What We Cooked Up September 2026

1 September 2026

September Arrived So Quietly

September arrived so quietly. No dramatic change at the door. No sudden golden leaves covering the pavement. No great declaration from the sky that summer had finished and autumn had officially begun.

Just darker mornings. A little more cold in the air. The feeling that the days are becoming shorter even before we are ready to admit it. And us, sitting with reheated coffee before work, looking at the first day of the month and thinking: No. We are not ready to say goodbye to summer yet.

Not because we refuse September. Not because we want to fight the calendar. We simply still have summer left to live. There are pencil plans ahead, and most of them are currently bending toward one place.

Amorgos. The ferry. The sea. The sun. The food. The unknown. The little decisions that will happen only once we are there. Bus or taxi? Coffee here or there? Which ice cream flavour? Which road? Which restaurant? Which magnet? And maybe, if the ground is kind, one small charm chosen not because a trend told us to do it, but because something real became ours.

So no, we are not closing summer just because September appeared on the calendar. But that does not mean we are going to ignore September either. We know it is here. We can feel it already. The colder air. The darker mornings. The first thought of thicker jackets. The possibility of rain returning more often. The sense that soon the kitchen will begin changing too. 

Salads giving space to soups. Cold drinks making room for hot chocolate. Lighter dinners slowly becoming stews, roasted vegetables, mushrooms, bread warm from the oven. And somewhere later, the first orange-yellow leaves will appear. Photos will happen. Autumn light will start doing what autumn light does. And we will be there for that too. Because we do not want the calendar to lead our lives.

We want life to lead them. So we will work. Commute. Stand on platforms. Complain about trains. Come home tired. Cook together. Laugh. Go on holiday. Return. Wash clothes. Reheat leftovers. Write when something asks to be written. Say nothing when nothing needs saying. Look at the rain. Look at the sea. Wear the thicker jacket. Eat feta. Drink hot chocolate. Photograph leaves. And keep doing what we already know how to do best. Live ordinary.

Then, by being fully there together, sometimes watch ordinary turn into extraordinary without warning. That is enough.

So hello, September. You arrived quietly. We noticed. We are not giving summer back yet. But we are not closing the door on you either. Come in. There is room for both.

— by Elena & Atlas

5 September 2026

We Ran. We Bought Them. Now Let’s Talk About the Sad Bits.

There is a particular kind of food video that does not suggest. It commands.

Run. Go now. Buy this before everyone else does. Sometimes the person filming is standing directly in the freezer aisle, product in hand, speaking with the urgency normally reserved for emergency evacuations. Apparently, if you wait until tomorrow, civilisation may continue without you. Ha ha!

We saw enough of those videos about these potato wedges that eventually we started looking for them ourselves. Not obsessively. But now and then. Our local M&S did not have them. Then more videos appeared. More freezer-aisle declarations. More “you need these.” So when they finally arrived in our little corner of the world, of course we bought them. We were curious. And because the packaging said olive oil, that curiosity had a little extra shine.

We tried them first with chicken gyros. We were not impressed. But one meal is one meal. So we left the other half of the bag for another day. Today was that day.

We opened the bag again. And that is when we met the sad bits. Broken pieces. Tiny chunks. Some wedges looking bruised enough that we stopped and inspected them before putting them on the tray. Not catastrophic. Not scandal. Just disappointing when the product has been presented online as something worth running for.

Then we looked at the ingredients. Potatoes: 90%. Olive oil: 6%. Water. Salt.

That made us stop again. Our much cheaper frozen straight-cut potatoes contain around 96% potato. So where had the extra potato gone? Not into a conspiracy. Six percent had gone into olive oil, and the rest into water and salt. Fair enough. But it raised a simple question. If we are paying more for less actual potato by weight, what are we getting in return?

The packet says the wedges can be cooked from frozen in the oven for around 18–20 minutes. Our old oven disagreed. We gave them around 40. Eventually, they looked good. Golden. Properly browned. Promising.

Then came the tasting. The outside was very crisp. Almost too crisp. The centre was soft enough. Salt level was fine. They were not oily. And despite the olive oil appearing prominently in the idea of the product, we could not honestly say we tasted a distinctive olive-oil character.  That does not mean the olive oil is not there. It is on the ingredient list. It means that, on our plate, it did not become the reason to choose these over a cheaper alternative.

And then something else happened. They cooled. The crisp coating became harder. Not unpleasantly crunchy. Hard. There is a difference between crisp and armour. Ha!

We left some. That matters too. Because food is not judged only at the perfect first bite, seconds after leaving the oven. It sits on the plate. You eat the rest of dinner. You talk. You reach back for another wedge. And that is when the texture tells you what it really is.

Our conclusion? They are not terrible. Some people may genuinely love them. They can become very crisp. They are not greasy. They are adequately seasoned. But for us, they do not justify the price.

