If you have any of that lentil/dal dish left over, my husband started serving those leftovers over ramen noodles (without the flavor packet of course) and it’s surprisingly good. Pretty much dal goes with any carb I’ve tried.

I had two weeks’ worth of collard greens from our CSA to use up. I sauteed them with bacon and garlic, added apple juice to braise, and a splash of hot sauce and vinegar to finish. They were the best collards I’ve ever eaten.

Here’s one for ravioli and one for butternut sq

as recipies:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/roasted-butternut-squash-ravioli-with-a-sage-brown-butter-sauce-recipe/index.html

http://www.cookinglight.com/food/top-rated-recipes/healthy-butternut-squash-recipes-00400000055219/

It’s kind of a lazycakes dish, but microwaving a spaghetti squash and topping it with some homemade pasta sauce. Surprisingly spaghetti-like, and very comforting when it’s cold.
Also, stuff like saag paneer (which is typically made with spinach) can also be made with other greens. Avoid super bitter ones, but things like fenugreek leaves work well, as do pea shoots. Kale with cinammon, pine nuts, and raisins is delish as well.

This week I had some leftover black beans and felt in the mood to make some rolls over the weekend. So lunch all week was black bean and cheese sandwiches with sliced radishes and beet greens, toasted. It’s a nice hot lunch for the cool fall weather if you have access to a toaster oven, and pretty fast/easy to put together in the mornings.

I’m with DAGCM! Canadian Thanksgiving has come and gone…a friend’s turkey dinner featured home-made, northern Italian-style sweet/savoury ravioli stuffed with squash in sage butter with fresh parmesan and fresh cracked black pepper. She learned to make them in Italy, where (she said) they usually stuff them with pumpkin. Easily the best new thing I’ve eaten this year.

I like butternut squash halved, brushed with olive oil and roasted with the hollow filled with sliced bananas, some brown sugar, red pepper flakes and a smidge of ground nutmeg.

For greens, I’ve been doing a version of a recipe from Deborah Madison’s cookbook “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone”. It’s for bok choy, but I use beet greens. Fry raw peanuts in peanut oil,  mix with salt and chile flakes. You stir fry the greens with garlic and ginger, add some soya sauce and serve topped with the peanuts…yum.  I would recommend that cookbook to anyone by the way…it’s awesome…lots of great recipes and preparation tips/flavour partners/methods for preparing pretty much any kind of vegetable. It’s exactly what you need if you are are suddenly faced with an abundance of (unfamiliarish?) fresh veggies.

I live far enough north that fresh grown produce is pretty limited. This year, the local farms finally produced enough to go “mainstream”. All the town grocery stores stocked local carrots, potatoes, red and golden beets, rutabaga and cabbage. Delish!

I’ve been roasting the beets:  pick small ones so that you don’t need to worry about tough skins. Top/tail and split them into an oven-proof dish, shake nice olive oil over top, a little coarse salt, cracked pepper, dried basil and some slivered fresh garlic. Cook until tender. Leftovers are great re-heated, or you can slice them up thin to have cold on sandwiches or diced into salads.

This year, I fell in love with brussel sprouts. My local store brought in tiny, baby ones not much bigger than a button mushroom (not local, sadly). I halve them, saute them with olive oil, garlic, cracked pepper and diced black forest ham or prosciutto. When they are starting to brown, you take them off the heat and cover them tightly, so that steam cooks them through. You want them just tender, with some leafy texture remaining. My eleven-year old adores them, if any of you are remembering trauma with slimey, overcooked B. sprouts growing up.

I love cooking with fall vegetables and just plain ole cooking in fall.

Last year, the NYT ran this collection of vegetarian thanksgiving recipes and it includes a lot of really good fall vegetable recipes.

There’s an Indian-style recipe with butternut squash and mustard seeds that is really, really good. There’s also a North African style stew with winter vegetables and chickpeas that became an almost weekly staple in our house last fall. Some of the recipes are a little fussy for weekday use, but there’s a lot to work with here.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/08/health/20101108_thanksgiving.html

We also take that zucchini/corn/beans enchiladas thing and start doing butternut squash or sweet potatoes with corn and beans. I really like the sweetness with the spice of the enchilada sauce.

