Six years ago, Thanksgiving meant lying on a hotel room couch in Park City, Utah, wondering what was wrong. I couldn’t see how and why my body had morphed from strongstrongstrong to something I simply couldn’t recognize. Six years ago, I admitted to myself that I was sick. It took me months to admit the same thing to the people close to me.

Thanksgiving means a lot of things, in my heart: It means food, and family, and the eggnog we age in the garage for three weeks. It means balancing cooking and relaxing and drinking and eating – have to do them all in the right amounts, in the right order, you know. And increasingly, it means a small, soft moment or two, when I sit back and remember that there was a time when I didn’t have lupus, and didn’t wake up on the easy mornings – the ones with good, greasy joints – and feel thankful, just to be walking comfortably. Despite all the physical and emotional hubbub that surrounds an autoimmune disease, sometimes I feel almost a little lucky to have lupus. It’s made me much, much better at giving thanks.

This week, I’m mostly thankful for the people who make it easier to live with lupus: For Kelly, who carried my groceries – not because I can’t, but because some days, it’s easier if I don’t. For our nanny, who came on her day off and schlepped all the heavy, awkward stuff out of the car for me. For a guy like Joe, who carried my skis on Sunday without making me feel like a sissy. For my neighbor, who walked my dog last week without knowing she’d picked the day when it hurt just to hold the leash. For my doctors, who tell me that my recent flare (honestly, the worst it’s ever been) can probably be abated by stronger medications and a lot less breastfeeding. For my friends, who told me it was okay to be devastated, and encouraged me to embrace what amounts to a huge departure from how I planned to feed my child. For my husband, who never knew “in sickness and in health” (or our own equivalent) would be a phrase he’d have to visit so often. And for all the people who help and support me, every day, without making me feel in any way handicapped. (That is a very impressive thing, indeed.)

You’ll also be thankful for Sarah, who came over for a gabbing and pie crust-making session and ended up staying to peel the sweet potatoes for this little crisp. (The real one’s bigger, but I’m saving it for the holiday, so you just get a snapshot of the baby version.) It seemed like such a nothing thing to both of us, I’m sure, but I’d broken my most hand-friendly peeler, and getting the job done with the normal metal peeler was somehow overwhelming. She just sat down and got to work.

I meant to come here days ago, for advice on what became my Thanksgiving conundrum of the year. I’d hit upon the idea of a sweet potato crisp – something done before, surely, but nothing my own taste buds had run across – and couldn’t decide whether to serve it as part of the meal or as a dessert.

Then Thanksgiving came cartwheeling in, before I could get my game face on. (There are eight here already, with eight more coming soon.) That crisp? It’ll slide in right next to the turkey, I’ve decided, as a substitute for the gooey-topped version found on so many tables. We’ll pile it onto our plates, along with Erica’s biscuits and a cornbread stuffing I’ve yet to invent all the way.

And when the meal’s over, and my husband’s salty, well-worked hands dig into the pile of dishes, I know I’ll be thankful for the way my family’s worked together to put everything on the table. When the pies come out, I’ll find a spot on the floor, because goodness knows where the couch will be by then, and wonder if it’s possible to teach a child to be thankful, just to be alive.

Thanks for reading. Happy Thanksgiving.

Bourbon Sweet Potato Crisp (PDF)

The recipe below makes enough topping to cover the crisp if the sweet potatoes are snuggled into a 9” square baking pan. You can also put it in a taller dish (like a soufflé dish) and use less topping, decreasing the crunch-to-potato ratio, or spread the sweet potato mixture out in a 9” by 13” dish, so each bite has more topping.

TIME: 30 minutes, plus baking
MAKES: About 12 servings

For the potatoes:
5 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 1/2” cubes
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup bourbon, such as Maker’s Mark
2 tablespoons maple syrup
Salt (to taste)

For the crisp topping:
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup old-fashioned oats
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
3/4 cup (packed) brown sugar
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Pinch salt
3/4 stick unsalted butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

First, start the sweet potatoes: Place the potatoes in a large pot, and add cold water to cover. Bring to a simmer and cook until very tender, about 20 minutes. Drain potatoes, return to the pot, and mash with the remaining potato ingredients. Puree in batches in a food processor until very smooth, and transfer to a 9” square (or similar) baking pan.

While the potatoes cook, mix the topping ingredients in a medium bowl until well blended. Scatter the topping over the potatoes and bake for about 30 minutes, until the topping has browned. Serve warm.

Note: Both the sweet potatoes and the crisp topping can be made ahead and refrigerated up to 3 days in advance. To serve, bake the sweet potatoes for 20 minutes, add the topping, and bake another 40 minutes.

Today, just a few quick links, and a recipe for an oven-roasted (mostly) root vegetable chowder…

That fried squash? You might have heard me talking about it on KUOW, Seattle’s NPR station. (If you didn’t, it’s here.)

