Butternut Squash

Now that we have gorged ourselves on holiday meals, it's time to get back to healthy eating. The latest healthy recipe comes from Jay Wilson, senior program director at the Dancel Family Center Y in Ellicott City. It is butternut squash chicken salad. Wilson said he has been cooking since age 12 and you can often find him in the kitchen experimenting with new recipes. He loves to share his creations with colleagues. His duties at the Y include coordinating sports and fitness activities and teaching boot camp classes.

Now that we have gorged ourselves on holiday meals, it's time to get back to healthy eating. The latest healthy recipe comes from Jay Wilson, senior program director at the Dancel Family Center Y in Ellicott City. It is butternut squash chicken salad. Wilson said he has been cooking since age 12 and you can often find him in the kitchen experimenting with new recipes. He loves to share his creations with colleagues. His duties at the Y include coordinating sports and fitness activities and teaching boot camp classes.

My friends all love to entertain, but, like me, they work full time and are often dealing with frenetic schedules. The solution for all of us has become the "planned potluck." We have found that discussing the menu and delegating who will be responsible for the main course, the sides and the dessert make for a winning formula. In our circle, the person who hosts usually prepares the entree, and the rest of us bring other fare to complete the meal. As soon as I accepted a recent invitation, I volunteered to make a side dish.

Kristy Skocik and her husband, Chris, signed up for a community-supported agriculture plan last winter to ensure they would have farm-fresh fruits and vegetables in the spring for the baby they were expecting. Disappointed when that weekly plan was canceled, the Columbia couple searched for an alternative and found one, in Friends and Farms, that they say has exceeded their expectations. "We hardly ever have to go to the grocery store now because we also get dairy, meat, eggs and bread," said Skocik, a NASA engineer now working part time from home to care for 9-month-old Samantha.

When entertaining during this season, I try to plan what I call transitional meals. I blend hearty dishes redolent of winter with lighter ones. A good example of this type of menu is one I recently created. The main course will include orange-glazed roast pork tenderloin served with asparagus, plus a gratin of butternut squash with Gruyere cheese and rosemary. For the gratin, I saute chopped leeks and diced squash in a little butter and combine them in a baking pan. I add rosemary-scented cream to the dish and finally a topping of shredded Gruyere cheese.

A monthly series to teach you basic cooking techniques Thanksgiving dinner preparations are a vegetable chop-a-thon for a cook, and not an easy one at that. Butternut squash is at its peak season now, but getting beyond the bell shape and hard skin to the naturally sweet veggie can be daunting. And just thinking about the amount of diced onions called for in the dishes that cover a holiday table is enough to make you cry. But don't reach for the tissues. Instead, place two all-purpose knives - a chef's knife for the squash and a paring knife for the onion - by your cutting board.

Although I adore risotto, I rarely make it for company as it requires a good deal of cooking at the last minute. I have on occasion prepared it in advance, using various techniques, but at heart I am a fan of making this glorious Italian specialty and eating it soon afterward. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across a recipe for baked risotto. The directions called for spreading Arborio rice in a buttered baking dish, covering the grains with hot, simmering stock and melted butter, then placing the pan in the oven until all the liquids were absorbed by the rice.

In my view, fall is the best season of the year. I adore the exquisite autumn foliage in New England where we live and the cooler days. But there's another reason I enjoy this season so much: after the long summer when many of our friends have been away on vacation, most are back by the beginning of autumn. Everyone seems eager to get together and exchange stories of their travels and experiences, so it's a perfect time to entertain, especially in a casual way. An informal dinner for six to eight on a Friday or Saturday night is the format I like best.

I have a tendency to concentrate my culinary energy on planning the all-important Thanksgiving menu and don't always give much thought to the rest of the meals for the long holiday weekend. However, if you have a houseful of company, like we will this year, there are several more days of feasting on the schedule after the holiday. Like most cooks, I count on leftover turkey to anchor many of these lunches and suppers. Our roasted bird's remains get sliced and fashioned into Dagwood-style sandwiches, cubed and added to soup and sauced and combined with pasta.

Of all the holidays, Thanksgiving is my favorite because it is the one most closely linked to culinary traditions. Families everywhere look forward to preparing their own classic offerings on this day. In Massachusetts, two prolific fall crops are apples and squash. Markets boast bins of apples from tart Winesaps to sweet Golden Delicious. For squash, there's butternut, acorn or pumpkin. Inspired by this local seasonal fare, I created today's recipe for Butternut Squash and Apple Soup With Bacon, a delicious opener for a Thanksgiving feast.

