Last week of August. Two things go in the oven Sunday and neither of them is dinner.

Slow-roasted tomatoes and corn stock. Forty-five minutes of work, three hours of the oven doing it alone, and then it's September.

Sixteen weeks. There is a log of herb butter in your freezer that will still be there in November.

Every sauce since May had a one-week clock. This one doesn't. Make it Monday, use it all week, find it again in October.

We're going back to Mexico this week, and we're doing it without a single tortilla.

Pozole, albóndigas, chiles rellenos. The cooking that had to stand up without anything to hide behind.