Spaghetti Squash with Mustard Greens Pesto

A low carb entree of baked spaghetti squash tossed with mustard greens pesto. Jazz it up with crumbled Italian sausage and cheese for a farm share dinner to please the while family.

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I'm going to preach today. If you're in the choir, skip on down or shout Amen! as the spirit moves you. I want to talk to the folks, LIKE ME, who get overwhelmed by the produce in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share box. The folks who don't want to keep on with a farm share because they we don't know what to do with ________ [insert name of farm share ingredient here] before it goes bad. It's why I started this blog, after all.

The thing is, we all eat. Heck, my spouse and kids want to consume food 4 to 6 times a day, every single day. It doesn't make sense to waste the food already in your fridge. After all, you've paid for it, you know? Not to mention that your farmers have grown it. So practical tips like this one help you us to make the most of the farm share.

A while back I shared a recipe for Mustard Greens Pesto. You can find the recipe here. This recipe makes quick work of a large volume of mustard greens and can hang out in the fridge or freezer until you are ready to use it. Since my farm share is about 25 weeks of the year, there is plenty of time for me to enjoy put up farm share produce on the off months.

This low carb recipe is flexible. I could have stopped with just the pesto and made it vegetarian, but to tempt my family I browned half a pound of Italian sausage and served that over top. Plenty of cheese seals the deal for everyone who loves cheese.

For other recipes using mustard greens, please see my Mustard Greens Recipe Collection. For more recipes using winter squash [as spaghetti squash is a winter squash and this is it's debut on the blog] please see my Winter Squash Recipe Collection. These are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating seasonally from the farm share. For more recipe ideas follow me on Pinterest and for my latest epic fails check out my Facebook page. Want to know how to use this blog? Click here.

Roasted Sweet Potato and Onion Enchiladas

A vegetarian enchilada casserole of corn tortillas stuffed with spicy sweet potatoes and onion, covered in roasted tomato sauce and plenty of cheese.

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Welcome back to your normal How To Use the Vegetables from your Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share box programming. Did you enjoy the week of desserts? I won't lie, it was loads of fun making them--especially the Killer S'mores Blondie!

I thought I'd settle back into a routine with a vegetarian enchilada recipe. I've been sitting on this one since the ladies at the Thrift shop raved about it last winter, and now that I'm getting sweet potatoes in the farm share--blue ones, too--it's time to put it up on the blog.

I can't tell you why I veered away from the standard "sweet potato and black bean" combo, other than everyone else is doing that, so why should I? Instead, I used a filling of roasted sweet potatoes and sautéed onions, spiced up with some salsa verde. Yum! We get plenty of protein in our diets, we sure don't need a can of black beans to make or break things. [Heck, yesterday at the Ohio Renaissance Festival I ate not one but 2 Scotch eggs--one for my honey since he couldn't be there. That's a hard cooked egg covered in sausage and deep fried. Yeah, some protein. And oh so good.]

I've shared plenty of enchilada recipes on this blog, vegetarian and otherwise. Some you can find on my Clickable Collages of Recipe Suggestions page. Since that was published I've added Turnip Enchiladas, Cranberry, Chicken and Leek Enchiladas, Easy Cheesy Vegetable Rice Enchiladas, and Beef Tongue Enchiladas. You could say I have a thing for enchiladas--they are a terrific vehicle for getting dinner on the table.

For other recipes using sweet potatoes, blue or otherwise (I still don't know what to make with them, good thing potatoes store for a long time in the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve) please see my Sweet Potato Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating seasonally from the farm share, the farmer's market, and whatever's plentiful and cheap at the store.

Pumpkin Eggnog Waffles with Chocolate Chips

Tender pumpkin waffles made with pumpkin spice eggnog, with chocolate chips inside and out.

Chocolate is a comfort food, and comfort foods are good in lousy situations. Traditions are comforting, too. So a tradition that involves chocolate can sometimes be just the ticket for comfort.

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I'm not certain how we started the tradition of going out for chocolate chip breakfast foods en route home from the airport after seeing off my spouse for a deployment. I think he had an early flight and we didn't want to wake the kids up until just before we were ready to leave. Dawn was breaking as I drove home, and I just wasn't ready to face reality so we stopped for breakfast. I ordered chocolate chip pancakes. The kids were young, and the idea of mom eating a mountain of chocolate for breakfast must have surprised them. The next time he deployed we had chocolate chip pancakes deliberately--something to look forward to after saying goodbye. After we moved to Ohio we had to adjust the tradition, as all military families learn to do. The next departure was on Mother's Day, and while at Waffle House eating chocolate chip waffles I got a carnation from the staff. Too sweet.

That brings you up to speed for the reasoning behind this recipe. This time the kids said goodbye and headed off to school, knowing that we'd get our chocolate chip waffles in a homemade version/after school snack so I could blog about it for #Choctoberfest.

Military children are nothing if not resilient. A food blogger's kids are nothing if not resigned to eating when the photos have been taken.  The day turned dark and gloomy, though, so I greeted my returning children with:

Yes, I know it's our tradition to eat chocolate chip waffles the day your father deploys, but the lighting is bad for taking photos. We'll have our waffles tomorrow, ok?

Gotta love kids that will roll with the changes life brings.

Some people celebrate ALL THINGS PUMPKIN by choice. I do it by necessity.

Despite never purposefully planting them,  I grow about a dozen pumpkins in my back yard every year. I hate to waste food, so that means I spend time each Fall processing a pile of pumpkins into puree. It also means that while my pantry is not stocked with cans of pumpkin the freezer has bags of puree stuffed every which way. I don't mind all the pumpkin. Because I put it up, I can choose the amount I want to have in each package. [If you're using canned pumpkin just double the recipe and use the entire can. It will be close enough.]

For more recipes using pumpkin, please see my Pumpkin Recipes Collection. This is part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me who eat seasonally or have a backyard prone to producing pie pumpkins. Want to know how to use this blog? Click here.