Digging in

Bummer for Nestle, which produces the iconic Libby's canned pumpkin, the go-to squash for millions of pie makers this time of year.

The company says heavy rains have forced it to cease harvesting its crop in Downstate Morton -- which may lead to a shortage during the holiday season of those recognizable orange cans.

But relax, people. You can still bake your pumpkin pie and eat it, too. A pumpkin is a gourd -- as are those oodles of beautiful winter squash with the poetic names (Kabocha, Hubbard, Delicata) crowding the store bins these days.

In my freezer, I have a Ziploc bag full of the cooked flesh of a red Kabocha squash. I bought the squash in early October from farmer Vicki Westerhoff (below) at Green City Market, for our story on farmers' favorite Thanksgiving recipes. Westerhoff is a something of a squash expert -- she grows between 11 and 18 varieties of winter squash on her St. Anne farm -- and her recipe for custard-filled squash is delightful.

In my first attempt at Westerhoff's recipe, however, forces out of my control prevented me from keeping a close eye on the squash -- or, more accurately, the clock -- as it baked (long story; just know it involved my two daughters). The beautiful, majestic squash collapsed on me in the heat, the filling spilling out across the baking sheet. Dang.

But it still tasted delicious, so I scooped all the flesh from the skin anyway, collecting it in a bag and popping it into the freezer. And next week, I'll be making pie with it.

Westerhoff says the three best substitutes for the canned stuff are the Blue Hubbard, Long Island Cheese and Butternut squash (though she assures me my red Kabocha also will work well).

"I would dare say other than a super pumpkin connoisseur, no one would know the difference," she says. "In fact, I think they work better than pumpkin in a lot of ways. The texture is smoother and the flavor is just really good."

So wherever you would have used canned pumpkin, try substituting a squash of a different stripe. It won't be the same old pie you're used to, but I don't think you'll be disappointed, either.

By guest blogger and local freelancer Leah A. Zeldes

Our condolences go out to the family of Josephine Minelli and to generations of Chicago-area Italian-food lovers. The matriarch of the Minelli Meat and Deli family, fondly known as "Mama Minelli," died Tuesday at age 99. By all accounts, she lived a life as robust as her marinara.

Until an ambulance took her away from the stove two years ago, Mrs. Minelli was still making meatballs at the family store -- up to 200 pounds at a time, all by hand. The shop, at 7900 N. Milwaukee, Niles, is the third in a series of food stores she and her late husband, Philip, first opened in 1957.

The first Minelli store stood on the corner of Western Avenue and Lexington Street in the Little Italy neighborhood on Chicago's West Side, dispensing Italian groceries, 10-cent beers and shots. In 1970, Mrs. Minelli and her three sons -- Lenny, John and Alfred -- expanded to a full-service Centrella grocery and Italian specialty market in Niles, and began making prepared foods, beginning with Mrs. Minelli's meatballs, which she insisted should be made by hand.

Thirty-seven years later, Mrs. Minelli presided over the grand opening of the newest location, a deli and butcher shop in Oak Mill Mall, where her grandsons Mario Minelli, Lenny Minnelli Jr. and Ozzie Caccavella continue to offer the locally celebrated meatballs as well as house-made Italian beef, sausage, salads and other foods prepared from Mama Minelli's recipes.

Born in Montefalco, Italy, near Naples, Mrs. Minelli immigrated to Chicago in the 1920s, where she met her husband and reared her family on Taylor Street. Before opening the grocery store, she worked at the Ferrara Pan Candy Co. and the National Biscuit Co.

Though she spent the last two years in a nursing home, St. Matthew Center for Health in Park Ridge, Mrs. Minelli daily entertained large groups of visitors and continued to take a lively interest in the family store.

Visitation for Mrs. Minelli will be held from 2 to 9 p.m. Sunday at Skaja Funeral Home, 7812 N. Milwaukee, Niles. Funeral services begin at 9 a.m. Monday at Skaja, followed by Mass at St. Isaac Jogues, 8149 W. Golf , Niles, and interment at Queen of Heaven Catholic Cemetery & Mausoleums, 1400 S. Wolf, Hillside.

It's almost Thanksgiving. For us, that means once again drawing on the expertise of the Chopping Block's Shelley Young.

