"What's one more?" is Louise Ward's frequent response to requests: Can someone come over to play, join in a car trip, or stay for dinner? An extra body is no big deal to Ms. Ward, who is the mother of 18 children, and a legal guardian to two, with ages ranging from 2 to 30.

When a family is over five times larger than the national average, just one of those meals can be impressive. Case in point: On a rainy Yom Kippur last Thursday most of the kids were hanging around the house on their day off from school, and for lunch Ms. Ward used up three loaves of bread.

A visit to McDonald's, a family favorite, can be a logistical challenge. "It scares people when we go inside," said Ms. Ward. Instead she will pull up the 17-seat family van - it can fit 18 people when the family uses its "illegal squeeze" maneuver - to the drive-through and order between $47 and $67 worth of food.

"They usually mess up our order and we get extra stuff," said David Ward, who goes to the East Hampton Middle School.

Though life seems to be an endless spiderweb of Boy Scouts, sports, work, chores, and community service from an outsider's perspective, it seems normal for those in the clan.

Ms. Ward and her husband, Steve, a carpenter, come from large families. Ms. Ward was one of seven children, and Mr. Ward was one of 12. The idea of having a large family was never a foreign one.

"The last time the two of us were alone was 30 years ago. We never, ever have an empty house," Ms. Ward said.

Some of the Wards' children are adopted, although Ms. Ward declines to say how many. "There is such a need, but it's not an effort for us," she said. "You just cook a bigger meal, and do more of the same."

Mr. and Ms. Ward were always willing to take in children. "We used to do foster parenting," she said. "We took the Suffolk County Department of Human Services courses. We fostered 48 kids."

Currently there are 16 family members, from 2-year-old Katalina through 23-year-old Chris, living at the eight-bedroom Ward house in Northwest Woods. "I always have someone in diapers. I thought I was done with diapers 15 years ago," said Ms. Ward. "Well, what are you going to do?"

Six children have moved out of the house, but their presence remains. All the children's pictures are displayed on virtually every surface of the house: Tiffany, Matthew, Big Nicholas, Robby, Chris, Shawn, Antwon, Lucus, David, Steven, Nicky, Kaelyn, Samantha, Sadie, Alexis, Thomas, Quincy, and Katalina, and Will and Tammy, who have the Wards as legal guardians, all smile in images throughout the house.

"You're never lonely, you might want a little bit of privacy. But if you want to have a baseball game, we can field two teams," said Ms. Ward.

"You always have someone to play with," said David.

Sports are a center of life in the Ward house. The kids not only play the usual spate of baseball, basketball, and soccer, but also make up their own games with increasingly intricate rules. They also keep the seven cats and two dogs on guard.

"You have to be substantial to be in this house. We have nothing that can't defend itself." Ms. Ward said. "I don't do reptiles or birds."

Ms. Ward also has three fish tanks, but only two were in use last Thursday after an unfortunate bologna incident killed off several of her saltwater species.

Driving the kids to all of their after-school activities, which include dancing, sports, theater groups, and community service projects, can be like solving a puzzle. Every day the kids write their commitments on a large white board off the kitchen. Then Ms. and Mr. Ward do their best to get everyone where they're supposed to go.

Sometimes it requires a little bit of carpooling, but usually there isn't a problem. Mr. Ward also is the head of the East Hampton Boy Scouts. Six of his sons are scouts.

Sports are not the only given among the Ward kids. "All my kids are going to go to college. They might have to get loans, but we will help them as much as we can," Ms. Ward said.

Shawn, who is in 10th grade, is the next child to apply to college. Already he has been courted by Brown University in Providence, R.I., and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore for his academics.

But the one way that the kids describe life in the house, is fun. Not only is there someone to play with, there is always something to celebrate. Birthdays come at least once a month. "We are official birthday central," said Ms. Ward.

In her spare time Ms. Ward makes wedding decorations. She supplied them for her two sons' weddings and for several friends and neighbors. The entire family gets involved in making them.

Without an upcoming birthday, and with no weddings in the near future, last Thursday's thoughts turned toward what to do for Halloween.

"We're going to do a big job decorating," said David. "Tell people to come to our house."

Stick To Issues

East Hampton

November 3, 1997

To The Editor:

I call on all political parties to refrain from name-calling and slanderous innuendoes in future campaigns.

It is okay to find fault and criticize an opponent's job performance when seeking to replace them in office. We need to make our political parties stick to issues relative to maintaining East Hampton Town. We are very fortunate to be able to express ourselves as citizens at Town Board meetings, etc. I encourage more citizens to attend these meetings.

We are a community of neighbors, shopkeepers, etc., that are always working together for our town. Let's keep it this way.

JULIA KAYSER

Problem Is Parents

Southampton

October 27, 1997

To The Editor,

An innocent child is dead! The life of a young girl is ruined! I do not know exactly what happened with the nanny story on TV, but I do know that no one has said anything about how difficult it is to be a nanny and about how badly babysitters are often treated.

I have babysat off and on over the years, with mostly delightful experiences. I have also stayed with children for as long as a week, even with the parents overseas. I, the babysitter, was treated wonderfully. I have had the appreciation I deserve.

Nannies are often deliberately lured from overseas, precisely so that they can be exploited. They "live in" with good situations, of course, but there are plenty of nightmare experiences.

Everywhere, the complaints are about the nannies and the child care agencies and the day care centers. The parents chose parenthood. The problem is the parents! Many couples today want everything. Many mothers do not have to work. Children are often treated like "projects" and like commodities. And, all too often, nannies are virtual slaves. I have worked for some billionaires. They are not superior people, but they can be expected to afford servants!

I know a lot about child care and do not like to have the caretakers' needs neglected in the discussions!

MINA BARSTOW

Letter Home From Boynton Beach

October 23, 1997

Dear Editor,

In the '20s and '30s, and until the social revolution of the '60s, the lack of discipline among children in school was not a serious problem, which made teaching a more enjoyable profession. Most children learned their Thou Shalt Nots very well before going to school. After they entered school, they did not present a problem to the teachers, as they had been taught at home to behave well wherever they went, and not to be an embarrassment to their parents.

Of course, there were incidents when a problem arose, but most teachers handled it very well. If a teacher was unable to do so, the problem student, usually a boy, was marched to the principal's office, where appropriate corrective action was taken. Most students would rather not interrupt a class, because they knew that if it were serious enough to warrant disciplinary action in class, the punishment received at home would be much more severe.

