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Making a meal shouldn’t be dangerous. I’ve never been tempted by those Japanese puffer fish that kill someone every so often, or even by pain-inducing incendiary chilies. I have, however, fallen for sweet meat squash. Sweet meat squash is very pretty — a flattened round of pale, silvery blue-green, sometimes with light brown speckles. It’s an excellent squash for eating with its dense, deep, orange-yellow sweet flesh. And the numerous plump seeds are just great for roasting and snacking. Let’s go back to the dense flesh. We’re talking very dense. In fact, the sweet meat is so hard that it is…

One of the best parts of fall is the arrival of apple season; time to drive to a local farm to pick your own or head for your favorite farmers’ market, where often you can find less common varieties. In our family, it’s the smell of cooking apples and cinnamon that signals that fall is here. My mom called it stewed apples, and it’s just apples and cinnamon and maybe a big dollop of honey — cooked in the big pot she gave me — until the house fills with the fragrance that is, to me, the essence of fall. When…

John Lennon in a 2010 Beatlemania Museum display in Hamburg, Germany.

One of my sisters who lived in New Mexico and Colorado gave me a recipe for Chile Verde that I have made for years. It has evolved, as recipes do, and no disrespect is meant to anyone from New Mexico or Colorado if it seems to have strayed from what you were expecting. As with most regional recipes I’ve come across, almost everyone makes their own version, all insisting it’s the true recipe. I like to keep an appreciative, open mind, because good cooking is good cooking and authenticity is in the eye (or taste buds) of the beholder. Chile Verde…