Many thanks to those of you who have offered restaurant suggestions to include in our next Barbecue Taste Off. We are looking forward to trying them.

The Taste Off has been the bright spot in the bleak landscape of our culinary life. Cooking has degenerated to a sad post-work effort to get food on the table before we fall into bed at 10. Our meals consist of various combinations of onions, garlic, and random vegetables sauteed in olive oil and chicken stock served over pasta. We are, however, in the middle of an interesting experiment to determine the effects of eating a chicken roasted after thawing on a countertop for twelve hours on a warmish day. So far, we’ve had nothing to match the raw seafood consumed in London on our honeymoon, which demonstrated the depths of our commitment to each other “in sickness and in health.”

I blame fall. We continue to receive tomatoes, eggplant, and cucumbers from our CSA, but the thrill has worn off as the flavors pale with the waning of the sun. We’re in that liminal space between the heady delights of peaches and the rich flavors of butternut squash. We’re in that sad, brief time when we realize how achingly beautiful and painfully short life really is.

Even the cicadas are nearly gone.