Also, I’ve entered the maple-kabocha sour cream bundt cake in Bon Appetit’s holiday dessert bake-off. The winner is picked in part by popular vote, which – if junior high cheerleading tryouts are any indication – has never been my strongpoint, but what the hay. Head on over to vote. (Hint: It’s in the cake category. And while you’re there, look for entries from other Seattle food bloggers!)

And then – then – I’m done with squash. Promise. At least for a day or two.

My recipe for Salty Marcona Almond Toffee – one of my favorite holiday treats – is being featured over at Saveur.com.

We’re having fifteen people here for Thanksgiving. Not much is decided, but I’ll certainly be making this pear-spiked cranberry jam, as well as these bleu cheese and walnut cookies, because a Thanksgiving elf just sent me a six pound wheel of Point Reyes. Today, I begin the hunt for an excellent sausage-studded cornbread stuffing recipe. And if you’re a geometry expert, I could use your help fitting a table for fifteen into our living room.

I’ve been on Twitter (@onfoodandlife) for a couple months now. For those uninterested in joining, note that you can now follow my tweets – and not learn a single thing about social media, if it’s not your thang – on the righthand side of Hogwash’s home page.

And oh, yes. Hogwash. She’s had a little bit of a face lift. What do you think? Is there anything you’d like to see more of around here?

For now, a quick chowder for two. For the days when you can’t sit over the stove and stir.

Mostly Root Vegetable Chowder (PDF)
Made with fennel, parsnips, kale, shallots, garlic, and of course potatoes, this bacon-studded, oven-roasted chowder is a break from the kind that cements you to your seat for the hours following lunch. And because the bacon and vegetables are roasted together in the oven, it takes much less active time than most chowders—and you get the same potato skin snap you get when you roast potatoes alone.

TIME: 20 minutes prep
MAKES: 2 large servings

2 fat slices bacon, diced
Half a (1-pound) fennel bulb, chopped
1 shallot, chopped
2 parsnips, peeled and sliced into 1” rounds
1/2 pound small white potatoes, quartered
2 large garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 teaspoon olive oil
3 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup chopped kale

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Scatter the bacon on the bottom of a heavy ovenproof pot, such as a Dutch oven. In a mixing bowl, toss the fennel, shallot, parsnips, potatoes, garlic, and thyme with salt, pepper, and olive oil. Roast 40 to 45 minutes, until the vegetables are beginning to brown on the bottom and the bacon is crispy. Stir to release the vegetables from the pan.

Add the chicken stock, cream, and kale, and stir again. Cook another 30 minutes, stirring halfway through. Season to taste with additional salt and pepper if necessary, and serve hot.

Note: To double the recipe, switch to a wider pan, like a heavy roasting pan, so the vegetables have enough room to spread out and caramelize a bit.

Before you run screaming, hear me out: Frying isn’t an actual sin. I mean, yeah, it’s bad for you, if you do it every day. Plus, your curtains will smell weird if you have hot oil around the house a lot, and if you own drama queen smoke detectors, like we do, it’ll probably cause you permanent hearing damage if you indulge more than once a month.

But sometimes—when the rains come, and the days seem to be ending sooner, and you’re dealing with, say, a borderline-unhealthy squash addiction—you just need a good fry.

When it comes to fried food, in our house, there are the usual suspects: Chicken. Onions. Potatoes. Fried and true, those guys are. But squash? Never. Squash was an Untouchable.

I had fried squash (tempura, naturally) for the first time in Japan, in the basement food gallery of Takashimaya, which someone once described to me as the Nieman Marcus of Japan. The exterior was surprising – more rough-textured than any fried food I was familiar with, shattery in the mouth, and somehow ethereally light, even though it was served cold. I loved every vegetal bite.

At home, I searched for a recipe, but each click uncovered another layer of musts: You must keep tempura batter coldcoldcold, so the gluten in the flour doesn’t develop. You must use eggs. You must use rice flour. You must not use eggs. You must use oil. You must use wheat flour. You must stir with chopsticks, and leave the batter lumpy, if you want the perfect texture. You must recite the text of Tampopo while mixing. You must use baking soda. You must use baking powder. You must not use any leaveners. You must . . .

I did what any cook worth her salt would do: I tried the tempura batter that comes in a box in the grocery store. And you know what? That worked, for me, for a while.

Then I became a whole-baked squash evangelist. I’ve been roasting away for weeks now, making cakes and food for Graham, and generally abusing every type of squash available by baking it whole, until soft, pureeing it, and putting it into something. I sort of got to feeling sorry for the things – they did all the work and didn’t get any of the credit. I wanted a recipe starring squash as itself. And well, goodness me, doesn’t everyone go through an autumnal fried food binge?

