Weekend Cooking: 3 Tasty, Easy, Healthy Fall Dishes

Each weekend, Beth Fish Reads hosts Weekend Cooking.  This is perfect for me since I love food and cooking almost as much as I love books!

Despite my love of cooking and food, sometimes I go through phases where I just stick with old favorites, easy stand-bys I don't have to think about. But that gets boring! The past few weeks, with a fridge full of veggies from the last of our CSA season, I got a bit more creative and tried some new recipes. Here are some of the delicious, simple, healthy recipes we made and loved the past couple of weeks:

Last night, I tried another recipe from my favorite cookbook, Curtis Stone What's For Dinner (my review at the link), Succulent Pork and Greens (sorry it's not available online). As I mentioned in my review of the cookbook, we have found that all of Curtis' recipes are simple, made with fresh ingredients, and filled with flavor. This one was no exception - we gobbled it up last night! I made a few minor adjustments (as always!). I used collard greens in place of kale because we had some from our farm CSA, and (more importantly) we really love cooked collards and aren't all that fond of kale. I wasn't able to find a ham hock, so I added a couple of strips of chopped bacon instead for that smoky, salty flavor. I'd never made collard greens with meat in them before, and this dish was absolutely delicious! I wish my sons had been home for it - they would have loved it. We served it with black-eyed peas on the side (simply heated with sauteed onions) for a complete Southern meal. Yum!

Last week, I tried a Cooking Light recipe (my other favorite recipe source) that sounded tasty: Green Curry Fritters. These are made with ground chicken and full of flavor! The only change I made was to reduce the amount of panko by half (I eat Paleo and normally don't eat any grains). Green Chicken Curry is our favorite Thai dish, so we loved these! They were super-easy, too. We served them with two veggies from our CSA: roasted cauliflower and spaghetti squash. It was a delicious meal, and I froze the left-over patties so that we could enjoy the rest this week!

Finally, I wanted to use some bok choy from our CSA last week. This wasn't a totally new recipe, since we made it once before, but still mostly new to us: Stir-Fried Bok Choy with Lettuce and Mushrooms. I made it with fresh shiitakes instead of dried but otherwise followed the recipe (using chicken stock for the mushroom water). It's full of flavor and very different for us - I'd never thought of cooking lettuce before! We ate it with sauteed salmon filets and roast cauliflower.

All in all, some delicious meals recently, utilizing the fresh veggies from our CSA, and adding some variety to our meals!

Hope you are enjoying your food this week!