Last week, I carmelized onions and then added brussel sprouts, salt, pepper and little feta cheese and tossed with some bow-tie pasta. That was really good and turned the brussel sprouts into a meal.

This weekend, I made a chicken curry with butternut squash.  I’ve used acorn and hubbard for that, too.  Chunks and slices of squash go well in fall/winter soups.  To freeze, cut or shred, blanche, toss with lemon or lime juice.  Or cube and toss with juice.  The juice helps to keep the color bright.
Turnips are good thinly slicedor cut into sticks and soaked in vinegar or salt water (small and tender); cubed and roasted with other vegetables; cubed, sliced or shredded and tossed into soup; boiled or steamed and 1 - mashed, which can be alone, with other vegetables (I like them with onions and carrots), 2 - tossed with shredded raw tender greens or and shredded or chopped sauteed greens (with onion, garlic, pepper, whatever to taste), 3 - slathered with butter or drizzled with olive oil and tossed with herbs (a bit of cheese can be a nice addition).

It is decidedly fall here north of Boston.  so this was a clear out most of the garden weekend.  I pulled a few of the last turnips, some of the remaining struggling beets and picked a good 3 cups of small green beans to add to the 2 cups from midweek. 
The green beans went into the curry on Friday, beef stew on Saturday, and the smallest ones into ginger-garlic pork with vegetables yesterday.  The beet greens were added to carmelized onions, mustard greens (I found a local source that freezes and sells to the regional grocery chain), rice, a couple of eggs and a soy with seseme and garlic sauce.
I had some peaches going bad, so made a variation of apple crisp.  I trimmed them up, added a couple of apples, tossed with a splash of lemon juice, a splash of lime juice, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and about 1/4 cup sugar.  Dumped them into an oven proof deep dish I had wiped with a bit of safflower oil.  Thoroughly mixed 1 cup cut oats, 1/2 cup white whole wheat flour, 1/2 cup oat flour, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup safflower oil, more cinnamon, a drizzle of molasses and an egg.  Dumped that over the fruit.  Baked at 375 F uncovered 25 min and covered about 20 more.  It was good, but needed ice cream or whipped cream on top, which I didn’t have.

helen, my test planting of snow peas two weeks ago has resulted in some sprouting despite temps unusually high for this time of year, so I dedicated a somewhat insignificant portion of my garden to some more of them today.  I figure that by planting them in batches on the southern side now I’ll get a good crop by mid-January, which is about a month before I plant the spring crop.

Yesterday I helped my spouse trim the kalamansi(Philippine lemon) tree, as it was producing branches that would require a firemans’ ladder to pick from.  It’s really producing now, and by December I expect the Valencia orange tree and the Meyer lemon tree to have ripe, pickable fruit.

I think it would help if we knew about how many or what volume of peaches you incorporated into this dish of yours.

Trimmed up pieces of 4 peaches along with the 2 apples - about 3 cups of fruit.  The fruit portion is all just to eye though, I’ve used as much as 5 cups and as few as a scant two.

So jealous of your “winter” garden.  My beans are mostly what I have left as the greens are minimal.  We are taking out a very badly done wall and roof section of windows (home-made double pained improperly flashed and sealed) in the 2nd story of our garage.  We had been prepping to take tham out when my spouse had his heart atack & triple bypass in 2004 and only just got back to it.  I plan to try using the glass with my raised beds as cold frames in the spring to see if I can’t manage a slightly earlier start next year.

helen, if you have room in a room on the south side of your house, you could grow a Meyer lemon:

Tips for growing your indoor lemon tree

  WHAT TO LOOK FOR: If you purchase your Meyer lemon from a nursery, look for plants that are at least 2 to 3 years old. Improved Meyer lemons are also suitable as houseplants. They can be maintained at 3 to 5 feet tall and if you have the knack, lemon trees make wonderful Bonsai specimens.

  SOIL: Like most houseplants, citrus prefer a slightly acid, all-purpose mix, which you can get by using a peat-moss based growing mix. (Remember, you get what you pay for, so don’t go for the cheap products.)

  TEMPERATURE: Lemon trees thrive in a normal temperature range of 70 degrees during day to 55 degrees at night. TIP: Though the plants are evergreen they will go into dormancy and stop growing below 54 degrees F.)