My goal was to avoid tempura altogether, the way you avoid a parallel parking spot that’s technically big enough for your car but too scary to actually use. I went with what I thought was a basic beer batter, spiked with a touch of Tabasco for intrigue. I thought I’d just dip my little kabocha crescents in, fry ‘em up, and that would be that—like onion rings, only orange inside. But no. Nooooo. That first batch had to come out all shattery and elegant on the outside, with a thin, crisp crust barely strong enough to encase what had become, in essence, mashed squash.

If I’d been counting, I’d say I fried six or seven batches that first time, by myself in the kitchen, dipping kabocha into batter and then oil time and time again, just to prove to myself that yes, it would happen again. It did. I was delighted.

Then I started to play: I thickened the batter with a bit more flour, and it bulked up a bit, which gave the kabocha a protective layer that steamed and hissed when the squash was cooked. In this second version, I started to really taste the beer – which is why when I made them again a few days later, instead of using another one of the PBR cans we’ve been fostering in our fridge for going on 4 months, I used a deeply malty, nutty local amber ale.

Then I added more flour. Result: Fair food. I had squash with a chewy, doughy batter, thick enough to sink my teeth into but not so thick it hid the taste of the squash. The crust lifted up off the vegetable just enough to hold a hot, moist puff of beer-flavored air that rushed out with the first bite. Excellent.

Give it a try, if your arteries are feeling unusually elastic (especially if you’ll already have a vat of hot oil around for your turkey one of these days). Start with the thinnest batter, and play with it a bit. Just think: It could very well be the first time you fry a quintessentially seasonal food.

About that seasonality thing: I believe we think of winter squash as something that’s always ripe, but that’s not true. Most squash have to be aged a bit, to achieve peak sweetness. At the market, look for specimens whose stems have dried out and become corky or woody – wet, green stems indicate a freshly-picked squash, which isn’t what you want (unless you want something less sweet that’s harder to cut and sccop, per the photo above).

And oh, yes. I almost forgot. After much testing, it seems like the fried kabocha reaches the ultimate interior texture – and the batter’s crispness and color peak – when the squash is sliced a bit shy of 1/2” thick.

Try not to kill yourself when you cut it, eh?

Beer-Battered Kabocha Squash (PDF)
Made with moonish slivers of bright orange kabocha, this Japanese-inspired snack skips traditional tempura batter in favor of something a bit more American: beer. The batter will fry up differently depending on how much flour you add, so try experimenting—the thinner the dip, the more elegant, crunchy, and tempura-ish your end product will be, and the thicker it is, the more doughy and chewy (and the more you’ll taste the beer). In any case, the sweet squash (and its skin) cooks up to a sweet, soft treat inside.

Dip the squash in a traditional aioli, a Japanese-style combo of dashi, soy, and mirin, or simply sprinkle it with sea salt right when it comes out of the fryer. But be sure to eat your squash hot!

TIME: 40 minutes, start to finish
MAKES: Fried squash for a crowd

Canola oil (enough to fill a deep pot with 3” oil)
1 5- or 6-pound kabocha squash (about the diameter of a soccer ball), halved and seeded
1 to 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup cornstarch
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 12-ounce beer (still cold)
Tabasco sauce (optional)

Heat the oil in a deep, heavy pot fitted with a frying thermometer over medium heat until the oil reaches 325 degrees. (The burner temperature will depend on your stove, so keep adjusting it as needed.)

Meanwhile, use a large knife to slice the kabocha squash into half moons just under 1/2” thick—any thicker, and the squash won’t cook enough before the batter gets nice and brown. Cut each piece in half again and set aside. Line a large plate with paper towels (or line your kitchen counter with newspaper) and set aside.

Whisk the flour, cornstarch, salt, and baking powder until blended in a large mixing bowl. (For a lighter, more tempura-like crust, use 1 cup flour, or use more flour for a thicker, slightly chewier crust. Or start with 1 cup, and add a little as you go, if you’d like to experiment!) When the oil has reached 325 degrees, whisk the beer into the dry ingredients, stirring only until the flour is incorporated. Add a dash (or a glug) of Tabasco sauce, if desired, and mix in.

Working with a few pieces of squash at a time, dip the squash into the batter. Let any excess batter drip back into the bowl, and carefully transfer the squash pieces to the hot oil. Fry for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes, or until the batter is golden brown and the skin of the squash begins to turn from green to brown. (If you made your batter nice and thick, you’ll need to turn the squash pieces over halfway through frying.) Use a slotted spoon or mesh ladle to transfer the squash to the paper towels, and repeat with the remaining squash, keeping an eye on the oil temperature and adjusting the heat as necessary. Serve hot.

It’s been a week of tiny tragedies, here in Seattle. I’ve been sighing a lot. They’re not the contented, self-congratulatory kind of sighs, but the deflating, disappointed sort. The kind you eek out, when there’s nothing left to do.

