Cranberry Pecan Green Beans

Fresh green beans sautéed with Cranberry Honey Butter and tossed with toasted pecans.

Green beans are one of my standard Thanksgiving Side Dishes, and I'm reminded again how silly it seems to wait another 2 months in order to celebrate the harvest. By the time American Thanksgiving rolls around the only 'fresh' local vegetables are hardy greens like kale and long-storing winter squash and potatoes.  Everything else has been put up. The Canadians have a better plan--have Thanksgiving in October, and do it on a Monday so you have an entire weekend to prepare the feast. None of this 'last minute rush around after work on Wednesday' craziness. No matter which day you're giving thanks for the harvest, here's a recipe for you.

The green beans have been plentiful this year in Ohio. From our farmers here in the SW corner of the state on up to Meghan's farmers in NE Ohio--lots and lots of green beans in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm shares.

On a whim I decided to combine some of my Cranberry Honey Butter with some of my copious volume of green beans. [I'll be honest, inspiration struck me when I opened the freezer door and a roll of cranberry honey butter fell out.] I thought it would look pretty with the bright green beans, so I whipped up a quick side dish.

To save time and dishes, I briefly cooked the green beans in the microwave and toasted the pecans in a dry skillet. Then it was a simple matter to assemble the finished dish.  Try this one at home.

Beef Tongue Nachos

Wait wait! Don't run away so quickly after reading the title. The picture caught your eye, right? Have an open mind! Try something new! Hear me out. You might like it.

One cook's trash is another cook's treasure. It fascinates me that, across the world, certain foods are perceived as desirable in some ages or areas and seen as unwanted in other times or places.

• Wheat bread was seen as a peasant food in earlier times, and white bread was the bread of well-to-do folks.
• Yellow cheese (from pastured cows) is more desirable on pizzas in Asia, whereas white cheese is the desired pizza cheese in the US. The source of this fact is a fascinating article I recently read. You can find it here. My spouse also backs up the idea that pizza cheese in Korea was just different than what he'd been used to [before my pizzas, that is]. Now anything goes.

Beef tongue evokes strong reactions. Depending on experience folks either love it because they've tried it or cringe because it looks like, well, a tongue. In keeping with my philosophy that if you choose to eat beef, you might as well use all of the cuts offered, I am firmly in the "love it" camp. My kids are still cringing because beef tongue looks different than all the ground beef in tidy packages in the freezer (link to my Ground Beef Recipe Round Up).

Does beef tongue skeeve you out?  How 'bout Mashed Potato Casserole, that can be made the day before, and cooked in a slow cooker or baked in the oven? My recipe for Make Ahead Irish Mashed Potato Casserole is in a Featured Bloggers Favorites contest over at SavingStar. Voting enters you in a chance to win a $50 American Express Gift Card, and the winning blogger also receives a gift card. You can find the contest here.

The whole family pitching in to make beef tongue enchiladas. The recipe is coming.

Each time I prepare tongue, the flavor overcomes more of the cringe factor. By our next cow it should be quite commonplace. With this tongue we had enchiladas, sliders, and nachos because there was plenty of meat and I felt like experimenting. This recipe gets shared first because I love the colorful photos and I could go for a plate of nachos right about now.

Fall Color Vegetable Appetizers {Sriracha Pumpkin Hummus}

Pumpkin, carrots, beets, tomatoes, tomatoes, olives and artichokes form a fall color palette in this array of appetizers, including Pumpkin Sriracha Hummus.  Combine the dips for a layered autumn vegetable appetizer--another Awesome Veggie App and Snack (link to my Pinterest board).

If you're rolling your eyes at the thought of a pumpkin recipe already, I'd like to share with you a photo of me that my daughter took on August 6th.

This 42 pound pumpkin was the first volunteer (meaning, I didn't plant it--it came from the compost) I harvested this year. I've since harvested another large one and 5 little ones, including the one shown in the ingredients photo below. I've got 2 more large ones on the vine.  So even if you're not ready for pumpkins, the pumpkins are ready for you. Props to me for exhibiting the restraint to wait until after the autumnal equinox before posting.

Even though it is easy to whip up and awesome vegetable appetizer in the summertime, such as this fattoush dip with kale hummus or this layered summer vegetable appetizer, the slight extra work involved in the Fall (i.e., turning on the oven to roast autumn vegetables) is not unwelcome.  In fact, though I'm happy to warm the kitchen up on a cool fall day, some of these Fall recipes involve nothing more than a food processor or blender. We're now celebrating Fall (and looking forward to more Fall vegetables in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share, so here's a suggestion (or 3) of how to enjoy your produce.

Since the beets in my farm share are prolific (yet I still cannot get enough beet greens) I wanted to keep rockin' the beets [get it?  Rockin' the beets?] but I also wanted some nice fall colors to pair with the beets.  I whipped up some Orange-spiked Beet and Walnut spread and thawed a jar of Fresh Tomato Pesto. When I saw this incredibly easy pumpkin hummus over at Naptime Chef I decided to whip that up, add a teaspoon (or more) sriracha to half of it for a bit of a kick, and have the assortment of dips shown above. That pumpkin hummus tasted so good that I grabbed one of my pie pumpkins and did it again from scratch (my Sriracha Pumpkin Hummus recipe is below).

Layer all of these flavors on a platter, add some preserved and fresh vegetables for different textures and flavors, and you've got yourself a feast for your eyes and your belly--and that of a male as well.

Now, this is not a comment on 'girl food' vs 'man food'. Far from it! More like an observation on changing perceptions or stereotypes of gender-related food choices. I participate in a photography group on base, and last week we were hanging our photos for display on the wall of the club. The theme was 'wild color' so I submitted the first photo of this post. An elderly veteran and his wife came in and were commenting about all our photos. They asked what was in that picture, and I told them. Then the gentleman commented "and your husband eats that"? "You bet", I told him. He loves a plate piled high with vegetables--though technically he was deployed when I fixed up the plate for me and snapped the photo. His plate would be more piled and less photogenic since 'it's all going to the same place'.

Sriracha Pumpkin Hummus topped with Fresh Tomato Pesto, Orange-spiked Beet and Walnut Spread, olives, and artichoke hearts--a veritable feast.

Now matter how your pumpkin arrives--in a can from the store, or rising like a Phoenix out of your compost, you can enjoy this dip--and layer it with other ones to enjoy Fall colors in your meal.