SpiceLines

A perfect Indian summer soup is composed of late season tomatoes and sweet peppers, both roasted over an open flame to bring out their flavor. Ground Aleppo chilies and smoked Spanish paprika add spice.

Is there anything more delectable than the smell of fire-roasted peppers on a brisk September morning? The mingled scent of wood smoke and sweet peppers, skin crackling, juices sputtering into the flames, is just about irresistible.

Summer’s over, whispers the mouthwatering scent, and even dour spirits lift, expectantly.

Early this morning it was a chilly 57 degrees. Just last week we had the kind of sweltering heat that makes you want to drift deep into a catatonic stupor and only wake up when fall has arrived.

Briny shrimp and cippollini onions, marinated in citrus juices, are deliciously sweet when grilled on rosemary branches over hot coals.

How did you spend Labor Day? Rising at noon? Napping in the hammock? Pondering the 324 items on your to-do list?

I’m afraid I was a little too productive. The day began with a Triple Threat muscle conditioning class—a necessary horror considering near daily ingestion of lavender and honey pannacotta last week. (Recipe coming just as soon as I can get my spoon out of the bowl.)

Then B and I drifted around Duke Gardens where we spied a flotilla of magnificent Victoria Amazonica lily pads floating in a greenish pond. With upturned rims, they were big enough for a child to sit upon and dream away the afternoon. Duke has gone tropical, by the way, with towering bananas, pink ginger, and witchy purple-leafed castor bean stalks dangling fuzzy crimson pom-poms in formal beds where prim perennials once held sway.

And then I came home and cut some rosemary branches for grilling shrimp.

Afar's inaugural issue includes pieces on trekking in
Morocco's Berber territory and a village in Bali's
clove-growing highlands.

It takes guts to launch an upscale travel magazine in an unpredictable economy.

Even more so, one which eschews luxury resorts in favor of a Laotian tree house in a remote gibbon reserve, reachable only by "a network of steel zip lines, some stretching as far as 1,500 feet..."

But two guys from San Francisco—Greg Sullivan, a “globe-trotting serial entrepreneur,” and Joe Diaz, a former teacher—have decided that the time is right for Afar, a stylish magazine for independent travelers that goes “beneath the surface of a place and look[s] for experiences that enrich and stretch us.”

There’s plenty for spice lovers and foodies in the premier issue: You can read about Munduk, a northern Balinese village where “cloves carpet the courtyards and walkways as buds dry in the sun, and the air smells vaguely of pumpkin pie,” and Les Garrigues in Spain, where “a fruity, aromatic oil” is made from arbequina olives. In “Feast,” there’s a tempting recipe for “bunny chow,” a South African dish “made of a hollowed-out loaf of bread filled with vegetarian or meat curry” seasoned with a mouthwatering array of spices: cinammon, green cardamom pods, curry leaves, turmeric, ginger and various masalas.

What makes you happy? A profusion of dazzling fall peppers gathered on a early fall morning? The thought of smoky roasted peppper salsas to come? Read on...

Sometimes it comes down to a choice: Ultra-chic Chloe boots, or a carload of glorious fall peppers?

What will make you feel really, really good?

The boots, I must say, are divine. Pebbled Italian leather, supple as can be, in the most delicious shade of rich dark chocolate—kindly ignore the hue in the photo—with a brushed antique gold buckle and a 2-inch stacked wooden heel.

These boots are made for walking, but also for, dare I say it, showing off. At their full, recession-be-damned price tag, the cost works out to $83.33 for each of the dozen or so times I’d frolic down Franklin—or maybe Newbury—Street this fall.

That’s a lot of peppers.

As a sous chef whirls pizzas in and out of the oven in Stir's small demonstration kitchen, Barbara Lynch calmly ladles a rustic San Marzano tomato sauce over the base of a Neapolitan-style Pizza Romana.

Is your kitchen too small?

So lacking in counter space that the Kitchen Aid occupies the dining room table? So crunched that you can’t open the oven door if your significant other is rooting around in the refrigerator?

Well, then, you’d be surprised at how much deliciousness can come from a space not much bigger than a walk-in closet.

Did I mention that besides sheets of marble and frosted glass, a Magnawave induction cooktop, and exceptionally deep pockets, you would need two chefs, one of whom is practically world famous, to turn said closet into a kitchen?

What a way to start the day: a creamy pannacotta flavored with honey and fresh lavender blossoms, topped with the last of the summer blueberries.

Once upon a time I was a good person.

You know: Always on time for carpool. Lurching out of bed at 6 AM to stash freshly cut carrot and celery sticks in the lunch boxes. Nothing too sugary for breakfast…

By the way, this is Serendipity's all time favorite lunch: Cokes and peppermint patties, followed by fresh pineapple-coconut ice cream. Eaten at Kapalua Bay on Maui during spring break.

(Is that the food police? No comment, please!)

But since the baby chicks have flown, things have changed.

Especially breakfast…

It isn't remotely authentic, but this riff on Spanish salmorejo with eggplant is delicious. Instead of frying the eggplant in olive oil, it is roasted at high heat, mixed with garlic, parsley, lemon and toasted walnuts, and spooned onto slices of toasted baguette.

Ssshhhh….don’t tell a soul.

At least not anyone who’s been wailing about a lack of tomatoes this summer.

The big news, around here, is that they’re back.

And I’m not talking about dull-tasting, pale-looking “shoulder season” tomatoes.

No, what we’ve got here are rich-tasting, sun-warmed, so-ripe-the-juice-just-spurts-when-you bite-into-them tomatoes. Cut a dark green-burgundy Japanese Black Trifele with a knife and sweetly acidic tomato essence will flood the kitchen counter and drip onto the floor if you don’t slurp it up quickly.

They’re so luscious you don’t even need salt.