It happened on cue, like an actor hitting their mark:
Labor Day arrived in America ten days ago, and, as she has done for the last twenty or so years, our neighbor Sherry threw a party: hamburgers, hot dogs, kids, a water balloon toss, a Yankee swap that inevitably gets very bawdy, swimming. Years ago, when she first started doing this, it ended with a campfire, guitars, ghost stories, and the neighborhood kids setting up tents in the yard and sleeping over with an assigned parent. Breakfast the next morning: hangovers, eggs, bacon, a lot of coffee. And almost always, the morning after the party was chilly — the first chilly morning of the season, as though some great cosmic hand had planned the necessity of wearing hooded sweatshirts after a long, hot summer which was, suddenly and precipitously over, just like that.
Those neighborhood kids are now nearing twenty-five. Some have moved away (England, Charleston, Florida), married, and now have their own littles. Some have divorced; some have fought off and survived dreadful illnesses. Many no longer drink or drink far, far less. Our parents, if they are still with us, are getting a lot older. And yet, we still manage to come together with our weird camping chairs and platters of deviled eggs, lemon tarts and chocolate biscuits, and trays of macaroni and cheese ostensibly made for the children (sure). This time, I looked around at us in our aforementioned weird camping chairs and could finally see it: we all actually look older. This, it seems, is also what September does.
And yet: I love this month.
I love it more than any other month of the year. I love it although it has always been the month of profound change for me, and, like any good cancerian, I wouldn't exactly say I like change: my parents married on September 9th, 1962, and separated on September 23rd, 1978. I love it because of the memories I have of my grandmother, Clara, setting our table with a starched white tablecloth and her mother’s silver candlesticks, and teaching me how to dip apples into honey, and it wasn’t about the prayers but about the ritual; it was almost always September. I love September even though I was in my car driving back to Connecticut from Manhattan where I’d stayed overnight with my mother, and heard an NPR story about a private plane flying into the North Tower, and twenty minutes later, life as we knew it had changed forever, and my creative director’s husband Kenny didn’t come home.
September is my father, with his beautiful tenor voice, singing this song, below, while driving somewhere in the car, and never being able to sing it again after the attacks. September is The September Issue; September is saying goodbye to the past season, and starting over. September is the academic calendar to which most of us subconsciously hew, out of ingrained habit. I live in New England, and September is hysterical color and leaf-clogged gutters and leaf mold and bears showing up on the deck because the weather is changing and they’re hungry.
A lot to say about September as we head into the second weekend of the month, and some things to share that I think/hope you might find interesting:
Recently, Susan had to have an incredibly unpleasant procedure done to relieve the back pain she’s been walking around with for years. (Think of the words harpoon and knitting pin and you’re on the right track.) She is, thank goodness, fine, still achy, but on the mend. I had no idea how long the procedure was going to take, so I brought along a book to read: Nigel Slater’s A Cook’s Book. When the nurse saw me, she rolled her eyes. You’re not going to be here THAT long, she said. Because this book that I decided to tote along with me is 512 pages of pure Nigel, and weighs a lot. But comfort comes from different places for different people, and I brought this gigantic hardcover book with me because it’s a touchstone in my fall kitchen. September also means that we’re on the precipice of new cookbook season, and I’m waiting with bated breath for Nigel’s next book, A Thousand Feasts, which is coming on October 1st.
In September of last year, the Sycamore Gap tree was vandalized in Northumberland where it stood for centuries in a dip near Hadrian’s Wall. I wrote about it here, and about how the subtle malevolence in the banal results in humans chopping down whatever they want to without giving it so much as a second thought. When woods and trees are destroyed — incidentally, deliberately — imagination and memory go with them, writes Robert Macfarlane in The Old Ways. To mark the felling of the Sycamore Gap tree, HarperCollins is publishing On Sycamore Gap, a stunning collection of poems inspired by the tree, by poet Kate Fox. Katherine May at The Clearing will be celebrating the launch of the book on September 26th, for National Poetry Day. For more information, go here.
This is the season for hearty breakfasts, and this massive mix of greens and eggs on toast stopped me in my tracks as a great dish to make for a brunch in which a hungry crowd has converged on your kitchen. Watch the amazing Jeremy Lee of Quo Vadis cook this here.
Is it strange to love one’s socks? I’m guessing that the answer to this question is Yes. This is a seasonal thing for me: I’m a sandal-wearer until the first frost, or at least I was back before my days of saying things like Is it cold in here or is it me. I used to think of socks the way I thought about supermarket white bread: as a vehicle for something else, or, to quote my dad, like the Garden State Parkway: a garden-free road that connects New York to Washington DC. (Please, before you yell at me: I love a lot of New Jersey, but my dad did like to poke fun.) Socks are the conduit between your pants and your shoes, and even when you can’t see them, it’s important to know that you love them. If you can see them — your pants are rolled up a little, for example — they’d better be good. Favorites for the cool but not freezing season: blue and white striped socks from J.Crew, cornea-burning orange socks from Finisterre, red cashmere socks from Garnet Hill (bougie I know). Is it odd to say that my mood lifts when I’m wearing cool socks? Probably. But then it REALLY lifts when the temperature drops even more and I get to wear these shoes, which my mother bought me in 1988 when I was working in food and on my feet all day, and I STILL HAVE THEM AND THEY ARE PERFECT with outrageous socks and dark jeans. My mother, however, says that when I wear them I look like Dame May Whitty walking on the moors. So: socks. It’s getting chilly: go buy some good socks that you love.
