The chestnut roasters are out again, here and there along the main shopping streets, their greaseproof bags of warm nuts lined up above the ashes. I wonder how they survive, and how autumn after autumn I manage to resist the smell of warm, toasted nuts and hot charcoal. I cook them at home, in the ashes around the hearth, but they invariably explode, sending hot nut shrapnel across the room. You can buy them vacuum packed or in a jar, ready to drop into venison or beef casseroles or to chop up and add to a breadcrumb and parsley stuffing for large, cupped mushrooms, but they are never the same as those you shell and toast for yourself.

There are walnuts too, and neat orange nets of pecans, hazels and brazils at the greengrocers, all of which signify that Christmas is days rather than weeks away. Even if you don't eat nuts after supper now, you'll need a bag or two for Christmas. It ain't Christmas without a few nuts in the fruit bowl.

You cannot miss the pumpkins and butternuts. They glow among the mushrooms, sweet potatoes and parsnips like Belisha beacons. Anyone who grew the sweet-fleshed Baby Bear variety will probably have roasted them already. Those who went for something bigger will probably be wondering what the hell to do with it. Soup is the answer, and mash, and risotto, and ravioli and pie. Or you could roast then mash it and add it to the batter for American muffins. My advice is to steam great chunks of any squash you have then crush it with a fork and add a little butter and ground coriander and serve it in a pile with sausages.

This is offal season too; time to thread kidneys onto skewers and marinate them in oil and lemon with rosemary needles and juniper before grilling them over charcoal. Stewed slowly in onion gravy they could do with some of the pumpkin mash above. Game must appear somewhere too. It is all too easy to forget until after Christmas when it needs long slow cooking. Now is time to slit a pigeon up the backbone, squash it flat and grill it with butter, thyme and olive oil. Later on we can roast and stew, but at this point they are tender enough to grill or flash roast.

I must roast a partridge and quickly, to get rid of the memory of the half raw, unseasoned monster I was served a couple of weeks ago at a new and much talked about West End restaurant. I might steal their idea of seasoning it with rosemary, salt and pine nuts, but I will cook mine with more attention, so that its flesh is roasted right through, and season it with more care. Neither will I skin it the way they did nor charge the earth for it. Pheasant is another idea. I rarely eat more than one or two a year, usually plain the first time, maybe with a gravy spiked with Madeira. The combination never fails. I like wild rice with mine, boiled till the grains swell but haven't opened out yet. Short of the time-consuming Pommes Anna where the thinnest slices of potato are baked with butter until they can be turned out like a potato fez - I cannot think of a more suitable accompaniment for that gamey bird.

All the fancy food in the world won't get the better of a baked potato. November, more than any other month, is the one where this cheap supper seems most appropriate. We will be bored with it by spring. I scoop the fluffy interior out and mix it with smoked haddock I have cooked in milk, or perhaps just the flesh of a creamy smoked mackerel, then pile it all back in to the empty potato skin, seasoned with pepper, moistened with cream, then baked again till the filling bubbles. Done that? Then slum it by mashing the baked filling with crushed corned beef and parsley instead. Dreamy food that smells of the 1950s.

Oysters, mussels, shrimps and scallops are as good as they can be at the moment. Time for a vast seafood platter, perhaps with garlic bread on the side or if that sounds too dear a treat then a classic Moules Marinière. I have taken to adding more than a glass of white wine or cider to the pot with the mussels, one tiny garlic clove, tarragon and parsley, so that I get a good bowlful of seafood broth to dunk my bread in. Look out for the native oysters, they can be as low as 50p each if you are lucky, and need nothing more than a squeeze of lemon juice.

This is when the pig, fattened with kitchen scraps all summer, would have been killed. Nowadays they kill thousands a day, but the rich nuttiness of the meat seems right for the weather. If you grew fennel and it has gone woody then snap the stems into short lengths and roast them under the joint with sage leaves and bay and a lemon, perhaps, squeezed over. Roast until it smells sweet and aromatic and the flesh shows no blood.You can make a thin gravy with the pan-stickings and some white vermouth. You need nothing more.

Apples and pears are at their peak. Kidds Orange, Cox, Egremont Russet and Blenheim Orange will be good enough to eat for dessert with some of those nuts I mentioned earlier. I had a Norfolk Beefing the other day for the first time - a cracking eat. Look out for them at your farm shop or market. This is the moment to get to taste all the appple varieties that never make the supermarkets and greengrocers. Stock up with them at farm shops and farmers' markets and if you buy too many then juice them, keeping the varieties separate so you get the full force of their character. There's Bramleys to bake of course. Try them cooked till their skins blacken, then eat them, skin and all with a ball of vanilla ice cream.

The blackberries that are left on the brambles have not had enough sun to ripen but there are still just a few worth picking. If there are no more than a handful then just chuck them in the breakfast muesli where their flavour seems to go further than trying to eek them out in a pie. Your last blackberry is the final taste of autumn.