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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I know, you're thinking, an onion dip? That's rather boring. But there has to be an onion dip of some sort at a football party, and I think this one adds a little more zip than the typical bowl. As the title says, it's not just onion, it's really onion. Hot sauce adds more kick too.

As a bonus, this is from Food Network's Sara's Secrets. I really wish Sara Moulton was on still on the channel. (Update: I got an e-mail from someone who used to work with Sara who informs me that she has a new show premiering on PBS this April titled Sara's Secrets For Weeknight Meals - thanks for the tip Lesley!)

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.

Writer and editor Jade Walker posts a favorite recipe on her web site every once in a while, and this month it's the Buffalo Wing Sandwich.

Buffalo Wing Sandwiches

1 pkg (9 oz) southwestern chicken strips
1 cup butter, softened and divided
2 tbsp hot sauce
1/2 tsp chili powder
1 tbsp bbq sauce
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbsp parsley, minced and fresh
4 cups shredded lettuce
2 tbsp celery, chopped fine
2 tbsp blue cheese dressing (on the side)
salt and pepper
4 hoagie buns

Not only is this the perfect Halloween goodie for anyone who prefers something a little more adventurious than a candy bar, but it would make a great addition to a scary movie marathon or Fear Factor-themed dinner, based on the names of the sauces alone. Haunted Hot Sauce combined "flesh-eating zombies with spicy food products" to produce a line of spicy sauces with names like "Flesh Feast and "Ghoul Drool." To further add to the appeal, each sauce is packed in its own cedar coffin! Their full line includes:

• Fleshfeast - Medium/Hot with cayenne peppers, garlic and other spices
• Return of Fleshfeast - Hot with cayenne peppers, garlic, coarse ground black pepper and other spices
• Revenge of Fleshfeast - Very Hot with cayenne peppers, garlic, coarse ground black pepper, crushed red pepper flakes and other spices
• Ghoul Drool - Medium/Hot with jalapeno peppers, garlic and other spices

[via boing boing]

You know it - it's the Asian hot sauce that comes in a squeeze bottle with the little green tip. In college, maybe you called it "Rooster" for the picture of the rooster on the front, like we did, because we had no idea how to say "sriracha." It's a staple. If i have nothing else in the refrigerator, like Nick, I have a half-full bottle of sriracha (because it never stays full for long).

I don't know what it is about sriracha that makes me want to put it on everything. Everything, I say, from scrambled eggs to mac and cheese to...pizza? Yes, pizza. If you're a sriracha lover, pizza is probably not even an unusual recipient for a lovely back and forth drizzle of the stuff.

But recently, on a night of Indian take-out, I found myself squeezing the stuff on my naan, as if it were completely normal. My dining companion at first gave me a strange look, then grabbed the bottle. "That's brilliant!"

What's the strangest thing you've done with sriracha sauce (in the kitchen, that is)?

It's almost some form of culinary masochism - but in the summer when it's really hot, I love to punish myself by eating supremely spicy foods that make me sweat even more than I already am. My friends and family think I'm psycho. Of course, there is a completely logical, physiological reason why spicy foods are eaten when it's hot, but there are also other health and preventative reasons why spicy foods are good for you. Let's just take a look at those reasons so we can use them when we go for the Korean yook-gae-jahng in 100% humidity.

• Cancer-fighting and cancer-prevention - A recent study shows that capsaicin can be used to fight pancreatic cancer. It slowed the growth of cancer cells and in some cases, even caused cancer cells to die off.
• Alleviate inflammation - Arthritis and psoriasis are cause by nerve damage and cause pain on joints. Capsaicin supposedly helps to ease that pain.
• Relieve chronic pain - In some cases, spicy foods containing capsaicin greatly reduced pain caused by headaches or osteoporosis.
• Heart-health - Cayenne and chili peppers can help to reduce cholesterol. Additionally statistics show that cultures that eat spicy foods (e.g. some Asian countries) frequently have a much lower rate of heart attack and stroke.

So break out those jalapenos! 

The chiliheads over at the Hot Sauce Blog are apparently pizza fans as well. John recently posted the results of a tasting of six different hot sauces paired with pepperoni pizza. The sauces ranged from Cholula to Blair's Jersey Death, and in the end, PepperMaster's Hurricane Mash came out on top, garnering praise like "blissfully delightful." CaJohn's Cayenne Select and Blair's tied for second. Personally, a good shake of crushed chili flakes does the trick for me. Also, I was a little surprised that Huy Fong's Sriracha didn't show up in the tasting, as I've definitely seen it used on pizza before. Nevertheless, it's a great post.

[Photo: The Hot Sauce Blog]

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!

I had no idea that Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry had a line of hot sauces, let alone that he and his business partners are gearing up for a re-launch with new products. All this I learned from a recent post on The Hot Sauce Blog by Nick Lindauer. The post pointed me over to SweetNSpice.com, which seems to stock a full line of Perry's sauces like the Rock Your World Boneyard Brew hot sauce pictured here. For an extra buck-fifty you can get a bottle with a guitar pick, and for an extra $90 you can get autographed bottles. I know that there's another hot sauce that comes with a tiny little spoon. It seems like an Aerosmith hot sauce would have one too...