Fall bounty

As a Halloween baby, it figures that I own pumpkin cookware such as a pumpkin-shaped spatula and cookie cutters…but now I get to add a pumpkin pot to the list! A Le Creuset pumpkin pot!  This turned into a delicious fall meal: pot pie and a collard green salad!

Wild mushroom barley soup with ham bone

Based largely off of ib‘s favorite mushroom barley soup (Please to the Table, p. 86), we made a lovely winter meal. The leftover ham bone (and some ham left on it) from our greenmarket ham for jambalaya added a nicely complementary base to this hearty soup.

Fun veggie dishes

As we were about to just throw together something, we realized that we could combine a couple of fun “first course” dishes that didn’t seem like too much work: fingerling potatoes with carrots and rutabagas.  The vegetables were just boiled so all the deliciousness came from the greenmarket veggies themselves and the little touches in the sauces.

Layers of mushroom, spinach, cheesy goodness

ib didn’t think he really liked lasagne! I proved him wrong!  We used our greenmarket spinach, mushrooms, ricotta, mozzarella, and spicy Merguez lamb sausage to pull together a rich and zippy version of white lasagne.  Along side, we roasted some greenmarket carrots to perfection.

Baked brie, glazed carrots

A whole wheel of brie lying around in the fridge.  Lots of jams, chutneys, and preserves left over from the holidays.  Bread rapidly going stale.  Dinner on a deadline.  The obvious result of all this was baked brie.  We threw in a side of glazed carrots, for good measure.

Veggie pasta

The theme for everyone post-holidays seems to be veggies-veggies-veggies!  In that same vein, we picked up a bunch of veggies that we like and turned them into a satisfying pasta dinner.

Ahh, salad

After all those Indian leftovers, we were feeling like a light, refreshing dinner.  With the last of the carrots and celery as well as everything-bagel-croutons and leftover goat cheese we managed to work in a few more New Year’s leftovers as well.

Indian Daal and Sweet Potatoes

Inspired by a Bittman piece on dal in the Times, we couldn’t resist—and we found ourselves with more than we’d bargained for!  I thought we needed something besides dal for dinner (I didn’t know what I was thinking, I hadn’t tried this dal before!) so we looked up recipes that use sweet potatoes, since that was really the only other thing we had on hand, and ended up with some tasty curried sweet potato.

Potato and mushroom pot pie

No pots, no meat, but a delicious and filling pot pie nonetheless.

couscous with vegetables and lamb sausage

couscous with vegetables and lamb sausage

Quick mid-week way of using up lots of vegetables and making lots of leftovers.  We supplemented CSA eggplant, zucchini, and baby carrots with white mushrooms and onions.  We also roasted two home-grown heirloom Russian plum tomatoes.  We sautéed the vegetables with some summer savory (also from the CSA), some home-grown rosemary (from Alexey and Rebecca’s wedding), and some oregano.  Then we tossed with couscous and served with farmers’ market pasture-raised lamb sausage, olives, and feta cheese, with a squeeze of lemon on top.  More pictures after the break.