~ recipe updated & photo added in 2008 ~ 2005: (F)ED, that is Easy and Delicious but no, not even close to Fast. Thus Baked Beets are a definite keeper but best saved for (1) eating some night when supper is 60 - 90 minutes away or (2) making ahead some time when the oven's already on anyway. 2008: Beets have turned out to be one of the great convenience vegetables. Once they're baked or roasted or cooked some way, they make for great quick salads. So I often throw a few into the oven whenever the oven's on for something else. For more ways to cook beets, check out (what's turned out to be, as A Veggie Venture continued past its first intended month) a huge collection of beet recipes . BAKED BEETS Active time: 5 minutes Time to table: 60 - 90 minutes Serves 4 1 pound fresh beets, stems on 1 tablespoon butter, optional Salt & pepper Wash beets well, cut off all but about 1/2 inch of stems. (See ALANNA's TIPS.) If desired, peel. (See TIPS.) Wrap in foil and

Acorn squash stuffed with protein-rich nutty-tasting quinoa, slightly sweet with dried cherries or cranberries, maple syrup and fall spices. A great choice for Meatless Monday during the fall. Fresh & Seasonal, an Autumn Classic. Weeknight Easy, Weekend Special. Not just vegan, Vegan Done Real . Naturally Gluten Free. The Recipe Has Moved Please see Acorn Squash with Quinoa & Cherries , merging great fall flavors plus a funny story about quinoa. A New Lesson About Vegetables On Day 23 of A Veggie Venture's first year of trying a new vegetable recipe every day, I recorded a lesson. Try new foods more than once, even if you don't like them so much the first time. Here's why: Acorn squash is one of my favorite foods, reliably delicious. But tonight, it turned out bland and watery. Was it a problem with the recipe? No. Then why? I don't know though it's possible that it was old, given that squash is harvested in fall not spring. But if I'd never h

~ recipe updated & photo added in 2006 ~ A real FED (Fast, Easy, Delicious) -- my favorite this month so far! I bet you've never had beets like this. I bet, once you do, you'll cook 'em this way again and again. The recipe caught my eye because I well remember röesti, a traditional Swiss dish of wide, flat, crisp discs of grated potato often served with an egg: mountain-top ambrosia. It comes from 'The Minimalist' Mark Bittman's 1998 How To Cook Everything, a terrific reference cookbook, very contemporary where the traditional ones (Betty Crocker, etc.) now seem dated. I turn to it often in learning mode and find 'just enough' detail. And it has nearly 90 pages of ideas for vegetables alone! BEET RÖESTI Active time: maybe 10 minutes Time to table: maybe 15 minutes Serves 4 1 tablespoon butter 1 large beet (about 1/2 pound), peeled and grated (see ALANNA's TIPS) 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon fresh rosemary, chopped (see TIPS) 2 tablespoons flour M

Yippeeeeeeeeeeee! From now on, when I think about vegetables, I want to be FED: Fast, Easy, Delicious. It was a clean-out-the-freezer night and somehow I happened onto a great dish -- and, maybe, a new concept. First, the dish: a simple sauté with bacon fat, some frozen vegetables and at the end, a splash of vinegar. Second, the "for instance" concept: Perhaps the trick for cooking vegetables night-in-night-out is to have a few techniques, each one that works with several vegetables. For instance ... tonight I cooked a mixture of beans, carrots and peppers but it might as easily have been fresh broccoli or cauliflower. I'll continue to test this concept and report in! FOR INSTANCE I (bacon fat saute with herbs & vinegar) Tonight, For Instance, MIXED BEAN, CARROTS & GRILLED PEPPER MEDLEY Active time: maybe 5 minutes Time to table: maybe 10 minutes Serves 4 1 tablespoon bacon fat (see ALANNA's TIPS) 16 ounces frozen vegetables (see FOR INSTANCE)

Recipe & photo updated in 2007 2005: Hmmm. Worth nearly an hour's time? Perhaps. But no, not in my emerging definition of a meal's "vegetable". With three weeks of a veggie-a-day under my belt, I am thinking that the only dishes that qualify require fewer than 15 minutes of prep time and fewer than 30 minutes to get to the table. And even THIS is feeling excessive -- feedback? Still, this dish is good. Another time, to save time, I'd use a bag of shredded cabbage, frozen green beans and diced tomatoes -- in fact, at least as far as the beans go, I believe frozen green beans would be of much higher quality than the fresh I found at the supermarket yesterday. 2007: This was quite good, a simple vegetable stew and served over a baked potato, was filling for supper. GREEN BEAN & CABBAGE TAGINE Active time: 25 minutes (see ALANNA's TIPS) Time to table: 1 hour (with occasional stirring) Makes 8 cups -- a lot 1 tablespoon olive oil (reduced from 2 - 3 tabl

Who knew that slowly and gently cooking fresh green beans with a good tomato would turn out a dish so sublimely summery? It may not look like much but this is a "wow" summer side dish, way more than the sum of its parts. Real Food, Fresh & Seasonal. Budget Friendly. Great for Meal Prep. Low Carb. Low Fat. Weight Watchers Friendly. just vegan, Vegan Done Real . Naturally Gluten Free. One of My Very Favorite Green Bean Recipes .

Great lesson tonight: if I hadn't something in the freezer, nothing green, nothing fresh, would have made it to the table. It's good to have insurance! And these green, leafy things are growing on me. In this bag, the bits of diced turnip were a sort of sweet contrast to the musky leaves, chopped very small. I did wonder, although too late for tonight, whether a full-flavored fat like bacon grease might do wonders over butter or olive oil. There's got to be a reason why all those "southern greens" are dripping with bacon grease! FROZEN TURNIP GREENS WITH DICED TURNIP Active time: About 5 minutes Time to table: About 20 minutes Serves 4 1 tablespoon butter 16 ounces frozen chopped turnip greens with diced turnip Melt butter in a large skillet over MEDIUM HIGH. Add frozen greens, stir, reduce heat to MEDIUM, cover and let cook 10 - 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. NUTRITION ESTIMATE Per Serving: 59 Cal (45% from Fat); 3g Protein; 3g Tot Fat; 5g Carb; 4g