YOU'RE MY PUMPKIN, PUMPKIN

I worry for food obsessives this time of year. How easy it is to spend all your time googling brining techniques and your money on that pedigree heritage bird. And please don’t walk into traffic while pondering how to make gingerbread not too crisp and not too chewy.

Freaks, myself included, who already siphon off too much time preoccupied by bacon or burgers or quinoa are way over stimulated in the mudslide of time between Halloween and New Year's Eve. It is truly a food season—authentically and comfortingly seasonal before seasonal was trendy or understood to be important. The cookies are nice, gravy is a little bit of liquid sunshine and I'm always pleasantly surprised by the siren song of fall vegetables. If spring and summer are ripe for fruit fetishists, autumn is a time when humble roots and tough leaves reign supreme.

The obvious MVPs are squash and friends, both sweet and savoury. Their seductive allure can inspire manic behaviour at the farmers' market—wandering through sighing, stroking every pumpkin while wondering whether they long to be curry, pie or crème brulee. Their crooked noses, warts and stems make these gnarled veggies seem empathetically homely. Forlorn, funny-looking, they want to be used. Heidi Swanson, author of the 101 Cookbooks blog (and a favourite pumpkin pie recipe) described her parsnips recently as "waiting patiently on the sideline, quiet as church mice". My butternut squash is doing the same.

Even the greens are exciting. I've decided it's time to dehydrate my own kale (having spent a little too much time on the blog I heart kale). I’m not so interested in raw food, so instead of following the site's approach and roasting them for seven hours at a low temperature, I think I’ll use the recipe that makes kale seem like French fries. I'll blast those green cuties, cover them in olive oil and sea salt and maybe cayenne. Kale freaks, back off.

~ ARIEL RAMCHANDANI

Picture Credit: WhitA (via Flickr)