I’m not sure how it started. Maybe it was last Thursday. Yes, that was it. Curses on you, Thursday.

First I somehow sliced my finger open with my own wedding ring. Then I hit a parked car—a 6,000-year-old Suburban, thank goodness—and busted a headlight. Then a raccoon attacked my normally scrappy cat, and we spent part of a night in the kitty ER. (Jackson came out a little maimed, but alive. He’s mostly just insulted he’s so poorly shaven and trapped indoors.)

Then—then—I made a ricotta cheesecake, a gorgeous, pumpkin-tinged, ginger-crusted gem of a thing, inspired by my borderline-unhealthy obsession with kabocha squash and a bit of leftover cream cheese. But I nearly broke it in half, moving it too fast (and too soon) from pan to platter. (And it had been so beautiful!)

Of course, it still tasted like a perfectly plated pumpkin cheesecake. (Say that ten times fast.) I took one slice out to verify. (Yes: delicious.) Then we took it to a Halloween party, and I never got a second slice.

Poor decision.

Now, a couple days later, in the middle of a grey afternoon, I have a finger that won’t type, a completely unnecessary $150 mechanic bill, a cat yowling to be let out, good coffee, and no last slice of pumpkin cheesecake. All I really feel capable of doing is pouting out loud.

I’ll just give you the recipe instead.

By the way, there’s a tiny lie in the recipe title – it’s actually a light, faintly spiced cheesecake made with pureed kabocha squash, but there’s something inherently unsexy about a squash cheesecake. Don’t you agree? Ditto for cream cheese pie, which is what my husband called the cheesecake when he couldn’t think of the correct word.  So pumpkin cheesecake it is.

Pumpkin-Ricotta Cheesecake (PDF)

Loosely based on the recipe for Eve’s Lemon Cheesecake, from Kathy Gunst’s Relax, Company’s Coming! (one of my all-time go-to cookbooks), this fallish, ginger-crusted treat satisfies all manners of cheesecake cravings. Thanks to plenty of eggs and ricotta cheese (and a bit less sugar than usual), it’s lighter than your typical doorstop dessert. Use pureed kabocha squash if you have it, or simply substitute canned pumpkin.

TIME: 90 minutes, start to finish
MAKES: 12 servings

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted, plus more for greasing pan
1 (5-ounce) package ginger thins, pulverized in a food processor
1/2 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar
1 pound cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 pound whole milk ricotta
4 large eggs, room temperature
1 1/4 cups mashed kabocha squash
1/8 teaspoon each ground ginger, cardamom, nutmeg, and allspice
1 teaspoon vanilla
Pinch salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. Grease an 8” springform pan generously with butter, wrap the bottom with a piece of foil (to catch any butter that drips out while baking) and set aside.

Stir the melted butter, ginger thin crumbs, and confectioners’ sugar together in a bowl until well blended. Dump the mixture into the bottom of the springform pan, and use your hands to pat it into an even layer on the bottom of the pan and about 1/2” up the sides. Transfer the pan to the freezer to harden while you make the filling.

Next, in the work bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, whip the cream cheese and sugar on medium speed until light, about 3 minutes. Add the ricotta, and whip another minute or two. Add the eggs one at a time, whipping on low and scraping the sides of the work bowl between additions. Stir the squash, spices, vanilla, and salt together in a separate bowl, then add the squash mixture to the batter, and mix on medium speed until uniform in color, scraping any stray cream cheese off the very bottom of the bowl.

Place the chilled pan on the prepared baking sheet, and transfer the batter to the pan. Bake on the middle rack for about 1 hour 15 minutes, or until the cake is puffed and just beginning to crack. (It may still jiggle a bit, but the cake will move as one piece, rather than just jiggling in the center.) Let cool to room temperature (or chill overnight), then cut and serve.

Note: If you want a cheesecake with almost no color (besides the obvious pumpkin-orange tinge) on the top, place a baking sheet on the rack directly above it as it bakes.

It’s hard to bring a dead magazine flowers, especially when you live thousands of miles away from its former headquarters. But more than profess Gourmet magazine’s perfection or symbolism, its former prowess or power, what I’ve been wanting to say, these last few weeks, is just. . . You know. Sorry.

I saw you at the farmers’ market this weekend. You picked up a kabocha squash – that big, tough-looking green one, with the woody stump – and fairly considered it. You turned it around and around, right side-up and upside-down. It wasn’t without effort, of course – the weight of the thing made your market bag trip over your shoulder blade and careen down your upper arm, at which point you wondered how you’d get the beast home. Then your buddy said, “So, how do you think you get it open?” And I watched you put that poor squash down.

I hate to be Debbie Downer, but you made the wrong decision, sister. A kabocha squash can be a big thug of a thing, but it is not (despite those witchy warts and scars) actually scary or difficult to use.

