If you’re not cooking it with meat, Minestrone is also an excellent place for leftover meat. You can shred up whatever chicken, pot roast, roast pork, etc. is left in the fridge and let people add it to their own bowls as they like.

Keat’s To Autumn pretty much nails it.* Underneath it all, there’s the whole horror of death and putrification, but dammit, the best fall days are all about the stretching out of the good times in the face of all of that, about the awesome fullness of what you’re living even when you know it’s not going to last.