Even carved jack-o-lanterns will keep several days before they begin to rot. If yours are starting to get far along, just cut away the rotten parts, which should be right along the holes. Painted ones will keep longer, but make sure to prep them in a way that doesn't get paint into the food!

In my Halloween report, I mentioned that we'd be eating pumpkin all month. Pumpkins are a *great* food source: nutritious, versatile, easy to prepare (only hard part is getting the strings off the inside. Skin comes off easily if you cook it first.)

The big problem is, how to use up all the pumpkin without getting bored? Here's how we've handled it, so far (we still have several quarts of pumpkin puree that we haven't decided what to do with yet):

I used a quart of puree to make pumpkin butter. My daughter tasted it and pronounced it too bland--so I added a bunch more mace, ginger, cloves, and cinnamon--too much, unfortunately! I doubled the amount of pumpkin and it was still too strong. So now I just prepped a few apples, which I'll cook up and throw in. Hopefully, my apple-pumpkin butter will be a hit.

My soup turned out great! Pumpkin, hot pepper, apple, garlic, almonds, and mozzarella cheese. My parents and in-laws were both up yesterday, and all pronounced it delicious.

Meanwhile, my 9-year-old daughter Alana made dessert: pumpkin chocolate chip bars. Even though pumpkin cookies are common around here, we couldn't find any recipe--so she made one up! We did 'em in a tray like brownies, rather than as individual cookies. Very tasty.

Turned out my food processor won't slice thinly enough for chips--so I made "pumpkin plantains," instead--like the big fat plantain chips you get in a Cuban or Puerto Rican restaurant. They were starchy and greasy, but Dina (my wife) liked them a lot. I thought about trying to make chips with a carrot peeler, but it seemed like more work than I could manage. I'll try that some other time, when there's less food to deal with.

Dina took another batch and made Chilean Squash Casserole (from the original Moosewood Cookbook) for Saturday's dinner: pumpkin, cheddar cheese, carrots, cumin, salsa, and I forgot what else. Very tasty once enough cheese was in. Next time I might try a wheat germ topping.

In the past, I've grated raw pumpkin for latkes (a traditional Jewish pancake that's supposed to be made with potatoes)--we mix eggs, onions, pumpkin, and flour into patties and fry them up--maybe add some potatoes. But this year, when I went to make them, I realized we had no onions--boom, no traditional latkes. So instead, I mixed grated pumpkin, eggs, and whole wheat flour with Thai panang sauce (ready-made and store-bought), peanut butter (all-natural), and coconut to make Thai curry pumpkin latkes--and boy, were they great!

Of course, we baked the seeds while some of the other stuff was in the oven. Yum!

And that took care of the larger pumpkin, 15 lbs. or so. The smaller one we threw, in its entirety (minus the pieces that had been cut for the jack-o-lantern), into the oven. It had been painted and we didn't want to boil it. Haven't figured out what we'll do with it, but my guess is some pies, maybe. Anyway, that bought us a few more days to figure it out.

By the way, pumpkin makes a marvelous vegetarian main dish at Thanksgiving. We like to remove the seeds and strings, fill it with a mixture of vegetables, cheese, milk, bread crumbs and flavorings, and throw it in the oven. You end up with a soup, stew or casserole (depending on how much liquid) that cooks right in the pumpkin skin.

Here's a great charity project for someone--go out on November 1 and gather up all the vandalized pumpkins, cook 'em up for a local soup kitchen. What a shame to waste all that food when people are starving!

Sneak peek: next month: a tip to cut the cost of airfares.