more cooking with strange vegetables

So like I said, I was sick for awhile.  Which means that I was eating toast, crackers and ramen.  Not the vegetables we were receiving from our CSA.  Once my stomach grew a little stronger (around Friday/Saturday of last week) I began to panic because I did NOT want those vegetables to go to waste!  Not when we paid good money for them!  (I'm a bit frugal) So I went into overdrive cooking about two weeks worth of veggies in one night (thank God they were all still in good condition).  And here's what I came up with:

for Swiss Chard: 

Risotto with Swiss Chard

Comments: Super tasty!! A little salty, which I think is great but if you're not that into salt it may be a bit much for you.  I guess Swiss chard is salty?  Because I didn't add any salt to the risotto.  John's comment: "I like it but not as much as some of the other risotto you've fixed".  Fair enough.  I definitely recommend it.

for beets:

I had some recommendations to pickle the beets but the recipe I found for that used canned beets.  I wanted one for fresh beets so I used some helpful hints from my mother in law and I also found this helpful tutorial on how to roast them online.

Comments: We loved them!  Surprisingly so!  John and I were both shocked that we actually liked them.  I would definitely cook them again this way.  AND now I think I can use the pickled beets recipe with the fresh beets, all I would have to do is roast them first (they seem like they are the same consistency of canned beets at that point).  Apparently beets are loaded in iron, so that's good too.  Hopefully we'll receive more beets soon.

for rutabagas:

Rutabaga and Potato Casserole

Comments: John preferred this dish to the first rutabaga dish.  I liked it and thought it was really good (for a rutabaga dish) but I'm still not in looove with rutabagas.  Oh well.  At least this is a decent way to prepare and eat them.  I also made darn sure when I was peeling them that I didn't leave any peel on it and they turned out well.

The fact that I'm posting about cooking weird vegetables is a testament to how exciting my life is right now.  At least we're going out tonight to celebrate our anniversary (the actual date is next week), so that counts for something, right?  Oh yeah, I bought new heels for this dinner.  Of course I did.  Anything I can use as an excuse to buy cute stuff is always welcome.  I'll post pics later (maybe).

Lucky for you, I just found a picture of them online.  Love them!