— Fran Costigan

So I cook seasonally and I cook as locally as I can. And it's very funny that Fran would ask this question because I think it was maybe in the beginning of the summer, I wanted to have some butternut squash and my grocery store didn't have butternut squash. And when I approached the, uh, team member in the produce department, he said, oh no, we don't carry that stuff. It'll be back in the fall. So to that, now that the fall is here, I'll be making lots and lots of, uh, winter squash soups, which are my favorite. I love roasted squash. I love to add roasted squash that's nicely caramelized, uh, much like you make in the roasting assignment. And I love to add it to salads. I love the sweetness of it. I prefer butternut squash to sweet potatoes, which a lot of people, uh, seem to like. But I do cook with sweet potatoes, uh, all year long. So when I was in Italy two years ago at the cooking school at Maia, um, we made a delicious, delicious dish that was butternut skosh that was roasted with oregano and cinnamon. And it just had the most delightful taste. I was surprised that it worked, but it was delicious. So you'll be seeing me making squash muffins, squash bread, squash soup, so forth and so on.