I have a few Thanksgiving recipes that I haven’t ever gotten around to adding, and in the chance I lose them, I figured better to post them! As much as I love green beans, I cannot stand, “cream of xyz” soup in recipes. After mashing together a lot of different recipes, this one seems to do the trick, with a really nice, earthy flavor of mushrooms without the soup. With a caramelized onion topping tosses in breadcrumbs, is a nice take on an old favorite!
Continue readingVegetable Sides
Zucchini Chips
Much like our green beans, our squash is out of control this year too, and we were looking for ways to use it up. I found a few different suggestions out there for zucchini chips, and decided to give one a go – they are AWESOME. Seriously, if you have a ton of extra squash, this is an awesome use for it. I found this on a blog call Add a Pinch and I made no changes. You can definitely play around with it and make all kinds of flavors, though. I do think without a mandolin slicer, this would be a serious pain, but you could still do it.
Dilly Beans
We grew green beans for the first time this year, and holy smokes are they prolific! They are definitely one to plant again. But like any heavy producing veggie in the garden, when you end up with a glut of them, it can be hard to use them all up. I decided to try refrigerator dilly beans. I got the basics from Cooking Light’s recipe for spicy dill beans, but I toned the spice down. Last year I overdid it a bit and the pickles were all kind of too hot for us. They would make a cute summery food gift if you wanted to take the final step and actually can them.
Peas with Prosciutto
Found somewhere in the depths of Pinterest, this was another very simple and pretty Easter size capitalizing on Spring veggies (okay, I had to use frozen peas =/ But still). The salty prosciutto went well with the ham, of course. Definitely a side I would make again for a crowd, quick and attractive.
Roasted Baby Spring Vegetables
This was a very pretty side dish for Easter. Roasted veggies are always great, and I really liked the touch of white vinegar. This is a Cooking Light recipe, and the only alteration I made was to use baby purple potatoes instead of fingerlings, and to lower the cooking temp to 400 to accommodate other dishes I had cooking (it was originally 500, which seems pretty high to me). We enjoyed this and the leftovers also make a nice lunch.
Garlic Herb Spaghetti Squash
This isn’t really a recipe, just a tossed together seasoning for spaghetti squash. I intended this to be a side to zucchini lasgana, so was thinking garlic-y flavors. I roasted the squash for about 40 minutes, let it cool, scraped it out, and then tossed it with 2 crushed garlic cloves and some basil and parsley. Topped it off with salt and pepper and it was pretty good (but very garlicky).
Garlic Zucchini Spirals
So I pretty much refuse to refer to veggies cut with a spiral-cutter as “noodles,” but that doesn’t make them any less awesome. This was a great side dish, and if you were so inclined, you could make a main dish out of it as well. Standby, we may even be trying this in March. 😉 Anyway, this is a prep method we will definitely continue to use. This was tossed with garlic, red pepper flakes, and a little bit of parm to go with a main dish.
Brussels Sprouts with Cranberries and Pecans
This was a festive side dish to go along with a tenderloin roast for our Christmas dinner. Quick and easy, but it was definitely a hit – my Mom even asked for it at every holiday meal from now on! As much as we like sprouts, I think we can make that happen. 😉 This is a good old Alton Brown recipe.
Mixed Beans and Bacon
This was a good, solid side dish for a holiday meal. I added both green beans and wax beans for some festive color. Definitely would go to it again for a nice holiday veggie side dish, though too splurgy for our every day. 😉
Dill Pickles
This is our first year with a big garden, and I am loving it!! Our cucumbers are gorgeous, and we’ve had enough to snack on as well as enough for the one thing I’ve been waiting for…pickling! I pretty much heart dill pickles. This brine comes from my Gram’s recipe, but the spice ratios I ad-libbed for our tastes. I used dill heads from our own garden as well, so extra fun. I did use pickle crisp because I did a BWB so they’d last a year+ and didn’t want soggy spears. Also, I was out of canning salt so used sea salt (about the only alternative to avoid the anti-caking).
For planning purposes, 20 medium to large pickling cucumbers and about 40 dill heads yielded 9 jars of pickles. The worst thing is waiting six weeks to see how they turned out!
Om nom nom! 