If you have not yet heard of Wyatt Ellis, let me introduce you to this young man. Back in the days before lockdown, Wyatt, then a wide-eyed ten-year-old kid living in Tennessee, took some mandolin lessons and fell in love with the instrument. Not rare for a kid from Tennessee. But watching this guy play is like watching a surgeon at work; a prodigy tapped by the mandolinist Sierra Hull in 2020 for a Tennessee Folklife Apprenticeship, he has appeared several times on the stage of the Opry. Wyatt’s work is not particularly seasonal; it’s just completely phenomenal and I want to make sure that you know about it, even if you don’t generally listen to bluegrass.
An excellent September soup:
The very best minestrone I have eaten comes from the wonderful Australian-Japanese Tuscany-based food writer Emiko Davies, whose work I have been following, and loving, for years. There are a lot of very good minestrone recipes out there—my Italian friends would laugh at me for saying minestrone and recipe in the same sentence—but I believe that Emiko’s is by far the best. The only tweak we ever make comes from soaking and preparing our beans — always Steve Sando’s — which yields a flavorful bean liquid; we use it for at least three-quarters of the broth base, and it is remarkable. If you have leftovers the next day, you could freeze them (the soup freezes very well) or better still, you can cook what remains down to a thick ribollita, which is the porridgy panade of my dreams. The recipe, which was first published in Food52, is below.
Emiko says: This recipe is inspired by the minestrone recipe in Artusi's cookbook, Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (1891), in which Artusi himself instructs is adaptable to your own tastes and what you find in the vegetable patch. More than a recipe, Artusi's is a description of what to put in it. He actually calls for "a little " tomato passata (or paste) but doesn't say how much. I do love that about old cookbooks, though—how recipes are really just guidelines.
The idea here is to take advantage of fresh, seasonal ingredients rather than looking at this as an opportunity to clear out the sad-looking scraps at the bottom of the crisper drawer in the fridge. This is a soup that you can make beautiful no matter what the season: If the greens aren't in season, use other vegetables such as fresh peas in spring or more root vegetables in winter.
If you want to make this more substantial, use beef stock as the base rather than vegetable stock. A little trick to add some flavor to a vegetable soup is also to throw in the thick rind of Parmesan cheese when you can no longer grate anything else from it: It adds lovely flavor and when it’s softened in the warm soup, you can eat it, too (strict vegetarians, just be aware that real Parmesan cheese is made with real animal rennet). If you want something lighter, stick to vegetable stock and you can also leave out the beans and the pasta, rice, or farro.
Serves 4 to 6
1 handful of parsley, both stalk and leaves, chopped finely
3 slices of pancetta or prosciutto, chopped
1 clove of garlic, chopped finely
1 small onion, diced
1/2 stalk of celery, chopped
1 medium carrot, chopped
2 bay leaves
1 small potato, peeled and sliced or diced
1 small zucchini, diced
2 big handfuls of greens (cabbage, spinach, chard, or a mixture), rinsed and roughly chopped
one 14-ounce (400-gram) tin borlotti beans, drained (or a handful of fresh borlotti beans, simmered until tender)
Half of a 14-ounce (400-gram) tin of whole, peeled tomatoes, roughly chopped (or 2 or 3 fresh Roma tomatoes)
1/4 cup rice, farro, or small pasta such as risoni, stelline
4 cups (1 liter) vegetable stock
salt and pepper
grated Parmesan cheese, for serving (optional)
toasted slices of bread for each bowl, for serving (optional)
extra-virgin olive oil
Gently sauté the chopped parsley, pancetta, and garlic in 2 to 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a large soup pot for 1 minute. Add the onion, celery, carrot, and bay leaves and continue cooking until the onion begins to become translucent.
Add the rest of the vegetables, beans, tomato, and rice (or farro or pasta). Season with salt and pepper. Cover with stock, bring to the boil and place a lid on top and cook until the vegetables are tender. Check for seasoning.
Serve the minestrone with a piece of toasted bread in the bottom or on the side of the bowl, and sprinkle over grated Parmesan cheese and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil. Artusi likes to put the Parmesan directly into the pot at the end rather than serve it on top.
Listen to the music, buy the socks, make the soup. The days are getting shorter.
I have worn socks now for the last couple of weeks. I will not confess to how many pairs of socks I own.
The best socks are handmade wool ones. If I have to wear socks they have to be wool. The handmade ones keep getting stolen around here.