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Best Vegetable Recipes of 2013 ♥

Your favorite vegetable recipes of 2013 from A Veggie Venture, one per month, all in one handy spot for easy reference. Yes, this year I'm featuring your favorite recipes , the vegetable recipes which you and other readers and visitors come back to again and again, all year long. It's that time of year, the week when we food bloggers look back over a year's worth of recipes and pick our favorites! I love-love-love this process! It really helps us hone our recipe collections, highlighting the best of the already very good, especially for sites like A Veggie Venture and my food column Kitchen Parade which by design, already post only really good recipes, the ones that work, the ones that are special or especially useful. (Here's the 2013 favorite recipes from Kitchen Parade too.) But I also love all the many sources of "best of the year" lists for movies, books, gadgets, etc. So this year, I'm collecting "best of the year" lists on Pinterest

Easy Appetizer: Hot Corn Dip ♥

Today's easy appetizer recipe: Just five pantry ingredients and ten minutes, that's all it takes to put this appetizer together. Are you good at appetizers? Me, not so much. :-( But this Hot Corn Dip was a hit on Christmas Eve afternoon during our annual family open house for forty or fifty or some times sixty people – I never count, we're just happy that the extended family is in one place for a few hours. But right, the dip. So yes, I watched one person after another dip a Frito corn chip into the hot dip and then go back for another, each time savoring the cheesy warmth. For a casual New Year's, for an upcoming playoff game and the Superbowl, this is a winner!

Easy Make-Ahead Endive & Apple Salad ♥ Recipe

Today's winter salad recipe: Just sliced endive and apple tossed in a quick curry vinaigrette. Make-ahead for holiday buffets or potluck gatherings, adding welcome freshness and a bit of "crunch" to rich food. Note #1: The Saturday before Thanksgiving is grand timing for a party! We were feeling all geared up and festive but it was too soon to start cooking for Thanksgiving and way too soon to be (over)planning Christmas gatherings. So that night, four couples gathered for an "Alsatian Harvest Feast" – and did we ever feast ! The meal was seven courses over five hours, each course better than the next. A charcuterie platter with two kinds of hand-made Alsatian sausage. Swiss and French raclette, warmed until melty on the stove in a small cast iron serving dish. (We have three, all from Lodge, small to slightly bigger to slightly bigger still, an oval , a rectangle and a round . We love them all!) Chicken liver pate. Excellent homemade bread! Warm onion soup

Pioneer Woman’s Broccoli Wild Rice Casserole ♥

Leave it to the Pioneer Woman to tantalize our tastebuds with a big, hearty casserole, six layers of nutty wild rice and crisp broccoli held together with a gorgeous Mushroom Cream Sauce. It's packed with vegetables, including the broccoli stalks. No cheese! Fresh & Seasonal. Weight Watchers Friendly. Vegetarian.

Butternut Squash Lasagna ♥ Recipe
with "Butternut Bechamel" and Roasted Butternut Squash

Today's Thanksgiving vegetable recipe, the first of 2013: Lasagna made with butternut squash, just three layers to save calories but packed with naturally creamy, naturally sweet butternut squash: roasted and puréed for a gorgeous "Butternut Bechamel" that envelops the lasagna noodles and roasted in cubes to stud the lasagna layers with bursts of flavor and texture. So hello, November, so glad to see your golden light, knowing that the next few weeks will be extra-busy and how easy it might be to simply fail to notice . I pledge: I shall notice, I shall appreciate, I shall remember. It's a November tradition here at A Veggie Venture: a focus fascination obsession spotlight on Thanksgiving recipes, a dedication to the many ways – many tradition, some creative, all fabulous – to cook Thanksgiving's favorite vegetables, all collected in a single place, Favorite Recipes for Thanksgiving's Favorite Vegetables . Talk about a reason for celebration! Who nee

Raw Brussels Sprouts Salad ♥ Recipe

Today's fall salad recipe: A raw salad, this time with raw Brussels sprouts shaved so thin they easily "cook" (if you will) in a lemon vinaigrette and then are tossed with grated romano for a certain lovely "sourness" and pine nuts for a touch of "crunch". Weight Watchers Friendly, WW 3 PointsPlus. Low Carb. Gluten Free. Primal. Vegetarian. Word to the wise, best left to rest for 24 hours before serving. My dear college friends Laurie and Susan visited this week, meeting midway in St. Louis. As Laurie wrote afterward on Facebook, "Thirty years melted away as we honored our loved ones' memories, cooked and schemed together. Still friends of the heart after all these years!" We three had much catching up to do and wondered out loud, how and why, when we had once crossed the state just to have dinner together, did our friendship become relegated to Christmas cards? Children? Careers? Something else? Where did the years go? Funny thing w

Whole-Grain Salad with Beets, Beans & Corn ♥ A Simple Salad

Today's fall salad recipe: A mix of whole grains like wheatberries or bulghur mixed with rainbow-colored vegetables in a simple vinaigrette. Weight Watchers Friendly, just 1 PointsPlus. Low Cal. Not just vegan, " Vegan Done Real ". When visiting my dad in northern Minnesota right on the Canadian border, I let myself “just cook” - happily forgetting that my websites are hungry for new recipes and other endless attention back at home. With proper timing, I can hit the St. Paul farmers market on the way north to stock up on fresh vegetables, then the grocery store in International Falls for staples. My poor father: when I arrive, his fridge will hold little more than a jar of peanut butter, a bag of baby carrots, a little cheese, a bottle of ketchup, a stick of butter. Fifteen minutes later, the shelves are crammed with food, none of it “ready to eat” mind you, all of it needing preparation. And so our visits begin ... Some times though, blog-ready recipes just happen n