![Beef and Maple Delicata Squash Boats (Eat Me. Drink Me.)](http://eatmedrinkmeblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_4663-2.jpg)
Deep, grooved ridges and gnarly warts, pockmarked orange skin and scabby patches of bedsore dirt: A pumpkin is one of those vegetables that’s so ugly it’s beautiful again.
Maybe it’s association – for me, they’re just about as fall as apple butter or hot toddies on cool and quickly-dimming evenings. It’s the memory of being a child and holding a huge pumpkin in my arms, big enough to bowl me over, straw from the patch clinging to my clothes. Or it’s the way a pumpkin halved offers up smooth, bright flesh and white, jewel-like seeds. Or how a Jack-O-Lantern leers glowingly from the porch on Halloween.
![Delicata squash (Eat Me. Drink Me.)](http://eatmedrinkmeblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_4587-2.jpg)
![Hollowing out delicata squash (Eat Me. Drink Me.)](http://eatmedrinkmeblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_4592-2.jpg)
![Diced zucchini (Eat Me. Drink Me.)](http://eatmedrinkmeblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_4574-2.jpg)
But not all pumpkins are alike, as I discovered this weekend at our neighborhood pumpkin festival. I went on a bit of a bender, making David drag home a big bag full of them: a dusty, purplish-hued muscat pumpkin with perfectly domed sections; a brightly speckled festival pumpkin with kaleidoscopic patterns of green and orange snaking up its creamy sides; and two delicata squash – long and pale yellow pinstriped with green. I’m sure I would have purchased more, had I not paused to think about how we were going to eat them all.
![Delicata squash halves (Eat Me. Drink Me.)](http://eatmedrinkmeblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_4591-2.jpg)
I still can’t really get over how quickly the fall has come – how quickly all the seasons are whooshing past. Have I really lived in this apartment for two whole years? Have I really been in Berlin for twice that? Today I’m wearing the brand new jeans I just bought in… February.
Yikes. And from what I hear, it doesn’t get better.
![Stuffed delicata squash boats with almonds (Eat Me. Drink Me.)](http://eatmedrinkmeblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_4638-2.jpg)
![Delicata squash boats (Eat Me. Drink Me.)](http://eatmedrinkmeblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_4642-2.jpg)
I remember long ago, my dad tried to explain the passage of time to me, how when you’re ten, a year is longer than when you’re twenty, since one tenth is bigger than one twentieth. The longer you live, the faster life really does go by, because each year is a little less chunk of time compared to the whole. » Continue reading this post...