Readers in the Northeast are enjoying a fairly autumnal day today, with temperatures sitting a bit lower after some much-needed rain. This sort of weather always somehow makes food taste better. Think roasted chicken with a cold salad, chilled Pinot Noir, plates of oysters with Prosecco ... or whatever's on the menu at your favorite spot.

Happy New Year

Tonight begins Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. And while Hot Plates loved the samples of organic challah with honey butter being given away at a Washington-area Whole Foods Market on Tuesday, we are not sure how we feel about tongue -- though if anyone is going to make it sound good, it is The New York Times in its article today. (We especially loved the "Talk about mouth feel" caption under the photo of the meat.) Their other holiday piece is about Great-Aunt Martha, Uncle Alan and kugel, including a recipe for a  crunchy variety, and the story will make you laugh no matter your cultural background.

Where apples dipped in honey are more commonly heard of as Jewish holiday food, it's candied quinces and spaghetti squash that are enjoyed by Syrian Jews. The  L.A. Times has a review of a cookbook about the Aleppine Jews and their cooking traditions that shows the more exotic side of Rosh Hashanah.

Drinking for Relief

There are two items this week related to The Big Easy, both of which will make you thirsty. In the Dallas Morning News, we see a note about a new vodka, Absolut New Orleans, a mango-and-black-pepper-flavored spirit that sounds like the creative cocktailer's dream. Profits from the sales of the beverage go to rebuilding efforts on the Gulf Coast, such as Habitat for Humanity, among others.

Abita, the beer made in a brewery that sits near Lake Pontchartrain, has been donating a dollar per six pack of their Fleur-de-Lis Restoration Ale to nonprofit relief efforts started after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, according to The Washington Post. Abita Brewing Co., the southeast's largest craft brewery, survived the disaster; its neighbor, Dixie Brewing Co., sadly did not make it, and has not reopened.

Apples: Old Is New Again

There is so much to enjoy in the Los Angeles Times article on heirloom apples.  First of all, it just makes you crazy with desire for a bite of a crisp, cold apple. Second, it is amazing to think of an apple variety that dates back to 1817 or 1200, and it's interesting to learn that Red Delicious apples have been bred to look pretty but don't taste the way they used to as a result of this tinkering. And lastly, just reading the names of the varieties will give you a charge:  The Sierra Beauty, the Bellflower, the Blacktwig, the Smokehouse, the Belle de Boskoop (not joking) ... this is apple erotica, folks.

In the Land of Milk and Honey, They're Always Amused

If you're not from the West Coast, you might find all things California to be very fresh and sort of perky when it comes to the way they eat and drink over there. This article about the amuse-bouche is an example of that relentlessly cheerful creativity. Hot Plates adores this liberal use of booze throughout the meal. It must be all that vitamin D they're getting ...

Lovely Layovers

Travelers could do worse than to get stuck for a while at Kennedy Airport with places like this: Vino Volo in American Airlines Terminal 8 is a new branch of this airport wine shop/bar franchise, and in Delta Terminal 2  is an offshoot of Todd English's Boston-based grill restaurant, Bonfire.

Who's Going Where to Cook What

Scott Ekstrom, who has worked at New York's famed Oceana and Daniel, is going to be executive chef at the city's Brasserie Forty-Four in the Royalton Hotel in midtown, and Craig Hopson is leaving Picholine for One If By Land, Two If By Sea.

Will Goldfarb of Room 4 Dessert and Kevin Pomplun of Thor have left their posts to start Picnick, a kiosk in Battery Park that sells fancy sandwiches and salads in tidy to-go containers.

And in the same spot where reality-show Rocco's on 22nd used to be, New Yorkers will have Borough Food & Drink. It is notable because Zak Pelaccio (Fatty Crab) consulted on the menu, but critic Marian Burros says chef Paul Williams has some refining to do both in terms of the food and the service.

In Washington, Butterfield 9 has a new pastry chef who will bring an Asian accent to the dessert menu, and in L.A., Antonio Tommasi has re-opened Ca'Brea after a fire and will reportedly be a bit closer to the kitchen than he has been in years past.

Wild, Wild Wines

"Lively red wines from less-known regions are just right for fall -- and a bargain to boot," says the LA Times in its piece on Tuscan rossos. "The first day of autumn is less than two weeks away; soon suppers will get heartier, and wines will follow suit."

The New York Times's wine tasting panel, with Eric Asimov as the scribe, tells us this week about a "wild" wine tasting of "flowers and fruits, olives and bacon and herbs." This is Cornas, which may have been thought of for a time as the "bumpkin cousin" of fancier French wines, "powerful yet rustic, perhaps embarrassing to introduce in polite company."

Also described as "wild" by an L.A. Times critic is this Côtes du Roussillon from the Languedoc region. "If you crushed an entire wild blackberry bush into a glass, this is what you'd get."

And selfishly, Hot Plates has to include this review of an Austrian white, since that is what we are crazy about drinking at the moment. The grape is called gruner veltliner, and this wine sounds absolutely delicious: spicy, crisp, peppery and fresh.

Anonymity, Fairness, and Google

We leave you to your week with a tasty morsel not for your mouth, but for the ol' brain. Perhaps the most interesting piece in this week's food pages, in Hot Plates's humble opinion, is this one, which is really more about dining culture than the food itself. Really, what would one be without the other?