There were several teachers in my school days who would take no nonsense or class interruptions from any student. I do not recall my first and second-grade teachers, Katherine Wade and Effie Osgood, respectively, ever spanking or shaking a student for causing any disturbance in class. In the third grade, however, I remember one incident, and after that, no more classroom disturbances occurred until we were in fifth grade, but that was nipped in the bud in rather an unusual way.

A new student, Jimmy Dixon from St. James, Long Island, entered our third-grade class sometime after the school year commenced. He was a hell-raiser, more in innocent fun than malicious mischief, and enjoyed pulling a prank, which made members of the class laugh, but which was viewed by our teacher as being not very humorous. After he had been in class for a while, he thought he'd test Miss DeCastro. Isabel DeCastro, a Sag Harbor girl, had seen many students pass through her third grade, and Jimmy Dixon was no different from the other bratty kids she had handled. He pulled his prank, but when she finished with him, he was a very meek and embarrassed young boy, and never again did he upset our classroom routine with one of his pranks.

Mrs. Harry Parsons was our fourth-grade teacher, and I do not recall anyone causing any classroom disturbances. That school year passed rather smoothly, with Miss Alice Pugh, a music teacher, teaching us a football fight song, in preparation for the Far Rockaway game which the Maroon and Gray won 13-12.

Mrs. George Jones was our fifth-grade teacher, who came from upstate New York, and had three children of her own, Ben, Betty, and William. At that time, each student was required to buy a geography textbook. Our particular book was titled "Our State and Continent." Geography was a subject which Mrs. Jones taught quite well, especially the section relating to the upstate area. One morning, while she was teaching it, one of the boys persisted in whispering to the student in front of him, and it annoyed Mrs. Jones. She told him to be quiet and to pay attention, because he was interrupting the class. He kept quiet for a few moments, and then resumed whispering. As he became engrossed in the subject about which he was whispering, he failed to notice Mrs. Jones drift toward the rear of the classroom, and then proceed up the aisle to approach him from the rear. When she came to his desk, she lifted "Our State and Continent" and it came crashing down on the whisperer's head driving him down in his seat. From that moment on, he was careful not to whisper while she was teaching.

When the second semester commenced in the sixth grade, after midterm, home economics and manual training were added to the curriculum. Gladys Fink taught home economics, and Mario Fontana taught manual training. Both were good teachers but left East Hampton, Miss Fink to get married, and Mr. Fontana for a better position in one of the Nassau County schools.

Mr. Fontana was known as Babe to his fellow schoolteachers, but was known to some of the boys as the Shadow. Alfonso Cesna, a classmate of mine, named him after the popular fictional character of the time. As Mr. Fontana walked, he seemed to glide, and when dressed for the outdoors, he wore a trench coat and a dark brown fedora with the brim turned down in front and back. He drove a 1929 Model A Ford roadster, and whenever it rained, he would sit behind the steering wheel with his coat collar pulled up behind his neck, and the fedora pulled down. He looked somewhat ominous, giving him the appearance of being a man of mystery, hence the nickname, the Shadow.

He was a no-nonsense teacher and often revealed himself as a man with a short fuse. Despite those characteristics, he was well-liked by his students. One morning, Bill Crapser, a shop student, entered the classroom feeling life was like a bowl of cherries, and when he saw Mr. Fontana standing next to a workbench, he went up to him and squared off, as if to spar. The next moment, Bill was on the floor, for he never saw the right hand that Fontana threw. Just as it happened, Mr. Brooks, the principal, entered the shop room and witnessed Bill being struck. He told both of them to go to his office, where he would call Mr. Crapser, Bill's father.

Levi Crapser, an automobile salesman, was employed by the Hedges Ford Motor Agency, located across from the Methodist Church. It did not take long for Mr. Crapser to arrive at Mr. Brooks's office. Mr. Brooks and Mr. Fontana explained what had happened, and after hearing them out, he turned to his son, and asked if what he had just been told was true. Bill replied that it was. Mr. Crapser told both men that should it happen again, Mr. Fontana was to do as he did, and Mr. Brooks was not to call him, as he was a very busy man.

Years later, when Bill told me of the incident, he added, "Pop gave me no sympathy, whatsoever."

Usually, that was how it was when a kid got into a bit of trouble at school. Parents' punishment was much more severe than what a kid received at school. Most parents, in those days, did not mind teachers using force on their children, and as a result, the use of force by teachers was rather infrequent. One must remember that when a child came home from school, usually a mother was there to greet him. Most of a kid's waking hours were spent under the watchful eye of a responsible adult.

When Sprig Gardner came to East Hampton, he had Babe Fontana make him a fair sized paddle, which he used on kids who stepped out of line. Female teachers would send a problem student to Sprig for disciplinary action, but after the word got around, the paddle remained on the shelf for most of the time.

Football linemen who Sprig thought lacked aggressiveness in line play, received several whacks from that paddle during practice. Sprig would yell, "Charge," and just as he yelled, he whacked the exposed backside of a lineman, encouraging him to charge with a little more enthusiasm.

Chester Gottschall, the high school math teacher, came to East Hampton in 1928, the same year as Mr. Brooks, and coached football during Robert MacLaury's years as the high school coach. Mr. MacLaury was primarily a baseball coach, and in 1929, his baseball team won the league championship. It was one of the better baseball teams in East Hampton High School history.

Mr. Gottschall was another teacher with a rather short fuse. Often, he would bang the blackboard with his ringed fingers when he became a bit upset and impatient with a student who had difficulty arriving at the correct answer to an algebraic problem. When he banged the blackboard, chalk dust flew in miniature clouds, intimidating the student. A few of his students thought it was his way of separating the wheat from the chaff. Some of the more timid students were elated the day they heard he was leaving the East Hampton School system to become a principal in upstate New York.

Each teacher had his or her own method of maintaining classroom discipline, and most were very successful teachers. Once a student knew he had to obey, pay attention, and not interrupt a class, the teacher had very few problems for the remainder of the school year. Many teachers spent their entire careers in the East Hampton school system, and enjoyed every moment of it.

