While you're frying up some eggs and bacon, we're cooking up something else: a way to celebrate today's food holiday.

Can you smell the excitement stirring? January is National Soup Month.

The cold weather that seems to grip most of the country at this time of year has a way of seeping into your bones to the point where nothing seems to help. And as the winter months wear on, and resolutions are made and broken, it gets harder and harder to find something that’s both warm and nutritious and easy to make. Fear not! I have the perfect solution: soup.
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Stacy Cowley is CNNMoney's tech editor. She's in a complicated relationship with her CSA and explores the odd vegetables that show up in her haul in CSI: CSA. Previously, she fell in love with the weirdness of kohlrabi. 

I have a zucchini the size of a baseball bat lurking on my fridge’s bottom shelf. It has a pack of cousins jammed into the veggie drawer, and my freezer is stuffed with roughly seventeen zillion pounds of squash creations.

It’s the problem every CSA subscriber or veggie gardener faces all summer long: The zucchini explosion.

These things are the rabbits of the plant world. During a long, dry July stretch when practically nothing else was coming up at my CSA’s farm, the zucchini merrily ran rampant. We got massive hauls of it each week; the leftover squash took to leaping off the vines and accosting those who wandered past. I’ve known home gardeners who become like drug pushers: “Oh, you have to take some of my zucchini home with you! No really, take some damn zucchini.”
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Vegetarians are (mostly) not here just to ruin your good time. Really. I swear. I was one, myself for seven years and all I wanted at a cookout was to hang out with my friends, and not have to worry that the omnivores would gobble up all the meat-free sides before I got to the table.

These days, while I'm likely to smoke up a brisket, a rack of ribs or some animal innards when company comes over, the non-meat options surely don't get short shrift.

Here are a few of my favorite ways to celebrate the bounty of the season and make sure all my guests leave full and satisfied - no matter how they choose to chow down.
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How fantastic are fall and winter squash? They're packed to the gills with antioxidants, dietary fiber, Vitamin A and carotenes, fill you up for just a few calories, and can be prepared in approximately seventy billion ways, from sweet to savory. Plus they're in season right this very second, generally cheap as the dickens, and add glorious color and fabulous flavor to your holiday feasts.

But how do you tackle the beast? Butternut squash can be unwieldy to butcher, some varieties like turban, hubbard and kabocha look all gnarled and knobbly and scary, and how the heck do you cook them?

Let's quash all those worries right this second, starting with selection.
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We've long maintained that the very best thing about Thanksgiving is the side dishes, and smack dab in the middle of November, you can't do much better than vegetables. Nope - not just canned green beans en casserole (though that's seriously delicious and we'll delve into that soon), frozen creamed pearl onions (again...mmmm...) or corn pudding. We're talking fresh and in season, because that's the very best way to eat.

In addition to our in-depth guides on roasted broccoli, butternut squash, other varieties of fall squash and all the pumpkin you can shake a spatula at, here are a few quick, killer vegetable dishes you can feel excellent about heaping high on your plate.
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Now's the time to heap your plate full of beets, broccoli, apples, chestnuts, kale, potatoes, pumpkin, winter squash, cabbage, citrus and artichokes while they're in peak season. Why? It's just more delicious that way.

Don't like broccoli? Give it a roast

How to roast butternut squash

Make the most of fall squash

Pumpkin beyond the pie

While you're frying up some eggs and bacon, we're cooking up something else: a way to celebrate today's food holiday.

Today's food holiday is for the thick-skinned – September 7 is National Acorn Squash Day!

Acorn squash has been a homegrown American vegetable ever since... well, America began! Native Americans were already hooked on the easy-to-grow squash and shared the love with early settlers.
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On the first day of 2011, our Facebook and Twitter feeds were glutted with friends' New Year's pledges to graze through hectares of leafy greens, ferry home wheelbarrows of winter roots and bunk down with Brussels sprouts and broccoli.

Celebrity chef and Meatless Monday booster Mario Batali publicly resolved to make and eat dinner with his kids, and "master more vegetarian dishes, like simple bruschetta, that are fun to cook as a team." By January 3rd, the Wall Street Journal aided George Ball, chairman of the W. Atlee Burpee Co. in dubbing it yea and verily to be the Year of the Vegetable.

Yet within days of the work week commencing (or the Champagne finally wearing off) that fervor wilted, giving way to an apologetic trickle of, "Yeah...I give up. Vegetables are too much work." "Too...cold...for...farmers...market..." "zOMG the organic stuff is sooooo expensive!" and "#resolutionfail Back to Lean Cuisine. I don't know what to DO with vegetables."
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Yup - we read the comments, and noted this while we were perusing yesterday's Five Tips on Cooking Fall Squash:

"Can you post how to roast an butternut squash, I have only every cooked in a pan of water until the meat is soft. Roasting sounds yummy." - ksbradley21

It is, indeed, and we're nothing if not helpful. As Chef Tony Conte says, "The heat brings out the natural sugars, makes the color more intense and makes the flesh much easier to work with or to make into a purée."

Here's how.
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5@5 is a daily, food-related list from chefs, writers, political pundits, musicians, actors, and all manner of opinionated people from around the globe.

Despite this week’s climatic tomfoolery, we are indeed in the midst of autumn - and if the fall season means anything for food, it’s squash, and lots of it.

Chef Tony Conte is the executive chef of The Oval Room in Washington, D.C. Conte arrived on the capital city’s dining scene after a stint as executive sous chef at Jean-Georges Vongrichten's critically acclaimed, three-Michelin-starred Jean Georges restaurant in New York City. Since then, he’s been cranking out Mediterranean-influenced modern American cuisine to the District's power players and food lovers alike.

For Conte, the best way to celebrate autumn's most ubiquitous gourd is by squashing it into your usual culinary repertoire - and here's how.

Five Tips on Cooking Fall Squash: Tony Conte
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