And I don’t mean to be smug, but I should know. These days, with sore joints, a can opener is my nemesis; I do not cut hard things. The thought of hacking into anything tougher than a bagel (much less quartering a big ol’ squash) brings tears to my eyes. But I love kabocha. So my choices are threefold: 1) stop buying squash and be sad, 2) let my husband finally buy the Samurai sword he’s always wanted, and pray he doesn’t hurt the counters or himself, or 3) skip the farmers’ market and buy pre-cut squash at the grocery store.

But oh, wait. WAIT. There’s a fourth. See, you don’t actually have to cut into a kabocha before you cook it, if you want soft squash. You can just put it in the oven, stem and all, and roast away at 400 degrees. It comes out like I do after a too-long day at the beach—tanned and tired, a bit stinky and maybe a little slumpy. But it’s as easy to cut into as a stick of room-temperature butter. I almost snatched your sleeve to tell you, right there at the market booth, but that would have been so awkward and stalkerish.

See, if I’d grabbed you, I would have had to tell you about my kabocha-maple bundt cake, too. As if you needed someone yakking to you about a cake that went out of style five decades ago. As if you need more kitchen equipment. I mean really, who owns a bundt cake pan anymore? I certainly didn’t. But last week, after testing a donut recipe for my friend Lara’s upcoming book (it’s tentatively called The Doughnut Cookbook, now who could argue with that?), one with an addictive maple glaze, I had maple glaze on my mind. It tangoed around in my brain with all sorts of ingredients, until settling on—well, drizzling down, really—the sides of a bundt cake hued with the rich, sweet flesh of a kabocha squash.

I broke into my neighbor’s house to borrow a bundt cake pan. (Okay, maybe there was a key involved, but rifling through her cupboards with no one in the house, it felt like a break-in.) I stirred and whipped and mashed, until I had a butternut-orange batter tinged with maple syrup and spunked with sour cream. Up it baked, in a meticulously buttered and floured pan – in 40 minutes, which was less time than I expected – then out it came, gorgeous and spongy and smooth in all the right places and, I daresay, almost sexy. Aside from the oft-abused line from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, I’ve never given the bundt cake a second thought, but goodness, yes, they’re sexy, with all those curves. Add a quick maple-vanilla glaze and a sprinkling of nuts, and you’ve got a head-turner.

But enough about the way she looks. I have to tell you this: She might be my best-tasting cake. Ever.

I’ve told you before that I’m not much of a cake person. I don’t like the way dry edges call out for frosting—in my opinion, a cake shouldn’t need frosting, and frosting shouldn’t need cake. Each should be delicious on its own, but they should complement each other when they’re put together. Like people, I guess. But like people, it’s not always as easy as it sounds. This cake is different. The glaze is diamonds on a woman too beautiful for jewelry: certainly not needed, but once they’re there, how could you take them off?

I love this cake because it’s equally appropriate for the plate at 8 a.m., 4 p.m., or 8 p.m. (and, I suspect, at 4 a.m., although I didn’t get the opportunity to try). I like it because I let it sit for two days before serving it to a crowd, and it was still perfectly moist. I like it because unlike a regular dessert cake, it’s hard for others to tell how big a piece you’re really cutting for yourself, so you can have ten little slivers, if that suits you, or one giant hunk, without looking like a princess or a pig. I like that it has a rich, dense crumb, all the way to the edges. I love that it’s easy to cut. And most of all, I love that nothing about making it hurts me right now.

The problem with kabocha, in my house, is that we never seem to have enough. Roasting up a soccer ball-sized specimen left me with about a quart of mashed squash, and I’m already panicking about how to use the last of it. Do I make another cake and freeze it for my mom’s visit next week? Or do I whirl it up in the blender with a bit of coconut milk and a dab of curry paste, for a quick lunch soup? Or do I sacrifice an ice cube tray, and freeze the rest into little cubes, for Graham to eat, once he gets past the initial shock of putting something besides milk in his mouth?

Oh, dear me. I might just have to roast another. I’ve actually just purchased my own bundt pan, so you can guess where the kabocha will most likely go. I want to try the cake with cardamom.

Kabocha-Maple Sour Cream Bundt Cake with Maple-Vanilla Glaze (PDF)

Kabocha squash has a rich, yellowy flesh that mashes up soft and smooth (like canned pumpkin) when it’s cooked. To roast it, slice a kabocha roughly in half and remove the seeds with an ice cream scoop. Roast cut side-down on a parchment- or silpat-lined baking sheet (no need to oil it) at 400 degrees until the skin is easy to poke with a fork, about an hour. (Timing will depend on the size and age of the squash.) Let the squash cool, peel away the skin and any other tough pieces, and mash the squash like you would potatoes, until smooth.

