October 13: Columbus Day is celebrated today.

October 14: National Dessert Day. Also, on this day in 1926, Winnie-the-Pooh was published. (Happy birthday, Pooh!)

October 17: National Pasta Day

October 18: Today is the birthday of herbalist Nicholas Culpeper, born 1616.

Apple-Spice Nut Bars
3 eggs
1½ cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1½ cups flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon cloves
½ teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
3 cups apples, unpeeled, cored, finely chopped
1½ cups walnuts, coarsely chopped

Beat eggs until foamy; add sugar, beat until mixture is thick and lemon colored. Add vanilla. Mix flour, spices, salt and baking powder. Blend into egg mixture. Fold in chopped apples and walnuts. Turn into greased and floured 13 x 9-inch pan. Bake 30-40 min at 350° or until tester inserted in center comes out clean. Cut into squares. Serve warm with ice cream.

Apples were believed to have powerful medicinal qualities. Some potent apple lore:

• To keep colds away for a year, eat an apple at midnight on Halloween.
• To keep up the strength, sniff an old sweet apple.
• To remove warts, rub the warts with an apple and bury it. When it rots, the warts will disappear.
• John Gerard, author of the famous Herbal of 1598, recommended a cosmetic salve to keep the skin soft and supple: apple pulp, lard, and rosewater. Known as pomatum, it was popular well into the nineteenth century.

Apples are high in antioxidants, flavonoids, phytonutrients, and fiber, a potent good-health package.

Apple dumplings, apple crisps, apple turnovers—for lots more apple treats, check out this website.

Give yourself and your kids a treat and take turns reading a few of the wonderful stories from Winnie-the-Pooh. And if you don't already know the complete history of the world's most beloved bear, go here.

Columbus Day inspires mixed feelings among Americans. Think about what it means to you, and find a way to honor that meaning. If you can't think of anything else, think peppers, for even though Columbus didn't discover a passage to China, he found the next best thing: chile peppers. And if you need a book to inspire you, try Dave Dewitt's The Chile Pepper Encyclopedia, with piquant pepper history, lore, information, and yes, of course, red-hot recipes.

Celebrate National Salsa Month and National Apple Month with Jim Long's great recipe for spicy Apple Salsa. He suggests using it as a relish with holiday meals, or as a dip for chips (we like this with tortilla chips). Combine 2 tart apples, peeled, cored, finely chopped; 1 fresh jalapeno, seeded and diced; juice of 1 large lemon; 3-4 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro; 1 clove garlic, minced; 1 teaspoon fresh Mexican oregano leaves; ½ teaspoon salt (optional). Mix well. Chill for at least an hour, serve at nearly room temperature. And for many other super salsa recipes, check out Jim's book, Sensational Salsas: From Apple to Zucchini

For National Pasta Day, let's not serve the same old spaghetti. Here's an unusual pasta salad, made with a mint-arugula-basil pesto. Delicious and different!

Happy birthday, Nicholas Culpeper! This herbal practitioner wrote The Complete Herbal in 1653—and it's still in print. Culpeper's work is a fascinating combination of astrological herbalism and careful observation of the way medicinal herbs were used in folk healing practices of his time. Read his biography in Wikipedia.