In sixth grade, our teacher was Helen Bond, a Southold girl, and another no-nonsense teacher. Her method of punishment was to take a ruler and slap the open palm that, sometimes, brought tears to the student's eyes. She was an above average teacher, and well liked by her class. She taught the Palmer Method of penmanship very well, and one of the reasons, I believe, was that she was gifted with excellent penmanship. The young kids of today hold a pen or pencil much differently from the way we were taught, but as time goes on, methods change, and nothing seems to stay the same.

Over all, we had very good teachers, most of whom never had to resort to force to maintain classroom discipline. It was not until we reached eighth grade that we had a male classroom teacher. During the lower grades, our teachers watched over us like mother hens. Some were married and had children of their own, and after the Great Depression blanketed the land, we lost some of our married female teachers, because of a controversial decision made by the local School Board.

In those days kindergarten through seventh grade were taught by female teachers, some of whom were married. As the 1931-32 school year ended, married teachers whose contracts had expired were not offered new ones, because the School Board had been pressured by some influential local residents not to rehire married female teachers. The reasoning was that there would be two wage earners in a teacher's household and in some of the others, none. In an attempt to override that decision, J. Edward Gay, a School Board member, introduced a resolution to offer contracts to the discharged teachers. He was unsuccessful, because the six-man board voted 3-3. Two teachers, Mrs. George Jones and Effie Osgood, who married Peter Zachas, were hired by the Town Board to be town welfare investigators.

During the '30s East Hampton High School had no guidance counselors. Our eighth-grade teacher, George Mercer Guery, at midterm, suggested the high school curriculum each of us should pursue. Quite a few of us ended our eighth-grade subjects at midterm and commenced our freshman curriculum months before we entered our freshman year. Mr. Guery was the only guidance counselor that we ever saw. As it was during difficult economic times, very few parents had the funds to send their children to college.

We resided in the boondocks, and there were no state normal schools in Suffolk County, as there were in some of the upstate counties. Our representatives did not have the necessary horsepower to have the state build a school in our section of New York State. It is too bad, for there were a number of smart students who were college material, but had neither the funds, nor the proper guidance to further their education.

It simply would be impossible for young people of today to understand the depth of despair and hopelessness that confronted a huge number of American families during those dark days. It took a world war and over 50 million dead to end the Great Depression. Pray God, we won't have to experience another era like that one.

Graduation brought to an end all those memorable and carefree days of school. In 1938, those days ended for my classmates and me, as we left Edwards Theater on a rainy Sunday afternoon in late June.

Over the past months I have written about an East Hampton as I remember it. The town that was, those many years ago, no longer exists, because the old-timers who made it such a pleasant town in which to live are no longer with us. Its fields and woodlands that we once roamed have been developed, true, but it is people who are the heart and soul of a community. I remember many of those old folks as being kind, and friendly, and willing to share their meager possessions with a less fortunate neighbor. A neighbor to them was not only the family next door, but anyone who needed a helping hand. One would meet them most anywhere, along the street, at the movies, on the playground, in church, and on a clam flat. Always, they had a cheerfulness about them, and a concern about one's "mutha and fahtha."

It was my good fortune that I met and grew to know so many of those fine and wonderful people. Of all the people who I have known, I believe Aunt Winnie Lester, of the Round Swamp Lesters, personified the loving and caring nature of all those compassionate people. Regardless of the number of people sitting in her home, when another dropped in, Aunt Winnie would say, "Take a chair." In her heart and in the hearts of all those kind people, there was room for one more.

Except for a few relatives, and they have been becoming fewer, there are but six people, now living, who I remember being friendly with, when we lived in Springs. They are Melvin Bennett and his sisters, Marion and Eleanor, Helen Payne Hults, her sister, Ivanette, and Clara Purinton Palma, who resides in Southampton.

I sincerely hope that my letters from Boynton Beach have helped the old-timers recall fond memories of their pasts. Also, that new residents of the Town of East Hampton might have a better understanding of the way of life as I remember it.

Take care, God bless, and happy 350th anniversary to all you Bonackers, old and new.

Sincerely,

NORTON (BUCKET) DANIELS

So ends, for now, Mr. Daniels's series of letters home from Boynton Beach, Fla. The writer, who has been sharing his reminiscences of the East Hampton of his youth with Star readers for the past year, has decided to "take a rest" from his toils. He has promised, however, to write again if so inspired. Ed.

Please address correspondence to [email protected]

Please include your full name, address and daytime telephone number for purposes of verification.

"Sicilian Vegetarian Cooking"

John Penza

Illustrated by

Miriam Dougenis.

Ten Speed Press, $16.95

Vegetarian cooking has always had two big advantages - healthfulness and economy - but there was a time when the cookbooks that extolled vegetarian virtues were as boring as they were earnest.

Strong on nutburgers and root vegetables, they might just as well have suggested eating one's Birkenstocks.

Not anymore. As more of us are eating lighter, so the cookbooks launched to entice us are lighter and brighter and livelier, too. Among them is John Penza's new book, "Sicilian Vegetarian Cooking."

Little Butter, No Milk

Following upon the well-received "Sicilian American Pasta," Mr. Penza, who lives in Bridgehampton and is more widely known as the novelist John Okas, has turned his hand to lighter and more healthful recipes with a Sicilian snap.

There is little butter and no milk in the recipes, which cover soups, appetizers, pasta, pizza, salads, rice, polenta, and egg dishes, plus a few desserts.

There are new variations on old favorites, such as a lentil soup that uses porcini mushrooms instead of bacon or sausage for a meaty flavor, and tempting new ideas, such as a hearty escarole soup with cheese ravioli or a soup made with portobello mushrooms and polenta.

Surprises

While the recipes for pizza don't have many surprises, there are plenty of others that do.

What about penne in a spicy tomato and Grand Marnier sauce or grilled polenta squares with a topping of white beans, arugula, and mozzarella, or an invigorating fennel, orange, and mozzarella salad?

Then there are rather more demanding recipes, such as a rice pie that calls for rice with eggs, pecorino, provolone, and ground almonds baked with a covering of fried eggplant in a hot onion, garlic, and tomato sauce.

Sounds good.

Drawings To Drool By

The book also supplies instructions for essential stuff you will need along the way - mayonnaise, a good vegetable stock, basic tomato sauce, pizza dough - so the beginner won't have to resort to other cookbooks.