If you’re afraid of cutting the squash, you can also put the entire thing – stem and all – into the oven, and bake it a bit longer. Just be sure to scoop out the seeds and stringy stuff before you mash the flesh.

TIME: 30 minutes active time
MAKES: About 16 servings

For the cake:
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter (at room temperature), plus more for pan
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pan
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup sour cream (8 ounce container)
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/2 packed cups mashed kabocha squash

For the glaze:
3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 teaspoons water (plus more, if necessary)
2 tablespoons chopped toasted nuts, such as hazelnuts, pecans, or walnuts (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Generously (and carefully) flour and butter a bundt cake pan, and set aside.

Whisk the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a bowl, and set aside.

Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, whip the butter and sugar together on medium speed until light, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl and mixing between additions. Stir the sour cream, maple syrup, and vanilla together in a bowl. With the machine on low, alternate adding the dry and wet mixtures – first some of the flour, then some of the cream, then flour, cream again, and finally flour. When just mixed, add the squash, and mix on low until uniform in color.

Transfer the batter to the prepared bundt cake pan, smooth the top, and bake (I find it easier to transfer if it’s on a baking sheet) until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with just a few crumbs, and the top springs back when touched lightly, about 40 to 45 minutes.

Let the cake cool 10 minutes in the pan, then carefully invert onto a serving platter. When cool to the touch (after about an hour), make the glaze: Whisk the sugar, syrup, vanilla, and water together until smooth, adding additional water if necessary to make a thick, barely pourable glaze. Drizzle the glaze (or pour it right out of the bowl) along the crown of the cake, allowing it to ooze down the inside and outside of the cake. Sprinkle immediately with nuts, if using.

Once the glaze has dried, the cake keeps well, wrapped in plastic, at room temperature, up to 3 days.

MAKE AHEAD: Cake can also be made ahead, wrapped in foil and plastic, and frozen up to 1 month. Glaze after defrosting at room temperature.

Click here to hear me chat on the radio with KUOW’s Megan Sukys about The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook, which has been my source of dinner inspiration for the last week or so . . . Above, 1-2-3-4-5 Sticky Spareribs. Scroll down for recipes.

Last week, I walked into HT, an Asian grocery store near my house, with a very short list:

Shaoxing rice wine
Pandan leaves
Panko

I’d dog-eared a few pages in my most recent cookbook acquisition, The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook, knowing I’d have to expand my pantry a bit to make a few of the recipes I’d picked out. But as I stood there at the front of the store, in the shock one inevitably undergoes when one enters a market that’s not totally familiar, I looked at the list again. Is that all?

It’s a well-known fact that if you don’t go into the grocery store with a specific list, you come out with more than you really need. But there’s a corollary to that rule: if you go in with too short a list, you come out with what you need and what you never knew you needed. Multiply by two if you’re in a store you don’t visit often, then by six if you’re hungry, and again by three if your child is sleeping peacefully. (See Why I Don’t Go to Target.)

At HT, I totally got sucked into the market vortex. I came home with the last of the ingredients I needed for the recipes I’d picked from the book, as well as enough for beef pho for roughly six people, fun frozen dim sum for an army, and whatever else I could fit into four giant shopping bags: chilies, tofu, six tiny cans of coconut milk, Vietnamese meatballs . . .

This week, it’s been all about other peoples’ recipes. Gotta cook down the fridge, if you know what I mean. But here are a few for you to try . . .

(And a quick note: try poaching pears in the ginger tea, below.)

From The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook, by Pat Tanumihardja:

1-2-3-4-5 Sticky Spareribs (PDF)

Chicken and Eggs in a Golden Curry (PDF)

Ginger Tea (PDF)

*Also, fresh ginger is sometimes available at Mair Farm-Taki at the UD farmers market (not Maki Farm, as I said on the radio!).

Once, then I’m done: Some days, lupus bites. Not in a lovely, peppery vinaigrette sort of way. In a rocks-in-my-soup sort of way. I felt so good all summer, then boom. I turned away for just a moment, and the wolf walked in the door.

It’s no wonder, really. We spent a week in Spain for a wedding, plus a long weekend in Rhode Island for another wedding. It all adds up to Too Much Fun. It was lovely, of course – the jamon iberico, watching the Vuelta a Espana’s last time trial, seeing cousins I hadn’t seen in (literally) decades, participating in weddings I wouldn’t have missed for the world . . . But coming home, we had sort of a crash landing. Graham didn’t adjust back to our time zone as well as he had going the other direction, and between his schedule, our own jetlag, and three good cases of the sniffles, we’ve been a mess. And my body has not been happy.

