Like Humpty Dumpty, We're Having a Great Fall

A game-changing Crocktober Crossover, some advance holiday bar prep and THE APPLE CANNON highlight a festival fall Friday on the ACBN

Scott Hines

24 Oct 2025 — 13 min read

I've really been enjoying this fall.

It's been a super busy season, don't get me wrong; I feel like I've barely sat down since Labor Day. It's been for mostly good reasons, though: fall festivals and football games, scenic hikes, pumpkin-picking and a lot of great outside time in general.

There's also been a ton of baseball.

My beloved Cleveland Guardians decided to revive a moribund season with a stunning late push into the playoffs, but that's not the headline event for me. No, the real highlight of fall has been assistant-coaching my 10-year-old son's first year of rec-league baseball, a great bonding experience (and learning experience for both of us) that concluded late last night with a win their final game of the fall season. There were some bumps along the way, but getting to throw a ball around with some happy kids a couple nights a week has been a blast, and I'm grateful for the experience.

It really has been a great fall, and even though I'm fully aware that the time changes next weekend and we'll be plunged into months of darkness, I'm not ready to put a bow on it quite yet.

I've got plans.

In between the ballgames and hayrides, I've been able to cobble together a fully loaded slate of autumnal excellence for you today, one that includes:

An epic CROCKTOBER Crossover event
A cocktail that feels like shooting apples out of a cannon, which is a comparison I am equipped to make
Important investments in holiday festivity, starting NOW
Music and TV recs, sports grudges, and more!

The sun is setting and the leaves are crunching. Let's fall out.

It's the biggest crossover event since Urkel showed up on Full House

As the weather has grown colder and CROCKTOBER has progressed, I've known one thing in my heart of hearts: I was going to make gumbo.

Two years ago this week, I got a primer on making it the proper way at the excellent LSU tailgate helmed by my friend Zach Rau, and while mine isn't as good as his, it's pretty damned good.

I was going to make it again. I had all the ingredients on hand, and I had a Saturday afternoon cleared for the laborious chopping and time-consuming roux-making.

Then, I stumbled across this recipe for a chili-gumbo hybrid, and well... curiosity got the better of me. I've been talking about needing an angle for my upcoming office chili cookoff that would allow me to be just weird enough to win but not so weird that my coworkers realize I'm actually weird, and this might be the ticket.

Is it heretical, both from a gumbo standpoint and a chili standpoint? Maybe. Probably? Absolutely. It sounded fun, though, and I had the time. I didn't follow that recipe exactly, but rather ran with the concept in my own way–making gumbo to the letter of my recipe above up to a point, then steering off into ChiliTown.

Follow along with me, won't you?

Chiligumbo, the Gumbo That's Chili

First, the Chili Base:

12 dried chile peppers, a mix of New Mexico, Ancho, Guajillo
2 cups chicken stock

Remove the stems and seeds from the peppers and roughly cut. Toast in a dry pan until fragrant, then add the chicken stock and simmer until soft. Transfer the whole lot to a blender and puree until smooth.

2 pounds ground beef
1/4 cup tomato paste
1-2 cups Chili Base
2 tablespoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons smoked paprika
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon dried oregano

Brown the ground beef in a saucepan, draining fat as best as you can. Once browned, stir in the tomato paste, chili base and spices. Use enough chili base to get it all well-coated, then remove from the heat and reserve for later.

Next, the gumbo.

1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup all-purpose flour

I go into more detail on this in the linked gumbo recipe above, but... you're just going to whisk this constantly over medium heat for... 30? 40? 50? minutes until it's a dark chocolate brown.

1 cup yellow onion, finely chopped
1 cup celery, finely chopped
1 cup green bell pepper, finely chopped

Toss these in to the roux; it'll immediately sizzle and get darker. Keep stirring for 10-15 minutes.

2 pounds andouille sausage, sliced
Chili/beef mixture from above
3 bay leaves
4 cups chicken stock
1 (28-oz) can peeled tomatoes, crushed

Fold this all in, bring it to a boil, and the reduce to a simmer for an hour or so. Serve with rice, or cornbread.

My verdict? It was good! Quite good, in fact, though a little confusing. I've made good gumbo and I've made good chili, and this wasn't quite either thing. It was very tasty, and I'm going to make it for the chili cookoff, because I believe in the Madman Theory.

It was a fun exercise, even if next time I'll probably just make one thing or the other.

He's got them apple bobbin' genes

Last week, I themed my weekly drink around the CORN PIT, a feature at my family's favorite fall farm destination. Said pit–literally just a giant sandbox filled with millions of dried corn kernels–isn't the only attraction my kids look forward to there each year. My son, being 10 years old and possessed of the same brain as any 10-year-old American boy (more on that later), was also very excited for the Apple Cannon.

the what

The Apple Cannon!

You know, [Bill Hader as Stefan from SNL voice] it's that thing where you pay for a bucket of apples and load them into a howitzer-like gun that uses pressurized air fire them at targets like a junked-out old car or cutouts of both University of Louisville and University of Kentucky fans?