But what makes this book irresistible, as those who bought Mr. Penza's earlier book will agree, are the illustrations by Miriam Dougenis of Sag Harbor.

Fat purple aubergines, fiery squash blossoms, butter-colored corn, tablecloths striped in Mediterranean blue, and the kind of ripe red tomatoes we fantasize about all winter long - Ms. Dougenis can paint food that makes you drool, makes you want to start cooking at once, and certainly makes you anxious to shell out a reasonable $16.95 at the cash register.

"Pancakes A to Z"

Marie Simmons

Houghton Mifflin, $15

As Marie Simmons notes in her introduction to "Pancakes A to Z," the batter-based food, also known as flapjacks, hotcakes, and griddlecakes conjures up memories of fire department-sponsored breakfasts all over small-town America, which would include the many hosted over the years right here.

What better food to honor with a little cookbook of its own?

Try to think of a kind of pancake for every letter of the alphabet. You're probably hard-pressed (if not, maybe you should be writing your own cookbook). But Ms. Simmons, a part-time resident of Sag Harbor, has managed to, with a creativity that reminds us that pancakes are not just that breakfast staple topped with maple syrup.

Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Through Ms. Simmons's interpretations, pancakes can be served for breakfast, yes, but also as appetizers, a light lunch, even dinner, and dessert.

And, all-American though they may be, they in fact draw from culinary traditions around the world, "from the crisp lentil patties of southern India to the buckwheat blini of Russia and delicate crˆpes of France."

How about starting a chilly winter day with a helping of banana sour cream pancakes with cinnamon maple syrup? Or savory little corn pancakes topped with a dollop of sour cream and crowned with black caviar served at your New Year's party?

Mashed-Potato Pancakes?

An egg pancake paired with greens and curls of Parmesan as a light lunch treat? Mashed-potato pancakes jazzed up with shredded cheese, mustard, and scallion to accompany your grilled meats for dinner?

Cocoa pancake-ettes with Susan's fudge sauce, a chocolatey choice clearly for dessert?

A few simple tips for the perfect pancake - for example, stir, don't beat, the batter - round out this concise little book. It is the third in an "A to Z" series by Ms. Simmons: Bar cookies and muffins have already been done, and word is a book on puddings is in the mixer.

In a continuing series of talks with writers about how they have been influenced by the visual arts, Ellen Keiser will talk with the novelist and art writer Frederic Tuten on Saturday at 3 p.m. at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton.

The visual arts have always played a prominent role in Mr. Tuten's life. He studied art before he turned to writing, and he has continued to write about art for such publications as Art in America and Artforum, most recently conducting an interview with the painter David Salle, who has a house in Bridgehampton.

The director of the graduate program in creative writing at the City College of New York for 15 years, Mr. Tuten has published four novels: "The Adventures of Mao on the Long March," which was the subject of a long piece in The New Yorker by John Updike, "Tallien: A Romance," about a figure from the French Revolution, "The Adventures of Tintin in the New World," in which the beloved cartoon character grows up and learns about love, regret, and betrayal, and his latest book, "Van Gogh's Bad Cafe."

Of these, "Mao" and "Tintin" had covers created for them by Roy Lichtenstein, who was a close friend of Mr. Tuten's, and the cover of "Tallien" features part of Mr. Salle's "Blue Paper." "Van Gogh's Bad Cafe," in addition to being a fantasy created around the artist, is fully illustrated by ink wash drawings by Eric Fischl.

The author will read from his latest book on Saturday and discuss how painting has influenced his subject matter and style.

Never have I seen so many fields of pumpkins as this year. Every farmer east of the Shinnecock must have planted at least an acre. And where a lone jack-o'-lantern used to preside on the average doorstep, this year there were armies of pumpkins artfully arranged on lawns, fences, on pediments, in commercial window displays, nearly everywhere except as car hood ornaments. I can't imagine how Jerry Della Femina got into so much trouble over pumpkin displays (the displays I'd like to see prosecuted are the political signs littering the roads).

But given the pumpkin inundation - fields are still full of them, free for the asking I should imagine - and Halloween a memory, what do we do with all those pumpkins? Although they are about as native American as you can get, our cookery has surprisingly few uses for them. In fact, winter squashes in general do not fare well in contemporary cookbooks.

However, in light of their enormous nutritional benefits as well as their goodness, cheapness and availability, I've gone hunting for some interesting ways - or at least alternatives to pumpkin pie and jack-o'-lanterns - to make use of them.

Hubbards are a bit sweet for soup, but almost any of them will be good in this spicy concoction. Let's face it: squashes aren't overwhelming in the flavor department and need a bit of help.

Butternuts and pumpkins are excellent and easier to peel than the rougher skinned types of their brethren. Butternuts are the easiest to peel, but another way of getting at these tough squashes like pumpkin and Hubbards if you don't have a machete or a heavy, really good serrated knife, is to cook them a bit first in a microwave until they soften up enough to cut them open so that you can remove the seeds and pith and, if the flesh is cooked enough, scoop it out with a big kitchen spoon.

First Choice

Another technique is to cut the pumpkin into large chunks and peel those with a vegetable peeler - my first choice.

Makes about two quarts.

21/2 lbs. peeled pumpkin chunks

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

4 cloves garlic, minced or sliced

1 very large onion, coarsely chopped

2 stalks celery, peeled and cut in 2-inch lengths

1 tsp. ground cardomom

1 tsp. ground coriander

2 tsp. ground cumin

1 tsp. coarse salt

1/8 tsp. cayenne or red pepper flakes

Pinch of grated nutmeg (optional)

1 quart degreased chicken broth

1 cup Half-and-Half

1 Tbsp. fresh coriander leaves, minced

Garnish: sour cream, light or regular

Hack the pumpkin open and scrape away all the pith and seeds - just like a jack-o'-lantern. Cut it into manageable chunks and peel them, then cut the pieces into two or three-inch chunks and set aside.

Puree The Soup

Heat the oil in a large deep soup pot and add the vegetables and spices. Stir and cook over low heat until the onions look transparent.

Add the pumpkin and broth, bring to the simmer, cover and cook until the pumpkin is very tender (this takes about four minutes in a pressure cooker - the method I always use), which depends on the age of the pumpkin, but should take about 20 minutes.

Puree the soup in a blender or processor and stir in the Half-and- Half. Reheat briefly and serve in warmed bowls with swirls (from a squeeze bottle) of sour cream and sprinklings of fresh coriander.

