Summer bums me out. It’s hot, it’s sweaty, everything smells and can I please just take a goddamn nap already? Everyone gets SAD during the winter, but between May and September, I’m pretty much the worst.

On an intellectual level, I understand why people love summer. The sun comes out en force and the world has shaken off spring allergies and any of its lingering greyness. Everything is so shiny! Carpe diem and stuff. Well, not for me.

Fall, though. Let’s talk about fall.

It’s clearly the best season. Sure, there’s all the comforting food (except gtfo, PSL, you’re not welcome), the warm sweaters, the crisp air. But there’s also something innately promising about the looming end of the year.

It’s the confluence of pent up creativity, projects as yet incomplete and that final burst of energy that finishes the race that is the current year. I can’t get enough.

This summer was mostly great. Adventures were had, oceans of wine consumed, bushels of food inhaled, but I eagerly embrace the impending fall, grandpa sweaters and all.

The Reading List

• There’s this pang of regret I always experience when people beat me to the punch. It’s like a skipped beat of the heart, and then I move on. In this case, it’s about ketchup. Like any red-blooded American, I’ve enjoyed ketchup for ages, and have been mulling it over as a potential food subject recently. Welp, silly me for sleeping at the wheel: Stanford linguist Dan Jurafsky beat me to the punch with his new book, The Language of Food. Check out this great piece over at All Things Considered. In the meantime, I have to find a new thing I’ll probably not write about.
• This will be interesting.
• Martha Stewart throwing shade to goop queen Gwyneth has, in all honesty, been a highlight this week.
• Though it came out last week, it’s still worth taking a gander at Brooklyn Magazine’s food influencer list. Heaps of talent in the Borough, and lots of familiar names on this list, but it’s still an inspiring look at what people are creating.
• Well look at this, food and travel writers/bloggers: Google has revamped its My Maps tool.
• Here’s a bit of wander-envy by way of this lovely missive to Santa Marta in Colombia, by travel writer, watercolor artist and friend Candace Rose Rardon.
• I’ve been seeing a lot of Misty Copeland lately, first on the best summer TV show of all time, So You Think You Can Dance, and then via the viral Under Armour commercial. I was pleased to come across this New Yorker article on her ballet background, and American ballet’s history of diversity and inclusion. Really great read about the culture of dance.
• If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about living in Ridgewood, it’s that its residents fucking love rotisserie chicken. On my various circuitous routes home, I’ve seen many a Mexican, Spanish or South American-owned business rocking some bomb-looking rotating birds in the windows, pumping out the fragrant, spicy smells of slow-cooked poultry onto Myrtle Avenue. This round-up of recipes from Food and Wine only adds fuel to the fire.
• Well damn, this Bon Ap listicle is all kinds of genius. Trendy, beloved kale is now a meme we can’t escape.
• This video, Eggs, from Kitchy Kitchen is legit next-level. Let me don my white-girl cap for a minute and just say: I literally cannot even, all over the goddamn place.
• Some blogging stuff on the ethics of sharing via social channels from Dianne Jacobs. Good stuff here for newbs and vets alike.

Lead photo licensed by Death to the Stock Photo