A Veggie Cooking Roundup

I’ve been cooking some pretty yummy things with vegetables that are left over from last year. I made a Butternut & Shrimp Risotto with a butternut squash from the farmers market that has been living under our sink since October. (Now to use up those turnips…)

We also had 2 bags of blanched, frozen chioggia and red beets from my parents’ garden in Wisconsin waiting to be used. We ended up buying a bag of blood oranges on sale and made a really tasty beet & blood orange salad served on a bed of spinach. (Now if only I had a cold frame to grow spinach…)

Update: This blog post is being entered in the January 2010 Grow Your Own blogging round-up! If you are interested in entering too, here’s the rules: http://www.andreasrecipes.com/gyo/ The host this month is House of Annie. You can visit this link for the current entry information. And HERE is the link to the Grow Your Own roundup. There are lots of great gardeners and cooks out there, so visit to get hungry!

Here are some pics of the scrumptious food:

The butternut squash puree goes into the risotto rice when it is nearly done cooking.

Ooh! Look what I found in the Demo Garden! I know you can’t tell what it is, but that, my dear readers, is thyme. Thyme is very winter hardy and can easily be harvested (lightly) all winter. Into the risotto with you!

Time for dinner! The shrimp was breaded in cornmeal and lightly fried in a pan.

Okay, here’s that salad I was raving about: Roasted Beet & Blood Orange Salad with Spicy Greens

We did alter the recipe a little bit, depending on what we had on hand and what we liked.

The beets after thawing, roasting with a little oil, salt, and pepper, then marinating in vinegar.

Blood Oranges…so strange-looking!

The beets and blood oranges on a bed of spinach greens. Yes, it would look better if we had used gold beets (good luck finding those in Wichita!) or normal oranges (but then I wouldn’t have found this recipe!). Oh well.

The salad dressed with the vinaigrette – made from fresh squeezed blood orange juice, shallots, etc. Yum!

If that doesn’t get you motivated to grow more veggies this year, I don’t know what will!