Plain heavy cream can substitute for the sour cream but the fresh coriander, if unavailable, can be replaced with fresh minced parsley, although the soup will not be nearly as interesting.

Black Bean Soup In A Pumpkin

I guess you could call this a post-Halloween soup or plan it for next All Hallows Eve. It's fun to serve and not nearly as forbidding as the lengthy directions would lead one to believe.

Look around for a rather tall pumpkin big enough to hold two quarts of liquid when hollowed out - it will probably weigh about seven or eight pounds. Wash it well and cut off a lid about three inches from the top leaving the stem on. Scoop out the seeds and pith very thoroughly.

Carve tiny wedges from around the rim in a rickrack pattern. You needn't bother with the lid unless time weighs heavy on your hands. The squash will be steamed to use as a tureen for the soup and will keep it piping hot though the pumpkin itself won't be served.

Find a pot it will fit into with a couple of inches to spare around the sides of the pumpkin and a shallow rack to set it on. Place a long dish towel or length of cheesecloth under it and bring the cloth up over the top to be used to lift it from the pot.

Place the pumpkin in the pot with a couple of inches of hot water and steam it, covered, until it is heated through but still very firm. This should be done about an hour before you wish to serve the soup. Meanwhile: the soup.

Black Bean Soup

Soaking the beans makes them cook more quickly, but if you forget, simply bring them to a boil, simmer for one minute, cover loosely, and let them soak for at least one hour.

If you use a pressure cooker, as I do, follow the instructions for timing that came with it as pressure cookers vary in the time required. The new second generation cookers will have the pre-soaked beans tender in about five minutes - if unsoaked, in about 20 minutes. Wash and pick over the beans as usual however you plan to cook them.

2 dried ancho chillies, soaked in hot (not boiling) water 30 minutes.

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1 Tbsp. cumin

Pinch of cayenne

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 medium onions, chopped

1 carrot, peeled and cut in chunks

2 quarts water or de-greased chicken broth

1 cup dry red wine

1 bay leaf

Salt to taste.

Tear the anchos apart and discard the stem and seeds. Puree the chillies with their soaking water, which should be strained, in a blender or a small processor. Heat the oil in a deep soup pot and add the cumin and cayenne, stirring it to toast slightly over low heat.

Add the garlic and onion and sweat them over medium-low heat, stirring often, then add the anchos. Add the carrot water, wine, bay leaf and soaked beans. Do not add salt. Simmer over low heat with loose cover until the beans are beginning to disintegrate. Then add salt to taste. Puree the soup, leaving some beans whole, and reheat. Adjust seasoning to your taste.

I usually add a splash of dry sherry or some mojo, a Cuban table sauce of sour orange juice flavored with garlic and hot chillies that I make myself. It is widely sold in South Florida, but the commercially made stuff isn't very good. Use your own favorite table sauce to flavor the soup to your taste.

Reheat the soup to boiling hot, stirring constantly as it tends to stick. Put the pumpkin into a deep bowl and slide the cheesecloth from under it. Pour the hot soup into the pumpkin and serve with warm tortillas or hot corn bread and butter.

Sweet Dumpling Squash

This lovely little squash, usually weighing about a pound, was developed in Japan and makes a very appealing presentation as it doesn't lose its attractive ivy green mottled stripes on a cream colored background. Unlike some of those deceitfully beautiful motley-colored dried beans that fade to a solid dull color after cooking. Though not common, I've seen them at our local farmstand this fall. (Most of these new squashes, beloved by the Japanese, were first grown in California expressly for export to Japan.)

Sharp Spoon

Store them at cool room temperature and use them within two weeks. They are quite hard and will need a heavy, sharp knife to cut in half vertically. Or if you have smallish ones, just cut off a few inches of the top.

In any case, scoop out the seeds and pith with a melon baller or sharp kitchen spoon. The ones that are about four inches in diameter will serve two people.

Sprinkle the inside with a little salt, pepper, and mace or nutmeg. For a single squash, place it, cut side up, in a glass bowl with about one-half inch of water. Cover with plastic wrap, leaving a tiny edge open for escaping steam. Microwave for four minutes on high. Serve with a lump of butter in the cavity and let each person mash it up with his fork, as you would a baked potato.

Use Foil

For a crowd - say the Thanksgiving mob - you might want to arrange a number of halves, with a little cream in the cavities, in a large shallow baking dish with half an inch of water under them. Cover tightly with foil and bake at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes or until very tender when pierced with a skewer.

They should be meltingly tender - don't make the mistake of many of the younger restaurant chefs around here who think all vegetables should be "hot-raw" and even in the case of dried beans, "crunchy" - an awful, not to say indigestible notion.

Kabocha Or Buttercup Squash

Several different strains of the Japanese kabochas are around on local stands and are called by various names. Whatever the seed catalogue writer dreamed up probably. The buttercup squash, a large turban-shaped squash of about four to five pounds, has a dull, dark green, rough textured skin and was developed in North Dakota - it keeps well at cool room temperature for as long as four weeks.

Kabochas sometimes look the same but have five or six variations. Most have a creamy pale pink interior when cut and a soft, custardy yellow flesh when cooked - usually by steaming or baking. Cutting, aye, that's the rub! You need a really heavy, sharp knife and a rubber mallet to do the job effectively.

Place the knife just off-center and bang on it with the rubber mallet until you get the squash split. These squashes are delicious, low-calorie, and very easy to cook. I have a buttercup awaiting its fate while I think of something to do with it for Thanksgiving. More on that later.

Nutritionally, according to my favorite source, "Uncommon Fruits and Vegetables" by Elizabeth Schneider, all winter squashes have tons of vitamin A, "substantial" vitamin C content, and some iron and potassium. They deserve to be more widely used as food, not just decorations.

The first thought, upon hearing that Michael's restaurant in Springs had changed hands, was "Darn it! There goes one of the last inexpensive places to eat."

All was well, however. Though the prices have gone up a little, Michael's is still great value, and the price rise is offset by a bigger menu with more imaginative offerings. There is an extensive selection of daily specials - on Sunday night, for example, there were six entree specials in addition to the regular menu.

