I think Jerry‘s hitting that point now. After years of piano gigging and vocal coaching and supporting everyone’s musical dreams but his own, he’s finally working on his first album. And it’s good. It’s really, really good.

He’s doing almost everything himself: songwriting, recording, laying down drum and guitar tracks, and then editing hundreds of tracks until the song coming through the speakers matches the song in his head.

Jerry would have done this on his own sooner or later, but it helps to have someone who absolutely believes in what you are doing. It’s so easy to let your own work drift to the margins.

The album’s coming out in January. It’s called Fighting for You, and it’s fucking amazing.

Jerry and I got married. I made my dress. The pattern is from the 1930s, when film stars were covering up their busts and revealing their backs to appease the censors. This tactic also works with easily scandalized family members.

I spent a ridiculous amount of time constructing the dress out of tracing paper, then muslin, then some really nice fabric. At one point in the process, my grandmother asked me if “there was a little corner in the apartment where I could work on the dress without Jerry seeing it.” I told her that I needed Jerry to help with the alterations.

Here’s a clip of Jerry singing while I walk down the aisle:

Did I mention that our wedding was two weeks after the bar exam? Don’t worry, I passed.

Then, I moved into a women’s commune in Philadelphia about two weeks later because I had to start a new job and the job I got was in Philly. Jerry and I became Bolt/Mega/Chinabus ninjas because one of us gets on that bus every single Friday night no matter what. I’m typing this on the Bolt bus now – they should totally sponsor my blog! And, um, my marriage, which I suppose they are already doing.

So that’s where I’ve been. Working in Philly, weekending in New York, and paying off my student loans as fast as I possibly can.

I think I’m ready to talk about food and home and making a place for myself again.

I also cut the fat and the sugar and skipped the (delicious) butter-cream sauce that goes with it – the man I live with feels acutely nauseated when confronted with the butter and sugar-filled reality of Western baked goods, and I try not to traumatize him too much.

I did, however, leave in enough fat and sugar to make it taste good.

Here’s the new recipe:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 x 13 inch pan and set it aside.

Mix the following dry ingredients together:

2 1/4 cups spelt flour (white flour or a combination of white and wheat would also work)

1 cup of sugar (1 1/2 cups in the original)

2 teaspoons of baking powder

1/2 teaspoons of baking soda

1 teaspoon of salt

2 teaspoons of cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon of ginger

1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon of clves

Beat the following wet ingredients together:

5 tablespoons melted butter (I just used the partial stick of butter we had in the fridge – somewhere between half a stick of butter and a whole stick of butter should be about right. The original recipe calls for 1/2 cup Crisco, which is one of the ingredients that makes Jerry shudder.)

1 cup (or 1 can) of pumpkin puree

2 eggs

3/4 cup of plain yogurt (the original recipe calls for buttermilk, which I had forgotten before beginning the recipe)

Mix the dry and wet ingredients together, then stir in a bunch of raisins, coconut, and pumpkin seeds. If you’re the measuring type, I would suggest adding 1/2 a cup of each ingredient, mixing them in, then adding more if the batter looks too sparsely populated. I don’t think you’ll need more than a cup of each ingredient.

Pour the batter into the pan and bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes, or until the cake is done.

Stir a pinch of salt into 11/2 cups flour. Cut in 12 tablespoons of butter. Mix in ice water, a tablespoon at a time, until the dough just holds together. Shape the dough into a flat disk and refrigerate for half an hour while you make the filling. When the dough is chilled, roll it out and put it in a pie pan, add the filling, and bake at 350 until it is done.

The filling: Stick the leftover butter nut squash with cayenne pepper, add two eggs, a cup or so of yogurt, another dash of cayenne, and a little milk in a blender and puree everything together.

Notes: The pie takes about an hour to bake, but it’s better to rely on your senses than the clock when it comes to cooking times. Other types of winter squash would be good too – this would work well with pumpkin or kombucha squash too.

Next, put your squash into a baking pan, add a splash of olive oil and a sprinkle of cayenne pepper, and stir it all together. Bake it at 350 degrees, stirring every 10 or 15 minutes, until you can pierce the squash with a fork. The squash should be done in about an hour – just use your nose, and poke it with a fork once in a while, and you’ll know when it’s ready.

If winter squash weren’t so delicious, I wouldn’t give much thought to cutting them open. But they are, and I have. So today, dear readers, I will share what I know with you.

First of all, it helps to have a big, sharp knife. I’ve cut up a squash with a paring knife – in fact, I’ve done it more than once – but I wouldn’t recommend it. They always get stuck in the squash, and then you can’t get them out, and you can’t cut, and it’s very frustrating.

Secondly, it helps to cut your unwieldy vegetable into something that is easier to peel and cut. Something with a nice flat surface to rest on the cutting board, for example. Or straight-sided cylinders. Or maybe the sort of wedge you would cut out of a cantaloupe.

For example, when I cut up a butternut squash, I begin by taking a nice slice off the bottom and the top. Then I slice the squash into two or three cylinders with nice, straight, sliceable sides. One cylinder is the neck of the squash, one cylinder is the base of the squash, and one cylinder is the part of the squash where the neck widens to meet the base. Then, I stand each cylinder on its nice, flat, sturdy base, and slice off the peel.

If I’m dealing with a kombucha squash, I treat it more like a cantaloupe. I slice it in half, then cut each half into wedges. Then I lay the wedges on one of their flat sides and cut off the peel.

Once you have cut your squash into more manageable chunks, it’s time for step three: removing the seeds and cutting the squash into pieces. I like to combine these tasks, as you’ll see below.

If I’m dealing with a butternut squash, I slice off the top, sides, and bottom of the base cylinder (the one with all the seeds inside), leaving the seeds and pulp behind. From there, it’s pretty easy to cut the squash into cubes or slices or rectangular prisms.

If I’m dealing with a kombucha squash, I cut along the inner edge of each wedge, severing the seeds and string from the flesh, and then cut the wedge into thin slices.

And that’s it! Your squash is all ready to cook!

Kate Harding has similar thoughts on the subject.

Pour a goodly amount of sliced almonds and dried coconut into a bowl. (If you’re not sure what a “goodly amount” is, start with half a cup of each and see if it looks like enough almonds and coconuts to cover the bottom of a pie pan.)

Remove the zest from one lemon and add it to the almonds and coconut. A zester is nice for this job, but if you don’t have one, use a knife or a carrot peeler.

Melt a couple of tablespoons of butter and stir it into the mix.

Press the almond-coconut mixture into the bottom of a pie pan.

For the filling:

Combine two cups of ricotta cheese, the juice from the lemon you just zested, 1/3 cup of honey, and two beaten eggs.

Pour the filling onto the almond-coconut crust and sprinkle it with a bit of nutmeg.

Bake the pie at 350. The pie is done when you can smell it and when the filling starts to look a little firmer. I don’t remember exactly how long it takes to cook, but if you put the pie in the oven before dinner, it’s usually done by the time you’re ready to eat dessert.

It’s best to let it cool for a bit before you slice it (it’s a bit runny when you first take it out of the oven), but you can eat it straight out of the oven if you like. It’s also good the next day, and it looks very festive with a bit of nice fruit.

Giraffes for the preschoolers; playsuit for the baby. The playsuit pattern is from oliver + s; the fabric is from Heather Ross‘s Far, Far Away line. The giraffe pattern is from Burda.