A monthly series to teach you basic cooking techniques Thanksgiving dinner preparations are a vegetable chop-a-thon for a cook, and not an easy one at that. Butternut squash is at its peak season now, but getting beyond the bell shape and hard skin to the naturally sweet veggie can be daunting. And just thinking about the amount of diced onions called for in the dishes that cover a holiday table is enough to make you cry. But don't reach for the tissues. Instead, place two all-purpose knives - a chef's knife for the squash and a paring knife for the onion - by your cutting board.

My friends all love to entertain, but, like me, they work full time and are often dealing with frenetic schedules. The solution for all of us has become the "planned potluck." We have found that discussing the menu and delegating who will be responsible for the main course, the sides and the dessert make for a winning formula. In our circle, the person who hosts usually prepares the entree, and the rest of us bring other fare to complete the meal. As soon as I accepted a recent invitation, I volunteered to make a side dish.

Although I adore risotto, I rarely make it for company as it requires a good deal of cooking at the last minute. I have on occasion prepared it in advance, using various techniques, but at heart I am a fan of making this glorious Italian specialty and eating it soon afterward. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across a recipe for baked risotto. The directions called for spreading Arborio rice in a buttered baking dish, covering the grains with hot, simmering stock and melted butter, then placing the pan in the oven until all the liquids were absorbed by the rice.

It sat in the kitchen for days, looming over me as I ate. It seemed to be asking, when am I going to be invited to a meal? It was the butternut squash that came to dinner, forcibly. I had not planted it in my garden; instead the squash imposed itself into my life, with savory results. The tale began in the heat of summer, when a squash vine sprouted in a neighbor's plot in our community gardens in Druid Hill Park. Quicker than kudzu, the vine jumped a fence dividing our gardens and made itself at home in my plot.

INSIDE TODAY WHAT THEY'RE SAYING TODAY'S SUN COLUMNISTS O, the pains of autumn On Saturday, runners will take to the streets for the Baltimore Marathon in the annual rite of pain that commences soon after that other rite of pain known here as baseball season. Today baltimoresun.com/cowherd Bleak outlook for debt Hardly anybody is talking about it, but banks and consumers are laying the groundwork for a wave of credit-card defaults, bankruptcies and asset write-offs for 2009 or so. Business baltimoresun.

The Wild Orchid calls itself a cafe, but it's a cafe where the duck breast is seared and served with pear chutney, the sirloin is free-range venison, and entrees average $30. The restaurant, located in an Eastport bungalow, is charmingly casual when it comes to its surroundings, if not its cuisine, with an inviting front porch and a patio where meals are served when the weather is warmer. The downstairs has been opened up so there's one large dining room that wraps around the kitchen, and a smaller, cozier room to one side.

Good friends, who are coming to visit in a few weeks, called recently to say they could not arrive before 8 Friday evening.Immediately, I knew that the original menu I had planned (when a late-afternoon arrival was expected) would have to be changed to lighter, quicker fare. I finally decided on pizzas topped with caramelized onions, sauteed squash, diced tomatoes, crumbled bacon and shredded Monterey Jack cheese.Both my husband and I loved the melange of autumn colors and the robust taste of this dish, so I reasoned it would be perfect to start the weekend with our out-of-town friends.

It sat in the kitchen for days, looming over me as I ate. It seemed to be asking, when am I going to be invited to a meal? It was the butternut squash that came to dinner, forcibly. I had not planted it in my garden; instead the squash imposed itself into my life, with savory results. The tale began in the heat of summer, when a squash vine sprouted in a neighbor's plot in our community gardens in Druid Hill Park. Quicker than kudzu, the vine jumped a fence dividing our gardens and made itself at home in my plot.

Vegetable Love By Barbara Kafka with Christopher Styler Artisan / 2005 / $35 Not sure what to do with those artichokes you picked up on a whim while grocery shopping? Vegetable Love has about 20 ideas, including wrapping them in bacon and serving them with snails. The recipes in Kafka's book range from the simple and familiar, such as roasted potatoes and tomato basil soup, to the unusual, such as avocado ice cream and cabbage risotto. For any high rollers, there are a couple of truffle recipes - a salad with potatoes and a gratin.

The Food You Want to Eat 100 Smart, Simple Recipes By Ted Allen with Stephanie Lyness Clarkson Potter / 2005 / $27.50 The Food You Want to Eat is a good choice for people who want to learn to cook or just want a resource for simple, tasty basics. The instructions are thorough. Ted Allen, the culinary expert on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, doesn't skip details other cooks might consider too obvious to include. The first chapter includes a section on choosing cuts of steak, and recipes include a wine pairing.