This is the third year Young has graciously agreed to be the subject of our Thanksgiving video how-tos. The first year, we asked her to show us how to carve a turkey. Last year, it was how to make gravy. And this year, she whizzes us through pie crust. You can check out all the videos here.

There are two reasons why Young's business -- which started in a charming cottage on Webster Avenue in Lincoln Park and has since mushroomed into a grand space in the Merchandise Mart and a Lincoln Square location -- has been around for 12 years. She knows her stuff. And her stuff works.

Sun-Times editor in chief Don Hayner told me he watched and learned from the turkey carving video; he and I both carve our turkeys this way, now.

Young's gravy relies on a simple, easy-to-remember ratio. And her pie crust recipe, she says, is foolproof. Foolproof is a tall order. But watch the video, and then try it yourself - especially if you have a food processor, you're going to be giddy at how ridiculously easy it really is, this crust thing.

So for next Thanksgiving... Shelley, you know the drill.

(And for another take on Thanksgiving duties, here's Anthony Bourdain, another person we love, but for different reasons.)

A chat with my best friend in Kansas happened to coincide with a doctor's revelation that my husband's cholesterol needs to be nudged back into a safe place. Naturally, I headed to the store.

Enough with the bacon and the Sunday steak, I thought. Except that the husband would sooner starve than eat something as mockable as, say, chicken chili, no matter who made it.

That brought me back to thinking about a visit to my Kansas friend's home last year. Ruhe had made a simple dinner in her slow cooker for us -- a chili-baked beans hybrid made with ground bison, homemade biscuits on the side. It was so tasty. It was so Kansas.

Bison, she told me, is the meat of choice in her home. It's markedly lower in fat and cholesterol than beef, chicken or pork. And of course, this being Kansas, bison is widely available in most grocery stores there. Where was I this whole time?

Bison has everything going for it. Why isn't it easier to come by in Chicago? At Whole Foods, fresh ground bison is $7.99 a pound.

Fortunately, Ruhe's recipe is hard to mess up and open to all sorts of interpretation. And the husband? He ate it up.

Roughly:
Brown 1 pound of ground bison (with 1 chopped onion, if you like). Add 1 can each drained black beans, butter beans, kidney beans and lima beans (or any combination thereof). Stir in 1 cup ketchup, 1/2 to 1 cup brown sugar (1 cup verges on one-dimensionally sweet) and a pinch of salt. If you have a slow cooker, let it do its thing; if not, cook in a Dutch oven in a 225-degree oven, stirring occasionally, for a few hours until it smells and tastes good.

Note: Ruhe sometimes subs KC Masterpiece barbecue sauce for the ketchup and brown sugar; other times, she adds curry and peas, a nod to her British-Pakistani heritage.

Putting together this week's story on four Illinois farmers and their favorite Thanksgiving recipes ranks up there as one of my favorites. Vicki Westerhoff, David Cleverdon, Tracey Vowell and Marty Travis -- they are some good eggs, and with fascinating back stories to boot.

They were all gracious enough to share their recipes during what is typically for them a busy, busy time -- and if you don't try Travis' cornbread recipe, you're missing out.

Speaking of, I missed a few resources for local food during the winter months in our listing, but the Local Beet, of course, has me covered.

Here, after the jump, are two more recipes from Cleverdon we didn't have space for in the section that make clever use of squash and greens. The rolls, his great-grandmother's recipe, have been in Cleverdon's family since the late 19th-century.

By guest blogger and New York writer Seanan Forbes

On Friday, Rodelio Aglibot abandoned Sunda, 110 W. Illinois Street (leaving it in the hands of a more than able crew) and took over the kitchen of the James Beard House, 167 W. 12th in New York City.

Aglibot's fantastic, the menu looked phenomenal, and I wanted in - not in the dining room, but the kitchen.

As is his way, Aglibot did the unexpected: He said yes.

That was Wednesday. This is three o'clock on Friday afternoon, and I find myself in a compact kitchen with an impressive array of chefs: Aglbot; James Gottwald, executive chef of Rockit Bar & Grill and corporate chef of Rockit Ranch Productions; Jesse Deguzman, Sunda's sushi chef, and chef Frank Fronda (below, right). Volunteers from the French Culinary Institute are putting in hours, as well.

