Between family, friends, and my high school reunion, this Thanksgiving weekend was socially and gastronomically packed, and ended, not entirely surprisingly, with a severe case of the flu. After a couple days of mentally and physically rejecting all food in favor of whimpering on the bathroom floor, the cold sweats have passed and I’m starting to regain both my senses and my appetite. As I do, I’m reminded of the importance of taste and smell—senses too often overlooked by writers in favor of vision and sound—in not only establishing the physical or social context of our stories, but in clarifying our characters’ relationships to the outside world as well as their inner health. With that in mind, I’m closing out November with a celebration of fall foods from Vienna (one of the inspirations for my current novel), even if, however ironically, I’m doing so with pictures.