Tag Archives: fall

Harvest Vegetables with Fruit and Nuts

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Harvest Vegetables with dried fruit and nuts, a recipe by Ruth Barnes, The Petite Gourmande

My harvest baked vegetables with fruit and nuts recipe combines my favorite flavors of fall: hardy winter squash, sweet potato, and nuts. The rich sweetness of dried fruit brings a warm welcome to the autumn table. It is generally served as a side dish. Meat—such as lamb or beef—can be added to make it a main course any time of year. But it makes an especially interesting and unexpected Thanksgiving side-dish! Serves 4-6

 

Harvest Vegetables with dried fruit and nuts, a recipe by Ruth Barnes, The Petite Gourmande

 

 

Ingredients

2 pounds butternut squash, cubed

1 large sweet potato or yam, cubed

10 ounce bag frozen pearl onions

½ cup dried pitted prunes

½ cup dried apricots

½ cup roasted shelled chestnuts

½ cup shelled pecans, halved

5 whole cloves garlic

3 TB olive oil

½ tsp kosher salt

½ tsp black pepper

2 TB honey

2 cups low sodium light chicken stock

1 TB ground cinnamon

 

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350°.

2. In a large baking dish combine squash, sweet potato, pearl onions, garlic, and dried fruit. Mix well with olive oil, salt, and pepper, coating the mixture evenly.

3. Add the chestnuts and pecans. Sprinkle with cinnamon and drizzle honey on mixture.

4. Pour in chicken stock and cover with aluminum foil.

5. Bake covered for 30-40 minutes or until vegetables are soft.

6. Serve as a hardy side dish alongside a main course.

Happy cooking!
The Petite Gourmande
© 2018 by Ruth Barnes, all rights reserved
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Fall in a Field of Pumpkins and Sunflowers

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pumpkin

 

Fall is my favorite season! I love all the fruits and vegetables that grow in the fall like pomegranates, spaghetti squash, and pumpkins. I recently went to a pumpkin patch and had a lot of fun picking pumpkins and sunflower seeds.

 

sunflower

 

Riding a tractor reminds me of growing up on a farm, and I couldn’t resist taking a picture on the tractor at the patch. It looked just like the one my friend’s family used to use, and they would always let us ride it.

 

tractor

 

Behind my house under the fig tree we had a bee hive where I got stung many times because I forgot to put on my white suit and net when I rushed to collect the honeycomb on my own. Once a week my father and I would collect honey from the hive and we would share the honey with our friends and family. All around the hive were sunflowers and every few weeks we collected the seeds and used the flowers for decoration. I managed to share the sunflower below with the bees without getting stung!

 

bigsunflower

 

My father used to have a small pumpkin patch, but he grew huge pumpkins. I have memories of sitting on them and feeling very small. This one looked like some of the pumpkins he grew.

 

bigpumpkin

 

I hadn’t seen this many types of pumpkins in one place in years, and I thought they were all so pretty and colorful. It reminded me of all of the soups that I can make out of them.

 

pumpkin-field

 

I wait all year long for the beautiful and warm colors that Fall brings. It makes me feel like making warm soups made, staying inside, drinking apple cider, and baking pies with cinnamon. More than anything, Fall makes me excited for the rest of the holidays to follow.

 

 

Happy cooking!
The Petite Gourmande
© 2016 by Ruth Barnes, all rights reserved
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