Stuffed Acorn Squash

Friends, I apologize for my absence here. My camera is broken! A disaster for a food blogger!

Searching through old photos, I found this (not-so-great) one of my favorite autumn dinner: stuffed acorn squash. Today a brisk wind is blowing the leaves from the trees, the sun is shining, the air is crisp: this dish is a perfect match.

The recipe fills a baked acorn squash bowl with sausage, apples, pecans, onions and cranberries and drizzles it all with maple syrup. Need I say more? It can be served as a main dish (one-half squash per person) or sliced up further as a side dish. It's prettier in person than it looks in the photo--definitely

Enjoy this autumn meal while I figure out this camera mess!

Receipe below; printable version here.

Bee-bim Bop

This is Swiss chard.

It is not, as I mistakenly believed last year, rhubarb. Although, in my defense, rhubarb looks suspiciously like Swiss chard. The purple stalks! The broad green leaves!

Thinking it was rhubarb, one year ago I tossed the (perfectly edible!) leaves and used the stalks to make "rhubarb" crisp. Which tasted like it was made from celery. Ugh.

Aside from learning what chard actually looks like, the most useful thing I've learned about it since then is that its leaves can be substituted for spinach in pretty much any recipe. It's not too tough and  has a very mild flavor.

We used some of our first chard of this summer in bee-bim bop. I always enjoy this meal, even with all the pots and pans it dirties.

Believe it or not, this recipe came from a children's book.  One day The Boy picked up Bee-Bim Bop! by Linda Sue Park at the library. It's a bouncy, rhyming tale of a little girl happily helping make her family's dinner of bee-bim bop (which the book translates as "mix-mix bowl"), a Korean mixed dish of marinated beef, vegetables and fried egg.

A recipe follows the story, with instructions divided up for "you" (the child" and the "grown-up". After many, many readings of the book, The Boy was excited to taste bee-bim bop himself. It was a huge success! Love the marinade for the meat.

It is a time-consuming, multi-pan recipe. And I make no claims that I'm doing authentic Korean cooking here. But bee-bim bop has easily slipped its way into our regular stable of meals.

Recipe below; printable version here. Check out the book for a kid-inclusive version!

Photo credit (rhubarb): Sandy Austin

Black Bean, Corn, and Zucchini Enchiladas

I love enchiladas. Mmmmm. This Cooking Light recipe revamps them up for summer, incorporating seasonal veggies and lightening them up without sacrificing their warm, saucy goodness.

The inside is a mixture of zucchini, corn and black beans, sprinkled with shredded cheese and wrapped in a whole wheat tortilla.


Little bundles of tastiness!


The recipe includes instructions for making a homemade sauce. It is veeerrrry tempting to sub in the handy dandy can of enchilada sauce from the grocery store. But resist. The veggie filling is fairly bland--a sort of fresh, healthy base--and it's the sauce that really makes the flavor of the dish. And, other than the half-hour it simmers on the stovetop, the sauce goes together quite quickly--and can be made up to three days ahead.

Recipe below; printable version here.

Pasta With Beans and Greens

I had never tried pairing pasta with beans as a main dish until earlier this year. (Pasta e fagioli, if you're feeling fancy.) But when I saw a few versions while cookbook browsing, I was intrigued.

Together, the grains and beans are a complete protein source, making it a tidy meatless meal.

It's a simple two-pot dish. In one pot, cook up some chunky pasta, some shape that can hold its own against the beans. We picked orecchiette, which looks like adorable wee turtle shells. The name actually means "small ear," but the thought of a bowl full of ears squigs me out. I'm sticking with turtle shells.

Meanwhile, get some garlic and onions going in a skillet.

Add chopped greens and cook, covered, for a few minutes. Add beans and basil and cook for a few minutes more.


Toss with the pasta and squeeze a lemon over it all to counter the bitterness of the greens. Although the recipe didn't call for it, we added a little grated Parmesan.

The kids were smitten with the orecchiette. "It's helmets, Mama! Little construction helmets! Like Bob the Builder," said The Boy. "Hats!" cried The Girl. But they diligently picked over every single bean and bit of kale on their plates, so it was kind of a failure in that regard. The new score: me: 1; kale: 1.

The Husband and I gave it a B. Although I liked the touch of lemon in this recipe, we have a version that uses tomatoes that I like better. But it was worth a try.

Recipe below; printable version here.