The garden slows down in October

The October chapter in Home Gardener's Cookbook (Marjorie Page Blanchard, 1974) is pretty short, admitting "Now with some feeling of relief we put away the gardening tools, but deep down we know that in a few moths we'll welcome getting them out again." In short, once "The pumpkins are picked and piled up to look festive for Hallowe'en," (gotta love the old-timey apostrophe), Blanchard is pretty much ready to be done with the growing season.

The chapter recommends turning one of the few newly in-season veggies-- chard-- into Chard Rolls in Tomato Sauce.

I had assumed the chard leaves would be used as a wrap for the other ingredients, but the chard is ground up with other veggies and mixed with bread crumbs, seasonings, Parm, and eggs to be molded into "sausage-like links." I also assumed that the tomato sauce would be made out of whatever final tomatoes were still hanging on, but this is just made with pre-made tomato sauce, so I was a terrible guesser on this recipe!

Winter squashes, like butternut, are also in season. Blanchard suggests a preparation with warm fall spices.

It's a lot like recipes for sweet potato casseroles. (Just no marshmallows!)

A couple of recipes in this chapter hint at the "Hallowe'en" mentioned earlier. Since this book was written when it was still somewhat acceptable for people to give homemade treats to trick-or-treaters, I suspect the recipe for popcorn balls was written with the holiday in mind.

And for the pumpkins that get turned into jack-o-lanterns, home cooks could still turn the seeds into a treat.

I'd probably recommend seasoning them with a bit more than plain old salt, but it's good to see that everything was getting put to use. October is the month for scares, but being wasteful doesn't have to be one of those frights! Home gardeners are practical.