"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."

Two years of Republican control over the East Hampton Town Board turned out on Election Night to be just an interlude in the Democratic winning streak that began in 1984.

According to unofficial results from the Suffolk County Board of Elections, starting on New Year's Day Supervisor Cathy Lester will have two Democratic Councilmen, the newly elected Job Potter and the incumbent Peter Hammerle, on her side of the table.

Ms. Lester took 4,069 of the 7,415 votes cast in beating Councilman Thomas Knobel, the Republican-Conservative candidate and her longtime political foe. Mr. Knobel garnered 3,346.

Mansir And Potter

Pat Mansir, a Republican and the East Hampton Town Planning Board chairwoman, received 3,913 votes in winning one of two Town Board seats. Ms. Mansir's colleague on the new minority will be the incumbent Councilman Len Bernard.

Mr. Potter took 3,741 votes in winning the other seat.

Republican Councilwoman Nancy McCaffrey lost the Town Board post she has held since 1990, finishing last of the four board candidates. Lisa Grenci, a Democrat, trailed Mr. Potter by some 418 votes.

A table of results appears with this story.

Lester Versus Knobel

The race between Ms. Lester and Mr. Knobel, both former Town Trustees, attracted the largest turnout of the day, nearly 54 percent of the town's 13,949 registered voters.

Despite balmy weather and lively public interest, the showing was smaller than in 1995, when 56 percent of those eligible went to the polls.

With 723 votes separating Ms. Lester and Mr. Knobel, a third candidate for Supervisor, Capt. Milton L. Miller Sr., took too few votes, 146, to even be called a spoiler. He represented the Independence Party.

Yardley Breaks A Record

Town Clerk Frederick Yardley, a two-term incumbent with a support base that stretches across both parties, got more votes than anybody on Tuesday - more, in fact, than any East Hampton Town candidate ever. His record-breaking total was 5,028.

Mr. Yardley and his Republican opponent, Edwina Cooke, an accountant from Wainscott, had run a dignified and quiet campaign with few issues and fewer harsh words. Mrs. Cooke's platform relied mostly on further computerizing the Clerk's office.

Town Justice Catherine Cahill survived an assault on her judicial demeanor by Robert Savage, the Republican town attorney, taking 4,356 votes to his 2,929. Mr. Savage ran the same race two years ago and lost to Justice Roger Walker.

Russo, Overton

Chris Russo, the five-time Highway Superintendent, beat out James Bennett for a second time. Mr. Bennett, who campaigned on a message of controlled spending, took 2,652 votes to Mr. Russo's 4,703.

Senior Assessor Fred Overton kept his job with a 20-percent margin over his opponent, Democratic newcomer Patrick Glennon.

Of the 16 town seats up for grabs, seven went to Republicans and nine to Democrats. Five incumbents kept their jobs and six were ousted, including Mr. Knobel.

Election Night

Democrats had held majorities on the board in 1979 and 1980, but without a Democratic Supervisor to lead them.

At 11:30 on Election Night, after a harrowing two-and-a-half-hour wait for final numbers, Mr. Knobel and Mrs. McCaffrey made the long walk from G.O.P. headquarters at one end of Main Street to Rowdy Hall, the restaurant at the other end where the Democrats were celebrating their victory, to concede defeat. They arrived in the middle of thunderous applause for Justice Cahill.

Someone finally spotted the pair waiting at the back door and they made an awkward exchange of handshakes with Supervisor Lester and Mr. Potter. The Republicans tried to leave quickly but the Democrats detained them a bit longer, with a vigorous and sustained ovation.

G.O.P. Headquarters

Mr. Knobel, flushing, declined Supervisor Lester's offer of the chair on which the Democratic candidates had stood to make their speeches of victory and defeat. "Hey, Nancy, let us buy you a drink," someone called from the crowd.

"I don't think so," she said, looking embarrassed as she ducked away.

An hour before, waiting with about 40 G.O.P. supporters who lined the walls and both sides of the hallway, Ms. Mansir reacted to the numbers by giving her mentor and political strategist, Perry B. (Chip) Duryea 3d, a bear hug. As the tallies from the 19 election districts were chalked up on the board, she seemed to be running neck-and-neck with Mr. Potter, but ended up 172 votes ahead.