  LIGHT: Set your lemon tree in full sun from a southern exposure. Trees need lots of light. If that’s not possible, supplement the light by installing 40-watt fluorescent shop lights above the plants—especially important in the winter, when they need 12 hours of light.

  MOISTURE: You’ll need to keep the soil evenly moist and since most interiors are quite dry, mist your plant often—daily if you can. Give your lemon tree a shower occasionally. (They loved to be wiped down gently with a sponge, like the one at right.)

  POLLINATION: When you grow plants indoors, bees and insects can’t pollinate them. So you need to use a paintbrush or cotton swab to rub pollen within the flower. Sometimes they will produce fruit without doing this, but it’s a good idea to increase your chances!

http://www.plantea.com/lemon-tree-indoor.htm

I would add that you shouldn’t let the soil dry out for more than 3 days in a row.

As for my garden, I was busy yesterday applying fertilizer to my backyard lawn and plants.
My house stands on what used to be an orchard, I think it was some sort of citrus crop.  This means the soil is so depleted that I’ve seen California Poppys growing in it displaying signs of iron deficiency, which is pretty extreme for a plant that is usually referenced as being suitable for growing in poor soil.

Tonight’s dinner:

Cook 250g of fettucine. Reserve a couple of tablespoons of pasta water, then return the drained pasta to the pan with 4tbsp butter. When the butter melts, add some pasta water and a few big handfuls of grated parmigiano reggiano or grana padano (NOT domestic American parmesan—it doesn’t melt right). Toss until the cheese is melted and the fettucine is coated, seasoning to taste with pepper and nutmeg. Presto: fettucine alfredo, classical style.

I served it with grilled salmon, just with some olive oil and salt on it.

DAGCM - citrus is a sore subject at my house.  I had both an indoor lemon and indoor lime tree for a few years, long enough to get them to bloom once each, then began traveling extensively for work.  All my houseplants died over the course of the next three years, even the ivies and peace lilies (those sometimes seem completely gone to dry streemers but often can be brought back). 
The apricots I am starting from pits my spouse brought back from ID this summer are doing well. Of 20-23 pits, I have 9 good starts.  The largest ones are almost 6 inches tall.  I also started a tamerind tree from seeds I found in my “seedless” paste imported from Thailand.  The paste is for curries and other sour/savory SE Asian dishes.  I put some pieces of water spinah in a vase and that has rooted as well. 
The garage should have good S-SW light and we are planning an indoor plant and koi pond area in the 2nd story.  The fish are much too big to winter-over indoors in typical tanks anymore, and have outgrown the water trough we used a few years back.  Two years ago we tried to winter-over outdoors and lost a few.  Last year we had a makeshift indoor tank in the garage that had issues of its own.
BrianX - That sounds fabulous!  I do something similar, but with olive oil instead of butter.  I’m sure I would like the butter better, but spouses heart-healthy diet would not allow for the addition as the cheese is already pushing the fat and salt levels.  Sigh.

helen, I had a tangerine tree that was a graft on a root stock that doesn’t fruit normally, the anomalous snowfall here in 1999 killed the graft but not the root, so it turned into an ornamental citrus, probably the only one in my block or side of town, AFAIK.

My wife planted a tangerine seedling underneath it to take advantage of the shade it provides.
This year she’s going to dig out the ornamental and plant it elsewhere because the seedling is now developed enough to withstand the CA summer sun and heat we’ll have next year.

Totally cool. 
The gardening is a much bigger lever than the spouse realizes in his constant get-out-of-New-England campaign.  Of course, he is pushing for SE Asia, not CA, and language is a huge issue for me with that.

It’s funny you should say that, helen, because my mothers’ family was originally from Shanghai, my noble spouse is a native of the Philippines.

She used to work in the provincial agricultural bureau and growing up on a farm she has developed a green thumb that would do credit to any ‘master gardener’ you see in the newspaper or hear on TV.  She uses the west side of the kalamansi tree as a shade nursery for propagating succulents like Jade plants and tropical/palm plants.  When my father and my stepmother moved into their new house a few years ago, I was able to give her two Jade plants which my n.s. had propagated from using leaflets like cuttings

My own contribution is the years of experience with the California climate, my understanding of the nutritional needs of the plants under our suzerainty, and unforced labor.

And now…SNOW.  Measurable snow.  Damn, we didn’t even make it to Halloween this year.