a.m., but what are you going to do? We all handed in our choices, and then they had Christopher Kimball come out and sample the same things we did to see if he would end up picking what the taste testers had deemed the best of its kind. I'm not entirely sure why we were also asked to put in our votes, to be honest—maybe to see if a smaller sampling of "regular" folks would also pick the taster's choices, and if we didn't then was our favorite the same as his?

At any rate, it was an interesting process to watch. However, it wasn't one I could photograph, as they didn't want any shutter noises interfering with the recording (not to mention flashes from cameras that don't provide the option of switching the flash off). So instead you get a shot I took as they switched setups for the different foods. That's Jack Bishop, co-host of the show and editorial director of Cooks Country magazine, in the apron; standing next to him is the director of the show, whose name has completely slipped my mind:



Filling out the rest of today's photo post, a few foliage shots I took later in the afternoon, starting with two group shots of some of the trees along Route 7A as it goes through town:





The church spire in these two belongs to the First Congregational Church in Manchester, one of the town's most recognizable landmarks:





The town's Revolutionary War memorial:



Which, as you can see, stands not too far from the church:



A solo shot of the tree behind the statue:



And a few shots looking up into that same tree:





I saved this one for last because I was struck by how it looks as much like a watercolor as it does a photo, at least to my eye; I promise, though, that the only Photoshop function I ran on this image was the one that reduced its size to something I could post online: