There are so many good things to cook and to eat this month, that I am at a loss where to start.  Let's start with this pumpkin.

Halloween is coming, and it's a great weekend to cook and treat your friends and family to something wonderful. 

Here's the plan:  take one large butternut squash, and roast it as I describe.  Puree the roasted, autumnal goodness and use half for my Stuffed Pumpkin Pastina.  With a green salad and a some grilled sausages, you've got the perfect Halloween supper.  

Use the rest of the squash puree for some Pumpkin Polenta to serve another night with your Italian porcini pot roast, your elk stew, or your braised short ribs of beef.  This time of year, I get seriously addicted to pumpkin polenta.

By now you've figured out that these dishes are not really made with pumpkin; they are made with butternut squash.  Shhhh. It's a trick I use to get my kids to eat squash. 

Believe it or not, the roasted pumpkin stuffed with tiny pasta, Parmesan cheese and a butternut squash puree fits my criteria for busy weekend food.  I have little patience for dishes that take more than an hour, especially when I want to be outside raking leaves, mountain biking, or trying to keep up with my husband hiking up steep slopes.   

You could skip the cute pumpkin tureen, and just make the cheesy pastina.  But if you do find an extra 5 minutes to carve the pumpkin, and another 40 minutes to roast it while you cook the pasta, this pumpkin dish will be sure to bring lots of smiles to the table. 

By the way, I'd like to thank Veronica for taking home Strega Nona last weekend at the Scarecrow Festival, to benefit the Center for the Arts.  If you are wondering what to make from the last post, here's a hint.  Veronica shared all the goodies but the Chocolate Anise Biscotti. Those she kept for herself.  Enough said.

Making some squash puree ahead of time will help you whip up these dishes fast. The squash (made irresistible with molasses and sage, balsamic vinegar and salt) can be roasted and pureed up to five days in advance, and is so good you can serve it on its own as a side dish.

This puree can be used as the base for pumpkin polenta and pumpkin pastina, but it can also be served on its own as a side dish, or stuffed into ravioli.  A 3 pound squash will yield about 4 cups of puree.  If your squash is not so big, just  cut back a bit on the other ingredients.  

Please be sure that the squash is very soft before you puree it, or else it will not have the smooth texture you're after. 

You could use other winter squash, of course.  Since butternut squash is the easiest to peel, that's what I tend to go for.

These recipes were adapted from Michael Chiarello's The Tra Vigne Cookbook, in which he calls dishes like this a "food hug".  

Roasted butternut squash puree gives this creamy polenta its depth and sweetness.  If you have some white truffle oil, it would be heavenly drizzled atop the finished dish.

The original recipe called for using 1 1/2 cups of heavy cream.  I found the recipe was just as good using whole milk, or a combination of lowfat milk and half and half. 

Semolina flour makes this polenta especially soft and creamy.  If you don't have any, just use more polenta as I have noted.

This is an irresistible dish to serve family-style to kids of all ages on Halloween.  If you must skip the carved pumpkin tureen, then so be it.  It will still be everyone's new favorite comfort food.

If you've ever made risotto, you'll find this method of making pasta similar, but faster. Just keep adding broth until the pasta is al dente; the amount will vary depending on the type of pasta you choose.

There's a Scarecrow Auction today at the Center for the Arts, to benefit the Center and the Jackson Hole Public Art Initiative.  Here's a sneak preview of the jacksonholefoodie scarecrow.

Her name is Strega Nona, after the children's book about the old Italian witch who makes her pot overflow with pasta by using magic. Her hair is made of pasta, and her body, well, let's just hope the kids don't miss their croquet set next summer.  She is the spitting image of my Nonna Barranco, except my grandmother dressed only in black, and didn't really smile. 

Strega Nona will go home with the highest bidder at the CFA live auction today.  Buy her and she will scare your crows and coyotes away, and supply you with enough pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, chocolate anise biscotti, and buttermilk pumpkin cake to last until Halloween.

The jacksonholefoodie scarecrow will also be offering a brand new original snack bar, created just for the Center for the Arts:  the Art Bar.  You could be the first to take a batch of these figgy, gingery, peanut buttery bars home.

Come by the Center for the Arts today and check out all the other scarecrows by local artists.  And if you decide to adopt Strega Nona, please send me a note so that I know she's found a good home.

Here's my recipe for Chocolate Anise Biscotti, the perfect little cookie for any occasion.  

Biscotti don't have to be hard as a rock.  When you make them yourself, you can bake them soft or crispy, or somewhere in between.  You'll need a good, sharp serrated knife, such as a bread knife, to cut the cookie loaf into thin slices.

Makes about 2 dozen

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ¾ cup sugar
• ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 2 teaspoons anise seed
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup mini semisweet chocolate chips

1.  Preheat oven to 350 F.  Line a large heavy baking sheet with parchment paper.
2.  Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.
3.  Crush the anise seed in a mortar and pestle.  Or place the anise seeds in a plastic bag, and crush a few times with a rolling pin.
4.  Using an electric mixer, cream the butter with the sugar.  Add the eggs, one at a time.
5.  Add the anise seed, flour mixture, and the chocolate chips.  Stir gently until just combined.
6.  Form the dough into a 16 inch long, 3 inch wide log.  Transfer to the baking sheet.
7.  Bake for 30 minutes, or until light golden.  Cool on the baking sheet for at least 30 minutes.
8.  Transfer the log to a cutting board, and cut on a diagonal into ½ inch to ¾ inch slices using a sharp serrated knife.
9.  Transfer biscotti cut side down onto the baking sheet.  Bake until pale golden, about 10 minutes for chewy biscotti, 15-20 minutes for crispy ones.

We make a big deal about birthdays around here. So when Nick turned 11 this week, it was time for an all-out, end-of-an-era, start-of-a-new-decade celebration. 

Favorite foods are crucial to making birthdays special.  For Nick's birthday weekend with friends, he requested chocolate and bacon at every meal (which is not as hard as it sounds), and something pumpkiny for dessert.  And homemade pasta.

Breakfast was easy:  pumpkin pancakes with chocolate chips, with maple-glazed bacon on the side. (To maple-glaze bacon, arrange bacon strips on a wire rack over a rimmed baking sheet; bake at 375 for 15 minutes; brush with maple syrup and bake for 10 minutes more, until crispy.  This is a great way to prepare bacon for a crowd.) 

Lunch was hearty and fun:  bacon, corn and potato chowder, apple and brie panini, and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies for dessert.

For supper we made Pasta alla Carbonara with homemade pappardelle. If you've been reading here for awhile, you may recall that Pasta alla Carbonara with Kale  is Nick's very favorite supper.  This year, we made a fresh pasta rich with egg yolks, and served crunchy kale chips on the side.  It is heartwarming to see a bunch of ravenous boys tucking into a plate of kale chips.

A pumpkin cake with chocolate ganache completed the birthday boy's favorite foods, and a busy weekend of cooking for me.

As much as boys love carving pumpkins into creepy, scary jack-o-lanterns, blowing them to smithereens is even more fun.

Pappardelle, which translates loosely as "gulp down", are long, flat, wide noodles that can be cut by hand into rustic-looking strips.  You don't need a pasta machine to make pappardelle, but it helps to have an extra pair of hands in the kitchen.

I am especially excited to share this recipe for homemade pasta.  You see, I have been making pasta by hand for a long time, and have never been thrilled with the results at high altitude.  Foods dry out quickly here, and adding liquids to pasta dough is dicey business...just a drop too much and you end up with a gummy mess.

Now that I've discovered the secret to making perfect pasta at 6500 feet, I hope you all will make some too.  It's easier than you think. A hand-crank pasta machine is very nice to have, but not essential if you have a rolling pin and strong hands.  If you have a dough scraper, it is useful to help gather up the dough.

This recipe comes from Thomas Keller, of Napa Valley's French Laundry, and is published in his cookbook Ad Hoc at Home. I found that Keller's recipe makes a perfect pasta dough with no alterations needed for altitude.  Made rich with egg yolks, and silky smooth with Tipo 00 flour, the dough is a pleasure to knead, roll and cut.

Tipo 00 flour, or "Double 0" as it is sometimes called, is ground extra fine, and the classic flour for making pasta in Italy.  True Tipo 00 imported from Naples can be ordered at markethallfoods.com.  I use a less expensive domestic product that I order from kingarthurflour.com.

Besides the fresh egg yolks and the Tipo 00 flour, there is one more secret to making the perfect pasta dough:  Rest.  The dough rests in the refrigerator for 12-24 hours before it is rolled, cut and cooked.  Resting is important to soften and develop the gluten protein, which gives the pasta its irresistible chewy texture.

Makes 1 1/2 pounds of pasta, which should feed about 6-8 hungry people.

Once the dough has rested for a few minutes, roll it up and cut it into thick strips, any way you like.  Pappardelle is usually about 1 inch wide, but here Nick decided to make huge rectangles of pasta, which were fun to eat.

Try to keep all the pasta pieces roughly the same size, so that they cook at the same rate.  

Once all the pasta has been cut, it can be tightly covered with plastic wrap and held in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.  

To cook:  Bring a large pot of water to boiling.  Add 1 Tablespoon salt. Add half of the pasta to the pot, and cook for 2-3 minutes.  Remove with a slotted spoon and toss with your pasta sauce.  Keep warm while you boil the rest of the pasta.

Old man winter is back in Jackson Hole, and we celebrated by building a raging fire and making a pot of curry.  After all, it's been almost exactly four months since we've seen snow on the valley floor.  Things feel more normal around here now.

I love the simplicity of this Pumpkin and Pork Red Curry.  You can use pork or beef, but it is also fantastic with venison, elk or bison. I usually make it with butternut squash, but I had this cheerful little pumpkin sitting in my kitchen, that I had purchased with the vague idea of making some pie, when really I just wanted to look at it.  Pumpkins are nice to have around.

This curry can be a quick, weeknight desperation dinner, or a slow-cooked one-pot meal that fills the house with the welcoming smell of roasting meat and coconut.  

The meat you choose will determine how long you will need to simmer your curry. This curry comes together in less than an hour when using quickly seared slices of game tenderloins.  If using stew meat, such as a beef chuck roast, or a pork butt roast, then you will want to slow-cook the curry in a Crock Pot or in the oven over 2-3 hours.  Either way, this is an easy dish that tastes like it cooked all day.

If you make the quick version, there will be tender chunks of pumpkin swimming in the rich sauce, that you can stab with your fork.   But if you simmer the curry slowly, the pumpkin will break down and melt into the coconut milk, creating a thick, comforting sauce of pumpkiny goodness.  You will want to lick the plate when you are done, like my kids did last night.

All your curry needs is a pot of freshly steamed rice or couscous, and a crisp green salad.  Now would be a good time to make some maple soy vinaigrette to have on hand, to dress your autumn salads topped with crisp chunks of apple or firm slices of pear, some goat cheese, and a few toasted pecans.

For the quick curry, use a large saucepan and cook on the stovetop.  For the slow-cook method, use a frying pan to sear the meat, then place it all in a Crock Pot.  Or use a large saucepan, such as a Dutch oven, that you can use on the stovetop and then place in the oven.  Confused? Me too.