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.

Chocolate Beet Crinkle Cookies #Choctoberfest

We are all just stardust on a tiny speck in an unimaginable multiverse. The following chocolate beet crinkle cookie is pretty pointless if you consider it in light of the reality, but I'm sharing it anyway. That's what happens when you come home from a wonderful talk by Neil DeGrasse Tyson knowing that you're going to be putting up a cookie recipe later. Like a food blog is important in the grand scheme of life. Might as well eat a cookie. NDT gives an excellent show if you're able to go.

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THIS IMAGE IS FROM NASA'S CASSINI MISSION. I ADDED THE ARROW. YOU'RE LOOKING AT AN ECLIPSE WITH THE SUN BEHIND SATURN. WE'RE A LITTLE SPECK NEAR THE ARROW.

Roasted beets in a tender and chocolatey crinkle cookie.

Now that I'm settling into a routine of posting dessert recipes (a very brief routine), I felt it would be prudent to reveal more of my veggie-loving self and bring some beets to the party.  It's our 4th date, I think it's about time. After all, the purpose of my blog is to provide practical support for local eating and where I've eaten locally that means beets. Lots and lots of beets.

I'm still waiting to find the recipe that makes me crave the beets I get in my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share (found it!) so I enlisted the help of my fellow food bloggers for recipe ideas. I've got 59 recipes in my Beet Recipes Collection. This recipe will make an even 60! That collection is part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, and random beets that show up in the mail.

The first time I made this recipe I was using beets sent to me without obligation from Melissa's Produce. They are shown in the ingredient photo below, roasted and ready-to-go in a clever shrink-wrapped package. After I got a vacuum sealer for Christmas, I duplicated their idea since I frequently have beets lolliping around in the crisper looking for something to do.

If you've got beets, roast them drizzled with a bit of olive or cooking oil and wrapped in foil at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for as long as it takes to make them 'give' when you squeeze them. It ranges anywhere from 20 minutes to 80 minutes for me, depending on the size of the beet.