Other things that haven't changed about Michael's are the cozy, Gemtlich atmosphere and the fact that it's still as difficult to find as ever. When searching for the turnoff from Three Mile Harbor Road, what you have to look for is Maidstone Market and the Springs Barber Shop on your right and what you have to remember is that you haven't got there until it feels as if you've reached Vermont.

Alcoves And Corners

Part of the restaurant's charm is its complicated arrangement of big and small tables, open spaces and enclosed booths, alcoves and corners, and rooms leading from one to another. It makes it a particularly attractive place on cold winter nights.

Appetizers range from $2.75 for a small soup to $7.95 for mussels, shrimp cocktail, or baked brie with apple or sausage. A la carte entrees start at $9.95 for pasta marinara and peak at $29.95 for surf 'n' turf, with the majority under $17.

But the bargains come with the special offers: a series of $9.95 entrees - on Sunday they were duck, chicken, and penne with pesto and sun-dried tomatoes - which include soup or salad, daily specials, or the regular $15.95 prix fixe dinners. These include soup or salad and dessert and a choice of half a dozen different entrees.

Maidstone Snails

Right up there in the imaginative category was the snail appetizer. Instead of being six little chewy things in pretty shells with a bit of garlic butter, this was a whole dish of snails, so tender they might just have ambled in from Maidstone Park, in a delicious Pernod sauce.

The Cajun shrimp and corn chowder was judged the best chowder anyone at the table had tasted in a long time - a sweet, creamy concoction enlivened with a peppery kick. The house salad was a little unimaginative and the dressing was a bit heavy on the vinegar. A couple who ate there on the same night raved about the fried oysters but were cooler about the portobello mushrooms with shaved parmesan.

Two Evenings' Worth

If you order the traditional sort of dishes that Michael's always carried in the past - roast beef, pork chops, lamb shank, prime rib, etc. - you can still rely on getting an enormous portion, laden with mashed potatoes, pureed squash, and fresh vegetables, that will feed you for the next evening, too, as like as not.

The three dishes we tried - roast lamb, prime rib, and flounder - were all the well-cooked, hearty, no frills offerings we had been expecting. Reports from other diners who have eaten at Michael's recently particularly praised the barbecued pork chops and the seafood fra diavalo, a dish of shrimp, mussels, clams, and calamari in a spicy marinara sauce that is $18.95 for one or $29.95 for two.

Though in theory we should not have had room for dessert, we felt we had to try some purely in the interest of research: a delicious chocolate mousse that came in a little pastry shell, a light tiramisu that didn't cloy, and a hearty, homey apple pie.

Bloody Mary

Also worth mentioning is Michael's Sunday brunch, which includes a complimentary Mimosa or Bloody Mary and a basket of featherlight muffins with the dish you order. That could be eggs Benedict ($9.95), poached salmon ($12.95), omelets, pancakes, chicken, or pasta. The French toast is particularly good, being made with challah which has been rolled in coarse-ground cornmeal.

There is nothing earth-shattering to report about Michael's, but the food is good, the service is friendly, the price is right, and it's the sort of place that, when no one can agree about where they want to go for dinner, someone says, "Well, then, why don't we just go to Michael's."

A recent visit to the sculptor Arline Wingate in the East Hampton house where she has lived for the last 45 years serendipitously coincided with her 91st birthday: a dainty birthday cake with pink and green icing sat on the kitchen table, baked by her dealer, Arlene Bujese.

The long-lived Arline/Arlene affiliation has been a happy one, according to Ms. Wingate. This summer Ms. Bujese's gallery gave her a 60-year retrospective of work dating from the early bronze and marble figures of her classical roots through her more abstract, cubist, faintly surrealist, and often very witty later sculptures of natural and human forms.

Ms. Wingate had lighted a fire in her huge, sculpture-filled white brick living room, formerly a garage to six cars and a fire engine on a large estate, but the interview took place in her cozy kitchen with Mr. Su Su, an impeccably pedigreed ash-blond Pekinese, lounging in her lap.

Hated Smith

A sprightly, diminutive redhead, the sculptor was born and grew up in New York City. After dropping out of Smith College, which she hated, she studied at the Art Students League and with Alexandre Archipenko in New York. She then moved on to work and study in Paris, Madrid, Stockholm, and Rome.

Her sculpture has been widely exhibited at the Metropolitan and Whitney Museums, the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Heckscher Museum, the Petit Palais in Paris, Museo des Belles Artes in Buenos Aires, and the Ghent Museum in Belgium, to name but a few.

Her work is also in the permanent collections of many of the above institutions, as well as in other museums throughout the world including the Parrish Museum in Southampton and East Hampton's Guild Hall.

Silvia Sydney, Harpo Marx, George Gershwin, and Prince William of Sweden number among the celebrities she has sculpted; a rather large pastel drawing Gershwin made of her while she worked on his bust hangs in her living room.

The Prince

"Doing Prince William's portrait was fabulous," she said, getting out a photo of herself looking like the young Myrna Loy, the Prince, and the striking larger-than-life head she did of him that calls Boris Pasternak to mind.

"I met the Swedish royal family here on Main Beach. They picked me up, actually, and begged me to come to Stockholm with them. When they threw in the sculpting job as an added incentive, my husband finally agreed." Two bronze castings are displayed in Swedish museums.

"I've also taught," she went on, mentioning classes at Southampton College and private sessions, most recently with her landscaper, who is learning to work in papier-mach‚. "I even taught Noguchi something, when I was very young."

"Usually sculptors have a lot of hair, I've noticed; Noguchi was one of the few bald ones. I recognized him in an art supply store on Canal Street that then was to artists what Bergdorf Goodman was to women who cared about clothes."

"He asked me if I could tell him how to do a patina - a technique for making plaster look like bronze - and I did. I laugh to think about it, me teaching one of the greats when I should have been learning from him. I never saw him again."

As one of six American women sculptors to participate in "New York Six," an exhibit installed at Le Petit Palais in 1950, she also met Giacometti.

"He was a cute little guy with plenty of hair who asked to meet me, and told me how much he admired my work. It takes a big artist to do a thing like that - I was completely unknown."

"David Smith and most of the other male artists at the time, even those who came to parties at my house, treated women artists as if we were half-witted children," she added with asperity.

Moves Nimbly

"Only Mark Rothko, another great, was different. He never missed one of my shows, and always left his name. I was a pygmy compared to him, but the real giants are different; often they are very special people."

