Here’s one culinary idea you don’t want to squash: Try butternuts, acorns and turbans for some great home cooking and a festive, rustic look to your kitchen this fall.

Seems like an odd assortment, but don’t let their names fool you — they’re all great squash varieties that can be found at farmers markets and in stores now. With some basic preparation and ingredients, they can be turned into wonderful home-cooked and healthy dishes filling enough to provide culinary comfort in fall.

Squash presents a very flexible food to prepare. It can be bought in bulk this time of year and stored throughout the winter in a cool, dark place. You can prepare part of it ahead of time and pop it in the oven for 20 minutes when company arrives for a healthy and hot dish. The different varieties of squash all taste a little different, too, with the acorn squash being the sweetest followed by butternut. It’s worth buying one of each so you can experiment until you find the variety you like best.

Squash also goes well with a variety of meats, although it is best mostly with the white meats: turkey, chicken and pork. Squash does not seem to go well with red meats such as beef.

Squash also can be prepared in a number of ways, including halved and baked whole, cut up and baked in slices or cut up and made into soup.

One way is to cut a squash in half, peel it, cut it into similar-sized small cubes, coat it with olive oil and other spices and then bake it in the oven at 375 degrees. Check it at the 30-minute point and then every 15 minutes with a fork to see if it’s soft enough to take out and eat. Squash has great fiber and a lot of nutrients, and, if you use olive oil, this dish presents a healthy snack or side dish.

Another way is to make stuffing using acorn squash. Here’s a recipe.

ACORN SQUASH STUFFING

1 acorn squash

6 ounces stuffing mix

1 1/2 cups hot apple cider

1 medium apple

1 tablespoon butter

brown sugar and cinnamon, to sprinkle on top

Cut the acorn squash in half and scoop out the seeds. Put a half-inch of water in a glass pan and put the squash, cut-side down, in it. Then microwave on high for 10 minutes.

Take 6 ounces of your favorite stuffing mix. Instead of adding water to the stuffing, use 1.5 cups of hot apple cider. Dice one medium apple. Place the acorn squash with the cut-side up on a baking dish (no water this time). Put into the scooped-out area the stuffing mix, diced apple and a tablespoon of butter. Sprinkle the top with brown sugar and cinnamon.

Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes.

The Gateway Gourmet, Susanna Elrod, is lead instructor in Gateway Technical College’s culinary arts program. Should you have a food question for her, send an e-mail to colonyl@gtc.edu.