Weekend Cooking 10/21

Each weekend, Beth Fish Reads hosts Weekend Cooking.  I started to participate last week, since I love food and cooking almost as much as I love books!

We got another lovely variety of veggies from our local CSA farm on Monday.  But, with my husband out of town most of the week, and my college-age son home sick, I mostly stuck with old favorites this week rather than experimenting with things like kale or eggplant!  My son, Jamie, said that he enjoyed all the home cooking while he was recuperating.

Well, I did sneak some broccoli rabe in early this week, but I knew everyone would enjoy this soup because I made it last year. I mentioned last week that many of my recipes come from Cooking Light magazine, but this one is a rare exception, from Rachel Ray's magazine.  I don't use a lot of Rachel Ray recipes (far too much cheese, pasta, and bread for someone on a restricted diet!), but this one for Rabe and White Bean Stoup is a favorite at our house.  Jamie loved it, and said the soups at school suck!  I subbed a gluten-free pasta and cooked it separately so it wouldn't get mushy which worked out very well.

In another effort to provide comfort food this week, I baked the boys a small ham and served it with cauliflower from the farm and a sweet potato casserole (we have LOTS of sweet potatoes from the farm).  It's funny - my sons say they don't like sweet potatoes if I just bake them or even make sweet potato fries, but they love this recipe (from Cooking Light, of course)!  I substituted coconut milk for the milk and gluten-free flour for the flour, and it was delicious.  We had the left-overs the next night.

We also got turnips and cabbage from the farm this week, so tonight we are having an old family favorite:  New England Boiled Dinner, a Cooking Light recipe so old (from 1995) that it isn't available online!  It's a basic corned beef and boiled veggies dinner, only at the end, you remove the corned beef, coat with with real maple syrup and finish it in the oven which gives it a nice sweet glaze on top.  We often only have this once a year, on St. Patty's Day, so this will be a treat tonight!

Oh, and we also treated ourselves this morning...to homemade donuts and fresh cider from our favorite pumpkin farm.  These donuts are amazing - the highlight of the season for us!

What are you cooking this week?