Not when we can buy a cheaper bag of frozen straight-cut potatoes containing more potato. And certainly not when we can buy fresh potatoes for even less, cut them ourselves, parboil them, rough them up, add spices, maybe semolina, maybe Parmesan, and make the exact kind of roast wedge we actually want.

Yes, that takes longer. But sometimes longer is not a disadvantage. Sometimes longer means one of us cutting while the other chooses the seasoning. Sometimes it means changing our minds halfway through. Sometimes it means talking nonsense in the kitchen. Sometimes it means spending twenty extra minutes together.

And after a period in our life when money was scarce enough to teach us exactly what each pound means, we do not confuse being able to buy something with believing it is worth buying. We learned the value of money when there wasn’t much of it. That lesson did not disappear when life became more stable again.

So no. We will not be running back for another bag. Not because M&S is bad. Not because influencers are bad. Not because nobody else should buy them. Simply because they did not deliver enough for the money they asked from us.

Our kitchen votes no.

The burger, however? That is another story. Halloumi. Gherkins. Raw red onion. Lettuce. Yogurt, mayo and sriracha sauce. Soft tiger bun.

Simple. Balanced. Delicious. No screaming required. No freezer-aisle emergency. No run. Just dinner. And sometimes dinner quietly wins.

- by Elena & Atlas

6 September 2026

The More You Travel, the Harder It Becomes to Choose Where Next

Twenty-four hours before leaving for a trip we have talked about for almost a year, we started discussing next year’s holiday. Typical us.

The suitcase was almost ready. The flat was clean. The route to the airport had been checked. The ferry was waiting somewhere in tomorrow. And instead of simply sitting there and enjoying the anticipation, we started asking: Where next? Another Greek island? 

Sicily, because pistachios have somehow become a perfectly respectable reason to consider an entire region? Sardinia, because we know surprisingly little about it?

Corsica, because we want to understand how French it feels — and how much it doesn’t?

Madeira, because apparently a holiday should include at least one dramatic cliff walk where Atlas says “careful” approximately one million times?

We laughed. Then we realised something. We couldn’t choose. Not even approximately. And this felt strange at first, because the desire to travel has not disappeared at all.

The travel bug is very much alive. It still screams: book something, go somewhere, see another sea, eat another thing you cannot pronounce properly, walk another road, take another photograph, find another place where ordinary life changes shape for a few days.

So this is not travel fatigue. At least, not for us. It is something else. Maybe the more you travel, the harder it becomes to choose where next. We say “maybe” because we are not trying to turn our Sunday-afternoon conversation into a universal truth.

We do not know how everybody who has travelled extensively feels. We only know what happened to us.

One of us has already travelled through more than thirty or forty destinations over the years. Together, in nineteen months, Amorgos will already be our fourth proper trip — which feels like a lot considering how difficult money has been for part of that time. And experience changes the way you choose.

When travel is new, almost everything contains mystery. A photograph of a white village is enough. A beach is enough. A promise of good food is enough. A city name can carry an entire fantasy. The unknown does a lot of the work.

But after travelling more, you start collecting reference points. You know what a beautiful old town can feel like. You know that “quiet” can mean peaceful, but sometimes it can simply mean there is nothing open after eight. You know that “easy public transport” can mean one bus every ninety minutes. You know what a good food destination means to you personally. You know how much walking you actually enjoy. You know whether you want museums, villages, beaches, mountains, cafés, markets, or absolutely nothing for half a day.

You know yourself better as a traveller. And that makes choosing easier in one way — but harder in another. Because you are no longer asking only: “Is this place beautiful?” You start asking: “What would this place give us that we haven’t already felt?” That is a much more difficult question.

It does not mean the places are less interesting. It means your experience is holding more ground.

You can already imagine some of what is waiting. You have enough memory to compare. And comparison changes anticipation.

This came sharply into focus for us because we were trying to dream about next year while this year’s dream had not even started yet. Amorgos was still ahead of us. Not behind us. The island we had imagined for almost a year was still only a pencil dream. We had not yet walked its roads. We had not seen its water with our own eyes. We had not eaten there. We had not taken a single photograph from the ground. We had not yet found out what the place would actually become to us.

And maybe that is part of the answer too. Sometimes it is difficult to choose what comes next because what is happening now has not finished teaching you anything yet.

Maybe after Amorgos we will want something greener. Maybe we will want more food culture. Maybe we will want easier transport. Maybe we will want another island. Maybe we will want the exact opposite.

We do not know. And for once, perhaps we do not need to know. So this is our small advice from one Sunday afternoon before departure: If you can, do not force yourself to choose next year’s destination while this year’s suitcase is still standing by the door. Especially if you already know travel well.

The inability to immediately name the next place does not necessarily mean you are tired of travelling. It may simply mean your experience has made your yes more specific.

Let this trip happen first. Let the next place earn its turn.

And if Sicily eventually wins because of pistachios, we will deal with that level of scientific decision-making when the time comes. Ha.

- by Elena & Atlas