Because You Can Never Get Enough Squash in Your Dessert (maybe $10 for a whole pan; about 40 minutes)

These are pumpkin-based dessert objects that I could sit and eat forever, except that if I did I would also feel shame forever, have to go to my first confession (this is a story [not by Frank O'Connor] for another time), and spend too much time atoning.

That Catholic thing never leaves you. The Jesuits were right. I haven't been to mass since the last Catholic dead person forced me there, but I still get the guilties, just like the good nuns told me I would. Or Jiminy Cricket. Sometimes I get the two confused.

On the other hand, being a mother the BVM would likely appreciate that I am eating my vegetables and fruit, even if they do come looking like something intensely bad for you.

What I have for you today, the day before I have to step back into the classroom and try to justify what I love best (writing, reading, and not stock-reports), is Pumpkin Treats. They're very modified versions of BH&G's Pumpkin Bars, over which the BVM would weep if she could read English, given the sugar and oil and such.

[Hey, when you get bodily taken up to heaven, do you think you get to learn everything? Like, say, reading -- since I'm betting good money (drachmas? talents? shekls?) that the wife of a carpenter in Nazareth during Roman times was illiterate. Or, say, what the hell a pumpkin is, since I don't know if they grew ditto. Or, say, how come the word pumpkin, a nice enough word, gets all cutesified by people in the throes of sentimentalism over children, wives, dogs, what have you.]

What you need:

lasagna pan or large lasagna-pan type baking dish, lightly greased (I use spray-grease)

2 c flour

1/4 c sugar

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cloves (ground)

4 eggs, beaten

1 can pumpkin (15 oz)

1/8 c oil

1 cup applesauce, preferably home-made. This way you get chunks and not much sugar.

Preheat oven to 350.

In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients (on the list, everything through cloves). In a separate bowl, combine the wet stuff. Pour wet stuff into the dry stuff, and mix thoroughly, then pour into greased lasagna pan. Smooth out lightly with a spatula.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool and cut into squares. Try not to eat six at a time. I bet you can't.

The original recipe calls for frosting these with cream cheese icing. Gilding the lily, I say, but if you want to, gild away.

There you go.