Photo: www.houstonhotsauce.com

September might be halfway over and autumn imminent, but that doesn't mean the fall food fun has to end. Here's a selection of September food fests across the country.

Nappanee Apple Festival, Nappanee, Ind., Sept. 17-20: Apple season is upon us. Many are headed to pick-your-own orchards. This festival includes an apple-peeling contest, apple bake-off, pie-eating contest and the world's largest baked apple pie, weighing in at 600 pounds and a whopping 7 feet across. There's a daily lumberjack show, too.

The Houston Hot Sauce Festival, Houston, Sept. 19-20: Hot sauce festivals are on fire! Nationwide, they're popular, chilehead blow-outs. Attendees can sample and purchase a plethora of sauces, chiles and dry rubs. Don't forget to vote in the People's Choice for the Hottest Hot Sauce at this ninth annual festival.

Grapefruit. Photo: Zanastardust, Flickr

• A new University of Western Ontario study suggests that eating grapefruit can help fend off fast-food fat.
• Toronto-based chef Susur Lee has his own vacation package up and running.
• As the "Julie & Julia" release date moves closer, a chat with author Julie Powell and Judith Jones, Child's Knopf editor.
• Visit a specialty hot sauce store or make your own tongue-zingers.
• Carrots can be orange, yellow or purple!
  
• From farm to fork: A look at duck farming at King Cole Ducks.
• Weekly wine picks: Strewn 2008 Cabernet Rosé, Ravenswood Vintners Blend 2007 Chardonnay, Torri Riserva Chianti Colli Senesi 2005, Quinta Da Carregosa Tinto 2007, Lan Reserva 2004.
• Recipe: Eggplant Börek.

Sometimes, it's not the food itself but its condiments that can spur the imagination -- and thus, the appetite. Though these bottles of hot sauce, snapped by stevesteve8383 at Flickr, are pretty beautiful all on their lonesome, it's the visions they inspire of tacos, heaping bowls of chili, scrambled eggs and pullled pork sandwiches that make this photo so drool-inducing. Where there's fire, there's possibilities -- delicious, tear-jerking possibilities.

[Via Flickr]

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Some of you may already know that I enjoy eating the occasional gloriously messy mango whilst perched over the sink. As you can see from the above pic, that's not the only way I like to savor this supremely refreshing tropical fruit.

Years ago a friend hipped me to the practice of sprinkling my mango with salt and hot sauce. His wife was from Guyana and she always had a bottle of homemade Scotch bonnet pepper sauce. Actually it wasn't so much a sauce as a fiery mix of chopped bright orange and yellow peppers floating in vinegar. This wasn't the first time I encountered this combination though. Back in my college days me and some friends used to have contests to see who could eat the most Patak's mango pickle. Straight out of the jar, mind you, with little more accompaniment than pappadam.

I have not been on what anyone would call a "picnic" in approximately 22 years. No joke. But it's June and that means many people will be heading out to parks and lawns and other places where they can spread out a blanket and eat various foods, so I'll start doing some posts on picnic-friendly recipes.

Today is Picnic Oven-Fried Chicken, over at AOL Food. It's from EatingWell, so you know it's not really fried, it's baked. The hot sauce, sesame seeds, and Dijon mustard in the recipe guarantee lots of flavor and kick.

Masochists and chile-heads have a British stockbroker to thank for unleashing Naga Snake Bite Sauce on the world. The fiery brew is made from what some claim is the world's hottest pepper. According to the sauce's creator, Mark McMullan, the naga morich chili clocks in at a breathtaking 1,598,227 Scoville Heat Units, beating out the bhut jolokia chili. In any case the dorset naga hasn't been certified by Guinness, while the bhut jolokia has.

The finer points of world records aside, one thing's for sure McMullan has created one blisteringly hot sauce. To give an idea, the dorset naga is 300 times hotter than a jalapeno. The pepper's name derives from the naga, a snakelike creature from Indian mythology. This may explain why the label claims the sauce is "Like drinking cobra venom." I don't think cobra venom is spicy, but it's certainly deadly.

Nick Lindauer over at the Hot Sauce Blog recently posted a link to an interview with Belizean hot sauce maker Marie Sharp. Sharp was the original creator of Melinda's line, and she discusses, in detail, how she lost the name to her U.S. distributor. Sharp describes the origins of her hot sauce line, from growing peppers for local friends to eventually finding her products on the shelves of Wal-Mart. The interview was originally published in Belize Magazine, so many of the questions pertain to Sharp's relationship with her country-local fruit, animals and history. It's an interesting read for you hot sauce buffs.

Most habanero hot sauces are strictly one-note affairs. That note being an A sharp in the key of aaaargh. That's because they usually use habanero extracts and those that do use fresh peppers often don't include much else.

Years ago I tasted a habanero sauce that was quite different: Dirty Dick's Hot Pepper Sauce. Not because of the use of fresh habaneros but rather such ingredients as bananas and sultanas that lend the reddish brown sauce a tropical flavor. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the National Barbecue Association recently gave Dirty Dick's a first-place Award of Excellence in the Hot Sauce/Anything Goes category. The sauce's name begs the question of whether they meant to enter under Anything Goes or both!