Ms. Wingate reached for her cane - she recently broke her hip but gets around quite nimbly - and took her visitor on a tour of her two studios, one off the living room for viewing, the other, looking out on the back garden, strictly for work.

There are stocky nudes in bronze and marble - she was "into short, fat people for a while" - distributed among lyrical flower shapes, austere, towering amphora-like bottles, and tender little terra cotta figures. A small heart-shaped bronze face gazes at us as gravely and mysteriously as a primitive stone deity.

A small rosewood head, a huge abstract "put-together" piece of black steel and white styrofoam, little marble owls, bronze and steel "fragmented" torsos, a plaster cast of a "Broken Heart," and a surreal "Garden of Torsos" are also displayed indoors.

Outside, on spacious lawns under spreading trees, whimsical congregations of mushrooms and occasional weeds are scattered about. Massive abstract and figurative sculptures stand at respectful distances, impressive, austere, almost Druidic in their agelessness. Both primitive and intensely modern, they are haunting works.

"Art is in my blood," said Ms. Wingate, back in her kitchen again. As a child in Westchester she turned her playroom into an art gallery, and covered one wall with an enormous mural.

Later, in her New York studio, she "just worked and worked and never stopped. I feel I am obsessive and impulsive, influenced mostly by nature, lyrical and feminine. But don't call me a sculptress - there's no such thing."

In 1934 she married Clifford Hollander, an investment banker. "Even though he was on Wall Street, he was a very nice guy," she said. "Really sociable, as opposed to me. After working 10 hours a day, I wanted to stay home."

The couple lived on the Upper East Side and had a son, Richard, now a businessman married to Bruce Clerk, a fashion magazine editor. They have a son, Dick, who works in computer technology.

"I was spoiled," she said, "We had a wonderful life and the best of everything. I can still remember when you could get a damn nice dinner for a dollar and a half on Madison Avenue and 85th Street, a lovely dinner. You can't get a bag of peanuts for that now."

"I haven't been to New York in close to 10 years," she added. "It got me depressed. I'd stand on Madison Avenue and cry, besieged by such strong memories. It's just not my city any more." Ms. Wingate's husband died 25 years ago.

"All I want to do now is stay home and work and not be distracted by things like having the chimney fall down, as it did recently," she laughed.

"If you work all day you get pretty pooped. I haven't been to a cocktail party for five years. I watch a little TV and read a lot to relax - well-written junk, nothing too philosophical, please. I'm only an intellectual when it comes to art books."

Although she now weighs only 89 pounds, Ms. Wingate is getting her energy back, doing her exercises, and driving herself to therapy sessions. "I started driving when I was 8 so I can really drive," she said. "I drove an ambulance during the war."

Ms. Wingate's broken hip, until it heals, has forced her to sculpt sitting down. "I never thought I could do it, but I'm learning. Usually I stand for hours, and walk all around my work."

A lovely blue-gray slab of Carrara marble rests on a stand in her studio, along with a small hammer and a set of little chisels.

From it a face is emerging, the raised profile of a woman heading into the wind, hair streaming back, ear delicately shaped. She seems to have the indomitable spirit of the figureheads on the prows of old clipper ships, not unlike the spirit of her creator.

Ms. Wingate attributes her longevity to good genes-her grandfather died at 99 - to luck, to living sensibly, and to the pure air of East Hampton.

More than anything else, however, she credits an abiding passion for her work, and the fellowship of a good dog.

"He knows we're talking about him," she said as Mr. Su Su rolled his beautiful, dark brown eyes.

Those readers who have faithfully followed the adventures and peregrinations of the fictional character Peter Leroy will have a chance to meet the character in person (though he may look a little like his creator, Eric Kraft) in a 13-part series to be aired on LTV, starting on Tuesday at 7 p.m.

For more than 35 years, Eric Kraft has been working to make one large work of fiction that is composed of many interconnected parts, all revolving around Peter Leroy.

The author has said "it is about the effect of the imagination on perception, memory, hope, and fear; about life in the United States in this century; about the physical nature of the universe and the role of human consciousness within it, and - despite the misery of many of its characters - it is about joy."

Boy In Dream

Mr. Kraft recalls a cold winter afternoon in 1962, when, as a sophomore majoring in physics and mathematics at Harvard, he fell asleep in the Lamont Library. When he fell off his chair and woke up, he recalled a dream about a little boy, sitting on a dilapidated dock and dabbling his feet in the water. The child became Peter Leroy.

Over the years, he added a context for the boy - an island with an abandoned hotel on a gray bay - and eventually he began to write about it. The hunt for a form that could accommodate so much material was wearying and frustrating, he recalled.

"I know now that throughout that time I was looking not only for a form, but also for a voice," Mr. Kraft said.

In 1975, Mr. Kraft was laid off by the educational publishing company he was working for, and he became a freelance editor.

Wider Public

He began publishing the Leroy history in the form of a newsletter, mailing it to friends, but it wasn't until 1981 that Peter Leroy started to reach a wider public in the form of published novels.

The large (and growing) work of fiction called "The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences and Observations of Peter Leroy," which Newsweek called "the literary equivalent of Fred Astaire dancing: great art that looks like fun," now contains seven novels: "Herb 'n' Lorna," "Reservations Recommended," "Little Follies," "Where Do You Stop?" "What a Piece of Work I Am," "At Home With the Glynns," and the latest, "Leaving Small's Hotel," which will be published in the spring.

"I have gone to all this trouble, am going to all this trouble, and will continue to go to all this trouble," said Mr. Kraft, "to produce the artifacts of what lies at the center of this work and is implied by it: the mind of Peter Leroy."

The backdrop of Mr. Kraft's readings will appear to be the lobby of Small's Hotel ("the little hotel without a slogan"), where Peter lives and writes while his beautiful wife, Albertine, runs the hotel.

Albertine has arranged for her husband, by now an aging dreamer, to read brief reminiscences of his personal history to the hotel guests for 50 consecutive evenings. It is these readings - in reality excerpts from "Leaving Small's Hotel" - that will constitute the 13 television episodes. Genie Chipps Henderson is the producer and director.

After graduating from Harvard, Mr. Kraft received a master's degree in teaching from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He has taught school and written textbooks, received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and was for a time part owner and co-captain of a clam boat, which sank.