Thankfully, the one taste I had to bring back from our trip – the flavor of Spain that lingered on my tongue, through all the ham, through the weird Oktoberfest meal on Lufthansa, through the Willow Tree chicken salad reunion (me and the chicken salad) in Newport – was the simplest of stews. We had it at a roadside restaurant, driving from La Rioja back to Madrid in a rented 6-speed diesel minivan. (As a side note, I do not recommend driving a large vehicle through the heart of Madrid if there’s even a small chance your iPhone, with all its hoo-ha navigational capabilities, will lose power.)

Considering our lack of Spanish, you could say we ordered the soup on accident. It was hardly a looker – just chickpeas, soaking in a simple broth with little beads of paprika-spiked oil bobbing around on the surface. Studded with slices of mild chorizo, it went down easy, rich but not overwhelming, unmistakably Spanish but after 8 days of ham, appreciably different. It had the kind of broth you want to drink for days on end, like a tonic.

When I sat down to think about how to make it, I felt like my brain wasn’t working. If I sautéed chorizo and then simmered it, along with dried chickpeas, in a paprika-rich homemade stock, the legumes would soak up some of that meaty flavor. But wasn’t there more? Five ingredients didn’t seem like enough.

But they were plenty. And an hour later, there it was: Spain. I’d purchased bulk chorizo, instead of the regular kind in casings, which made it a bit different from the version I fell in love with. (If you must know, I don’t like the way sausage slices look cooked with the casings on. The way the exterior shrinks up and strangles the meat reminds me of putting nylons on – you know, when they’re only partway up your thighs? Uncomfortable, and a little gross.)

Of course, the one thing missing from the roadside stew – the same thing, frankly, that was missing from so many of my meals in Spain – was the color green. I served ours over sautéed kale.

This could very well be The Fall I Didn’t Make Pie. Peeling apples just doesn’t seem to be an option right now. My hands are too sore.

But soup. Soup can be easy.

Thank goodness.

Quick Chorizo and Chickpea Stew (PDF)

Brimming with more flavor than a stew that takes 10 minutes of attention really deserves, this hearty concoction was my favorite meal from our recent trip to Spain. I used bulk chorizo, but sliced (sausage-style) chorizo would work well also (and was what we ate in Spain). Homemade chicken stock is important here—use yours, if you have some.

Serve the stew as is, or try ladling it over sautéed greens, such as kale or chard, or over leftover rice.

TIME: 10 minutes prep time
MAKES: 4 servings

1 1/4 cup dried chickpeas
6 cups good chicken stock
3/4 pound chorizo (bulk or in casings, thinly sliced)
1/2 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika (Pimenton de la Vera)
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Bring the chickpeas and 4 cups of the stock to a boil in a soup pot. Cover, remove from heat, and let sit for 1 hour.

Preheat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Crumble the chorizo into the pan (or add the sliced chorizo) and cook, stirring and breaking into bite-sized pieces after the first 5 minutes, until cooked through, about 10 minutes. Transfer meat to the pan with the chickpeas, stir in the paprika and the remaining 2 cups stock, and season with salt and pepper. Simmer for 1 hour, until the beans are soft.

Season to taste, and serve hot.

Before our son, Graham, was born, I started daydreaming about his culinary education. His first course always seemed obvious: My firstborn would be a boob man from the start. Yes, I’d teach it myself, with equipment provided and fuel replenished by nature. Only it never occurred to me in all the hours spent obsessing over what foods he might prefer later, or whether he’d be unreasonably picky, that there might be a glitch—like being born unable to eat.

When Graham showed up almost two months early, we knew we were fortunate because he had good lungs and a willingness to fight the e. coli infection that sent me into labor. And (be still my beating heart) he apparently inherited my rock-solid digestive system. There was just one minor detail: he’d skipped the part of fetal development in which we learn to suck and swallow. So instead of waiting until toddlerhood, when kids typically begin refusing any food whose assembly they don’t personally witness, Graham decided we needed to fret over what he did or didn’t ingest from day one. For seven weeks, we watched our child learn to do what most kids are born doing.

Graham spent the first week of his life in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), then the next two weeks at a similar but slightly less scary ward called the Infant Special Care Unit (ISCU), both at Seattle’s Swedish Hospital. If you’ve never had the pleasure of visiting these places twice daily for weeks on end, you’ll find a close approximation, minus the cow sounds, at your nearest feed lot. Here, in I’d say half the cases, small but otherwise healthy children are nourished through a tube, their every nutritional need calculated and analyzed, prioritized, and criticized. There are charts and protocols and many, many syringes. Lactation consultants—nipple nazis, we called them—float from cribside to cribside, encouraging new moms to pump breast milk for their babies, touting it as nature’s perfect food. New mothers hide behind curtains, hooked up like modest, half-clothed heifers, but most of the babies end up on formula, because it’s often the most effective way to get calories in—and in the ISCU, calories count for everything. In other words, the ISCU is where babies become veal.