Gottwald and Deguzman look like undergraduate students, but the kitchen buzzes with professionalism - and camaraderie. Aglibot, Gottwald and Deguzman are a three-man Chicago team. Fronda and Aglibot travelled around Asia together, and they co-own Baba's Pasta, an artisanal pasta company.

This isn't a tight-knit group; it's a strong, effective sailor's knot - one flexible enough to add a writer to its curves.

Last week I read, in the Sun-Times Showcase section, that celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, star of the shows, "Hell's Kitchen," "The f Word," and "Kitchen Nightmares," has signed a deal for a new show on Fox, tentatively titled "Master Chef."

In it, Ramsay will attempt to take people who have no experience in the food industry into expert cooks. The contestants will whip up dishes that will then be judged by a panel of expert chefs. Are they kidding? Really? I'm sure that Fox will have no trouble finding people to take part in this because people will do anything to get on TV, but what sort of masochistic person, with no professional kitchen experience, would ever subject themselves to the foul-mouthed, short-tempered Ramsay? It's one thing for Ramsay to shout and swear at professionals who can't run a restaurant or cook food worth putting in front of a paying guest but I don't see how his act will work on those who haven't worked in kitchens before. Restaurants, like bars, are among the best places in the world to work, but much like newsrooms, the folks who work in these places are quite a different breed. Everyday behavior in working restaurants (like newsrooms) might get you fired from just about any other workplace, with the exception of perhaps a pirate ship.

I predict lots of tears, some people storming out of the kitchen, some on-camera asides from the contestants remarking about how mean Ramsay is, and maybe a few people who will swear and scream back at him. Fox may as well call it, "So You Think You Can Cook?" The carnage could be horrible. And I can't wait to tune in.

The news was announced via email this afternoon: After 40 years, Don Roth's Blackhawk in Wheeling, is closing.

The surf-and-turf restaurant of Spinning Salad Bowl fame will serve its last meal on New Year's Eve.

"With my 90th birthday on the horizon and none of my children in a position to assume responsibility for the family business, it will be better to close Don's last restaurant while it still is a going concern," said Ann Roth, Don Roth's widow, in a statement.

Could you eat sausage pizza -- and only sausage pizza -- for an entire month?

Craig "Pizza Boy" Scharoff (pictured) could -- or rather, did.

Scharoff entered into a bet with his co-worker, Ron Kaplan, back in September, that he would eat sausage pizza for every meal during the month of October. It was one of those "If you could eat one thing for the rest of your life... " discussions that just took on a life of its own, Kaplan says. "After talking about it for so long, I decided to challenge Craig and everyone here egged him on ... At first, I never thought he could do it but when he ordered that Dominos very early on, I knew I was in trouble."

Kaplan laid out the specifics: sauce and other fillings optional; no pizza variations (e.g. French bread pizza, pizza-flavored Hot Pockets); no salads, side dishes or dessert, and so forth.

Kaplan, conveniently, is one of the moderators of the food chat site, LTHForum, where this whole thing has played out for the past several weeks, with photographic evidence posted by Kaplan of much of Scharoff's intake.

The payoff for all of Scharoff's effort? $2,000.

The twist: Around lunchtime today, Kaplan announced that he and Scharoff have donated the cash to the Northern Illinois Food Bank. And Kaplan is now dusting off an old treadmill to give to Scharoff.

If you're not already sick of Halloween candy -- make that, if you're sick of that waxy, pedestrian, drugstore stuff filled with stabilizers and subpar ingredients -- check out today's story and recipes from Anita Chu's Field Guide to Candy. Better yet, check out the book.

I've been toting around the pocket-sized guide for weeks now like my 4-year-old does her nubby, floppy bear. There were only so many recipes I needed to test for the sake of the story, but now that that's in the can (and I'm off my sugar high), I can scratch my itch for Chu's version of Almond Joys, one of the world's greatest candy bars.

Chow's take on the DIY Halloween candy story, meanwhile, also tackles the Almond Joy as well as the three other big guns in the candy world: Twix, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Snickers. At a glance, Chu's recipe appears more doable. But then, Chow gets points for its printable wrappers and super cool cross-sections of the chocolate bars (which reminds us of how much we love looking at cross-sections of food).

Happy homemade Halloween.