The unofficial tallies released yesterday morning by the Suffolk County Board of Elections did not include all the votes from one of the 19 districts, where a voting machine was discovered to be jammed shut. Most of the 691 absentee ballots on hand were said to have been counted and a few more were expected to trickle in for a few days more.

Traditionally, those voters have gone for Democratic candidates 2-to-1. In the 1995 Supervisor's race, in fact, James Daly, the Republican candidate, went to bed believing he had won, but the absentees put Ms. Lester over the top.

So the final count could push Mr. Potter closer to, or even past, Mrs. Mansir. Ms. Grenci, however, is probably too far behind to hope.

Grenci Vows To Return

"I brought the Wild West to East Hampton," said Ms. Grenci, who is from Montauk, "but if I lose, I'll be back." She stood on a chair and shouted above friendly hooting: "You are the best group of people I have ever met."

"I told you we have more fun," shouted back Deb Foster, a longtime Democratic organizer who serves as advisor to the party's newcomers. Ms. Grenci was a newcomer this year, a Republican who turned Democrat and activist after the influential and Republican Duryea family, her neighbors, put a barrier across Tuthill Road.

Montauk, a Republican stronghold for generations, "came out Democrat for the first time in a long time, and if I had anything to do with that, I'm damn glad," she shouted.

Four Democrats won jobs as East Hampton Town Trustees, and there is a chance that absentee ballots could push a fifth onto the nine-seat board, shifting the majority there for the first time in 13 years.

Taking four seats was a feat; in recent years, the Democrats hadn't even been able to field a full ticket.

This year, though, they had a full ticket led by three highly motivated men - Barry Leach, Frank Kennedy, and Eric Brown - who did not fit the traditional Bonac profile of a Trustee. All three lost, though they led the debate over whether to expand Trustee authority, a Republican-backed movement.

Instead, voters picked other Democrats with old family names - two Bennetts, a Lester, and a Gardiner.

Mamay Finishes First

Diane Mamay, the incumbent Republican Trustee Clerk, led the Trustee polling with 3,707 votes in winning her fourth term. In second and third place were two more Republican incumbents, Gordon Vorpahl and James McCaffrey, the Councilwoman's husband and a three-term incumbent.

Richard Lester, a Democrat and a bayman, came in fourth, followed by the lone Democratic incumbent, Harold Bennett, also a bayman.

Martin Bennett, a Democrat and native Bonacker, placed sixth, followed by Joshua B. (Jack) Edwards 3d, a three-term Republican incumbent.

Close Margin

Mary Gardiner, a former town harbormaster and first-time Democratic candidate, was eighth. William Mott, a Republican newcomer, took the last seat, with Mr. Kennedy, a town code enforcement officer, just 115 votes behind.

That seemingly small margin had the Democratic Party leader, Christopher Kelley, waiting impatiently for all absentee ballots to be tallied.

"We could have a majority of five, or even six," said Mr. Kelley, chomping on the thick cigar that has become his Election Night trademark.

It Took A While

At Republican headquarters, candidates and their supporters stood for a long, long time as Councilman Bernard, Irwin Roberts, and Robert Davis, the town leader, took election results over the phone.

They worked two phones lines and three calculators but did not post any results until more than a hour after the polls closed. Mr. Carley and Mr. Vorpahl, whose older brother, Stuart, also ran for Trustee but won just 688 votes on the Independence Party line, spent the afternoon making the enormous tally board that hung 10 feet over everyone's heads.

Asked whether anyone was carrying a lucky rabbit's foot, Mr. Carley's response was swift: "When you're right, you don't need luck."

Long before the red and green markers were uncapped, a dozen or so candidates and volunteers had left, muttering they would watch the results on LTV.

Mr. Savage found a television across the street at the Grill. Ms. Mamay and others headed to the Three Mile Harbor Inn, where the Republicans planned to gather later on.

Down the street, the Democrats were packing away the laptops and fax machines they had used to take in numbers and send them out again to LTV. They were popping open bottles of champagne and hugging each other at Rowdy Hall while the Republican tally board still lacked numbers from five districts.