Continue reading Baby Boy A at LeitesCulinaria.com

It’s the same sort of day as most of the other days here in Seattle, I suppose. I’m sitting at a coffee shop, next to a woman who appears, at a brief glance, to be editing a Swedish-Chinese dictionary.

I’ve started working again, three days a week. Sitting down at Herkimer, my body remembered all the right moves—sidling into a seat before getting coffee because the line was long, shyly sneaking my yogurt snack into the corner of my little bench seat, tuning into Basia Bulat. I even remembered my favorite barista’s name.

It all seems amazingly simple: I had a certain life. Then I had a child. Now I have a different sort of life, and I also have a child. Life’s changed, but then again, it hasn’t.

I can’t imagine anything better, for me, for now.

At least, I couldn’t, until we got a new dishwasher.

A new dishwasher, people, really does change a life. It’s not that we didn’t have one before. We did. It was white and dirty, rusty inside and cranky. It didn’t clean dishes particularly well, and our dinner plates didn’t fit inside. I consider myself neither a dishwasher snob nor a connoisseur, but clearly, fitting one’s dishes inside and getting them clean should be two of a dishwasher’s top attractions.

I actually learned a few things in the buying process:

a) a dishwasher should wash your dishes for you, not after you

b) putting rinsed dishes in the dishwasher with abrasive soap leads to cloudy glassware

c) with a new energy-efficient dishwasher, you really only need about a tablespoon of soap

The new one is named Darla. Yes, I named it. I mean her. But only after some thorough testing. She had to earn her keep, you see.

It turns out that the guy I bought our new KitchenAid from, Joe, has an appliance blog. Yes, he blogs about dishwashers and refrigerators and washing machines. When he told me, I tried to stifle a laugh. But then he challenged me: Try everything, he said. See if you can stump your dishwasher. Then tell me what happens.

So I did. I baked blueberry crisp, ate half of it, and reheated the leftovers, so the purple scrapies on the bottom burned right into the pan. I left the empty pan in the sink overnight, untouched, and Darla cleaned it right up.

Then I made Thanksgiving. I know that sounds crazy. It was mid-August and 85 degrees outside, but I was working on some recipes for a November issue, and I didn’t see any way to avoid it. Darla took on the sticky cranberry sauce ring, and a  challinging kale gratin dish, and boy, did she shine.

Next I made little hand tarts. I let the fruit bubble up and over the cornmeal crust, right down into the baby brulee dishes I baked them in, and plunked the dishes right onto the top rack, berry crusties and all. The first time, they didn’t come quite clean, but once I moved them to the bottom rack, where the real business gets done, she came through.

Finally, I gave her cheese. I made a sausage- and vegetable-studded breakfast strata, and baked it until the top layer of cheese – the cheese leather, Jim calls it – was good and brown. We ate a third of it for breakfast the first day, then a third the second day, and the last of it on yet a third day, reheating it in the oven each time and cementing (at least we thought) layers of cheese to the dish’s topsides. Again: clean.

Darla darling, we love you for your cleaning ability. Joe was right. You can do anything.

Now, if you could only figure out how to dry the dishes, we’d be much obliged. Joe said you might not like our eco-froofroo dishwashing detergent. We switched to something that looks much more environmentally harmful, but you’re still not happy.

Darla. Oh, Darla. What should we do? We’ll have to call Joe again.

Sausage & Summer Vegetable Strata (PDF)

It’s easy to fold summer’s best produce into lunches and dinners, but I think we too often forget how good the garden tastes first thing in the morning. Here’s a make-ahead strata that shines with bright cherry tomatoes and zucchini. You can buy a baguette just for the occasion and let it sit out overnight, to dry it out, but I love to use up all the old bread heels that somehow end up congregating in the corner of my freezer.

TIME: 15 minutes prep time, plus 30 minutes baking time

MAKES: 4 to 6 servings

4 large eggs

3/4 cup half and half

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary

1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme

Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Butter (for the pan)

1/2 day-old baguette, cut into 1” cubes (or 4 cups cubes of assorted bread)

1 cup crumbled feta cheese

1 small zucchini, chopped into 1/2” pieces

1 cup grape tomatoes, halved

1 heaping cup cooked, crumbled sausage (from 1 large sausage, about 1/3 pound)

1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Whiz the eggs, half and half, milk, rosemary, thyme, salt, and pepper together in a blender until well mixed. Butter an 8” x 8” casserole dish (or similar), and arrange the baguette chunks in an even layer in the dish. Scatter the feta, zucchini, tomatoes, and sausage evenly over the bread, then pour the egg mixture over everything, turning and scooping so that all the bread pieces are moistened. Top with the cheddar. Cover with foil and refrigerate overnight.

Before baking, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove the foil and bake for 40 to 50 minutes, or until the top layer is toasted and melty. Serve warm.