The local (MIchi­gan, or even just Mid­west­ern) win­ter squashes are com­ing avail­able in the local pro­duce mar­kets. Mex­i­can win­ter squash is never hard­ened off enough, and lacks a sweet dry­ness that’s nec­es­sary for the way we cook it.

Which is: Cut the win­ter squash (but­ter­nut, acorn, del­i­cata) in half, remove seeds, place face-​​down on a cookie sheet coated lib­er­ally with peanut oil, cook at 400°F until brown burned crap comes out around the edges.

Here’s the trick (one even my lov­ing wife doesn’t under­stand or appre­ci­ate): Eat the brown burned crap.

As far as I can see, that’s the sug­ary juice of the squash, expressed and deep-​​fried in the peanut oil around the flesh of the veg­etable as it des­ic­cates and cooks. The nat­ural sug­ars toast, then burn in the oil. They make caramel. Not like the crap you get from cane or beet sugar. Deli­cious squash caramel. Good enough, and fla­vor­ful enough, that you should eat even the black puffy crunchy stuff.

No, really: try it. Bit­ter? Yes. But bit­ter in a deli­cious way.

[At this point I walk back over to the stove and scrape more black burned squash juice chips off the pan, and then reach in with my hands and pick them off and stuff the tini­est frag­ments into my mouth.]

This is good. This is Autumn, dis­tilled and puri­fied. Browned, the fla­vor of senes­cence and com­fort­able decline. The sweet­ness of mem­ory, the bit­ter­ness of unavoid­able demise, the promise of stock­piled proven­der, of things set aside and kept long after the world sleeps—long after that ephemeral green crap of Spring and Sum­mer can even be wist­fully recalled.