Harvest Bounty and The Casual Veggie

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Crisp October air and the first frost of the season can only mean one thing: its harvest time! Growing up on a rural farm, we had a huge garden full of your basic vegetables like radishes, carrots, potatoes, beans and tomatoes. By the close of summer, we would be busy picking the last of the produce and finding ways to can, freeze, ferment or otherwise preserve the harvest bounty to extend the delicious fresh vegetable (or fruit) eating well into the winter months. Most often, we canned or froze our excess produce and stored potatoes in our cellar. I now find myself in the midst of preserving my small harvest and farmer’s market finds that I’ve purchased in excess and it feels so good to be back in the swing of eating what we can fresh from the “field” and being able to preserve the remainder.

This week has brought on the harvest of 5 large baskets of concord grapes from my backyard grapevine. So far, I’ve made one bucket into grape jelly and another two started as fresh grape juice, one of which is being fermented into wine. The last few buckets are on my counter waiting for me to de-stem the grapes and make grape juice. From there, I’ll freeze the juice as concentrate for putting into smoothies or drinking fresh.  I should have some recipes to post for you soon!

I’ve also been very busy preparing tomatoes into homemade tomato sauce and roasting squash, pureeing it and freezing the squash into portions that are perfect for sneaking into fun fall recipes.   I’m always on the search for something different to do with my excess produce but sometimes find myself making the exact same dish, time after time, and well, I get bored with it. I seem to remember a similar problem with our excess produce growing up.   My mom would prepare beans, or tomatoes, or radishes, the exact same way every single time. I’ll admit they were tasty, but still…variety is what keeps us interested in eating veggies. If I could go back in time, I’d find an awesome cookbook that’s completely focused on an amazing assortment of vegetable recipes that has every vegetable featured with a number of different ideas for preparing them.

Oh hey, guess what?!? This exact cookbook is currently in the making and it’s ALL about that veg. I’m proud to be a part of an incredible cookbook called The Casual Veggie which is food blogger collaboration including 166 everyday recipes for almost every veggie you need a recipe for (29 different veggies included!!). I am fortunate to have five of my recipe creations featured in the book and the other recipes come from a variety of talented food bloggers such as Dana at Killing Thyme and Liz at Pumpkin and Peanut Butter. The whole cookbook is organized around veggie centered home cooked goodness to help you eat more healthy. The Casual Veggie cookbook will be available in just a few short weeks in an easy to navigate digital copy perfect for viewing on your tablet, smartphone, or any digital device. No worries, the recipes are also printer friendly.  It’s pretty exciting!   Stay tuned for a launch party post coming Monday morning!

Anyway, in the meantime, I’ll leave you with a few fun recipes for your very own fall harvest bounty! Here’s a few of my favorite fall harvest recipes from the blog…

Cheers to healthy happy harvesting!

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