Expanding East Hampton's three public schools was the subject once again on Tuesday at a meeting of the school board, which hopes to bring a bond proposal to a vote in the spring.

The project has been at the forefront of the board's agenda since a proposed $90 million plan failed in a referendum last June. Under that proposal, a new middle school would have been built next to the high school, which would have been expanded, and the old middle school would have been renovated to use for district offices and fourth and fifth-grade classrooms.

Concern over the price of expansion led the board to rethink the project over the summer and fall.

The new plan, which would cost $66 million if it were built today, would add 16,485 square feet in new classrooms and a cafeteria to the John M. Marshall Elementary School, renovate the middle school, and build an addition on the north side of the high school. The total construction would add about 100,000 square feet to East Hampton schools, about half of what was included under the previous plan, which added almost 190,000 square feet.

The fifth graders now at the middle school would move to John Marshall, eliminating the need to hold classes in the basement. East Hampton administrators believe the state will eventually forbid using basements for instructional space.

To save money, according to Raymond Gualtieri, the district superintendent, the new proposal cut 12 classrooms that would have been built on the back of the high school.

The new proposal would alleviate overcrowding but would not give all the teachers their own classrooms, a consideration that had been addressed in the previous plan. "It wasn't our choice to cut the ribbon and give the teachers carts" to help them commute from room to room, Dr. Gualtieri said.

James Amaden, a school board member, said the project would cost around $66 million today. Victor Canseco of Sandpebble Builders is calculating the projected price of construction with inflation rates, Dr. Gualtieri said on Tuesday.

If a referendum passes in the spring, construction on the three schools would last through 2012.

"I'm very happy with how this project looks," said Mr. Amaden, adding, however, "I still think that the $89 million plan was our best step forward."

The board voted on Tuesday to begin a traffic impact study at John Marshall in preparation for a possible expansion.

Board members had initially hoped to bring another referendum to voters as soon as this winter. Those plans were delayed, however, when the board decided to go forth with an expansion at John Marshall, which had not been included in the prior plans.

Even if a spring referendum passes, the immediate need for more room has forced the district to order more portable classrooms for the high school and John Marshall. The high school already had leased 10 portable classrooms - four for district offices, and six at the high school.

At Tuesday's meeting the board resolved to lease four more portables for the high school. Dr. Gualtieri said the district will also need 10 portable classrooms for the elementary school, "whether or not the referendum passes," to house the fifth-grade classes that would be moving from the middle school

A three-year lease for each trailer costs $300,000.

"If my math is correct, that means we're going to have to lease 24 trailers over three years. That's $7.2 million in trailers," said Mr. Amaden. "That's a lot of money on an asset that's deteriorating and depreciating rapidly."

"We're going to be educating children in a community with $7 ice cream cones and $12 hamburgers in trailers," said Laura Anker Grossman, a board member.

In the wake of massive flooding and erosion from October's two punishing northeast storms, government offices and private contractors have found themselves swamped with requests for disaster relief and applications for emergency shore protection and beach nourishment.

Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency were to inspect damage to East Hampton's public property, including erosion of public beaches, this week.

At the same time, the town's Department of Natural Resources continues to collect damage assessments from private property owners. The assessments will be forwarded to the Fire Rescue Emergency Services of Suffolk County. As of Sunday, a county report put the cost of storm-related damage at over $43 million, with over 6,300 residents reporting damage. The figure included $6.5 million in agricultural losses, and $14 million in damage to public property. Tallies will be passed on to the State Emergency Management Office, which, in turn, gives the bad news to FEMA.

Once SEMO has collected the information, Gov. George E. Pataki will decide whether or not to declare the state a disaster area and request reimbursement for damages from FEMA.

Last week, the State Department of Environmental Conservation approved the use of 70 to 100-pound sandbags to buttress houses in Southampton that, because of erosion, are precariously close to ocean waves and tide. Aram Terchunian of the First Coastal company of coastal engineers said on Tuesday that he was being flooded with requests for sand to rebuild eroded beaches.

"We're inundated. It's a very emotional time. People are losing their homes. It's an emergency room in a hospital. The guy is dying. You don't ask about his diet," Mr. Terchunian said. He said that houses should be saved first, "whatever it takes," before long-range erosion control and beach building plans can be made.

Sand that was to have been excavated from a lowered Georgica Pond this week will not be trucked west along the beach to First Coastal's Sagaponack clients for at least another week because of the fragile condition of the beaches.

At least one lawsuit has been threatened to add to suits already lodged against agencies accused of having abetted storm damage at Georgica Pond.

Unprecedented rainfall caused the memory - too high, and avoidably high, in the opinion of Harvey Karp of West End Road in East Hampton. Mr. Karp has lived 150 feet from the pond for 36 years. He said the rains that started on Oct. 7 and stopped nearly a week later caused his basement to flood for the first time ever. He said that neighbors who lived closer to the pond could have sustained hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of flood damage.

He faulted the East Hampton Town Trustees for not opening the pond to the sea early enough to have prevented the flooding. "The pond was already at an unusually high level with weather reports predicting substantial rains on a sustained basis. The trustees are charged with the responsibility to make sure it stays at an appropriate level. They did nothing." The pond was let on Oct. 14.

On Oct. 25, the day the second northeast storm hit, Mr. Karp threatened the trustees with a lawsuit, but on Tuesday he said, "I'm not a litigious sort. I'm more anxious that the trustees understand their responsibility, and not act in a cavalier fashion when their inaction results in risk to property and lives."

Larry Penny, East Hampton's director of natural resources, reported that members of the Amagansett East Association, whose homes are on Napeague, had experienced severe flooding when the gorged water table flooded basements and crawl spaces, and even pushed its way through floorboards into living spaces.

Dr. Alan Klopman, speaking for the association, said on Tuesday that many members were second-home owners who were still not aware that their community had turned into a lake, and that a few residents had been forced to abandon their houses. He had already collected damage assessments from 11 homeowners and passed them on to the Department of Natural Resources, which, in turn, sent them to the county.

Serious erosion at Montauk's Ditch Plain Beach will be dealt with in the near future, Larry Penny said on Tuesday. He said the plan, in part, was to remove phragmites from wetlands behind the remaining dunes at Ditch Plain. The area will be turned into a pond. An estimated 5,000 cubic yards of soil and sand from the excavation would be used to fortify the dunes, Mr. Penny said.