Squash Dependency

My name is Joe.

Altogether now, HI, JOE!

I don’t know how it happened. I was walking around the greenmarket and I saw it, an eight pound sweetmeat pumpkin. I didn’t mean to buy it, but it just appeared in my bag. When I got home, that was when I realized I might have a problem. Butternut and delicata squash were vying for attention on the shelf, the table littered with small pie pumkins. Worse yet, cheese pumpkins aren’t even really out yet, and I’ll have to buy one when they are. What to do?

My treatment begins today: soup, ravioli, maybe a pie and puree into the freezer for a handy side dish.

I was vacillating about making ravioli because of time constraints, but what the hell? They’ll be time to sleep when I’m dead, right? Like almost every word in Italian, the precise definition of *raviolo* is hard to pin down and dependent on geography, demographics and the mood of the person in question. Tortelli is a popular word in the north for filled pastas, as is tortelloni (meaning, loosely, ‘big tortelli’, which itself means loosely ’smaller form of cake’), although I have alternately heard both of those terms applied to full and half moons. Logic and the majority of experience suggest that tortelli are the folded, half moon shape, and tortelloni the round.

Ravioli, on the other hand, I have only ever seen to be one thing, and though I always associate it with southern Italian food, the fact is there is no basis for that other than being raised by southern Italians; the word is just as popular in the north.

Regardless, squash and pasta are a classic fit, and if time permits we’ll make some together.

And leave some comments, for Christ’s sake. People tell me they read this thing all the time, but I won’t *know* unless you leave comments.