A Speech And A Poem

Recalling the close call in 1995, Supervisor Lester did not make her victory speech until the party was in full swing and the crowd demanded it. Earlier, she said she was "superstitious" and couldn't bring herself to say she had won or lost "until the last vote is counted."

She did take the chair, though. "There is nothing like an honest campaign to let the people know who should run the town," she declared. "The Democrats are really the party of all inclusiveness, the party of the people."

The most ear-shattering applause of the night came when Ms. Lester thanked her daughter, Della, "for standing by me."

Harold Bennett, the new Trustee, later that night read a victory poem penned for him by Sonja Connors, the bartender at Three Mile Harbor Inn:

"The election is over

The results are now known

The voice of the people has clearly been shown

So let's get together and let bitterness pass.

You hug my elephant and I'll kiss your ass."

Dead Silence

In a somber and anxious mood, the Republicans posted their first results at 10:10 p.m., from Councilwoman McCaffrey's neighborhood in Wainscott. On each of her two past bids for office, she had taken District Seven by storm.

However, battered this year by Democratic ads that called her unproductive, she learned on Tuesday night that she had finished a mere seven votes ahead of Mr. Potter in her own district. She looked distraught.

There was dead silence around the room, the only sound a sharp intake of breath from a woman in the corner.

As it does each year, the Board of Elections impounded the voting machines and will do a vote-by-vote recount, expected to finish by early next week.

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.

"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.

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."

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.

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.

Judging by the huge amounts of money Hollywood investors are willing to risk in making new movies these days, Joe Landi of Springs didn't think he was asking for too much.

Only $150,000.

"It may sound like a lot of money, but what is it to the big spenders in the movie business?" he said this week. "They spend like that for lunch."

But will risk-takers invest that much to help him and Alan Scott-Moncrieff, formerly of Amagansett, put the finishing touches on their feature film "The Prodigal"?

Need An Angel

To find out, Mr. Landi and Mr. Scott-Moncrieff advertised in The Star during the recent Hamptons International Film Festival.

"Wanted," their ad began. "An Angel to help two local talented guys finish their film. . . ."

With the town awash in film-making professionals, Mr. Landi hoped the ad would catch the attention of the "angel" they were looking for.

They got some calls - and even arranged several private showings - and the people who saw the film liked it, but as yet, no one has come up with the money.

Mr. Landi insists the movie, which runs to just under two hours, is a good investment and that the risk involved is minimal because about 95 percent of the work is already done.

"All we need now is a final cut and some sound adjustment," he said. "Then it'll be ready for a distributor."

Mr. Landi, who was one of the owners of the Bologna-Landi Gallery on Route 114 in East Hampton, now closed, for 14 years and followed it with a three-year stint at a video store in Springs, said the movie traces the adventures of a small-time Edinburgh gangster whose life changes abruptly when he meets a powerful organized crime figure from New York.

Local Talent

The Scotsman signs on with the mob and thrives in the American underworld. He makes lots of money and ultimately tries to reconnect with the family he left behind. Along the way, he crosses paths with a flighty priest who has purchased, but somehow lost, a prize-winning lottery ticket.

As the story progresses, there's plenty of violence and blood-letting and some sex but, in the final analysis, Mr. Landi said, it's a movie about human redemption, about a man desperately seeking to correct the mistakes of his past.

The film, which was shot in Scotland and Manhattan, is something of a showcase for local talent. Mr. Landi himself has a role, as do Steve Lilja, Bob Turano and Rick Feldman, all of East Hampton. Mr. Lilja has performed in several CTCTheater Live productions, including "South Pacific."

A former Sag Harbor resident who now lives in Scotland, Maureen Witty, produced the film.

Mr. Landi had high praise for the skills of Mr. Scott-Moncrieff, 31, who was a young artist living in an Amagansett farm stable when Mr. Landi began showing his work.

Mr. Scott-Moncrieff, a Scotsman, is not only a painter but a playwright and screenwriter whose multi media play "Funk Off Green" won awards at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh in 1993 and was later performed at the Royal Festival Hall in London.

"Alan is a wonderful painter as well as a writer and director," Mr. Landi said. "He's a Renaissance man, good at virtually anything he tries."

Mr. Scott-Moncrieff is now in New York City, directing "a new feature movie for a major film company," Mr. Landi said.

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.

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.