Fall Food Adventures

Today's family activity was a trip to the pumpkin patch to pick out pumpkins...

As we rode back on the wagon, "Farmer Jim," mentioned that they had some late season sweet corn that was especially good.  We decided to take his word for it and get some for dinner. As we picked out corn, we started looking at the rest of the market's offerings and decided that we would pick out some other veggies, get a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, and have a "fall festival" for dinner.

We got a little carried away and came home with, corn, spaghetti squash, acorn squash, beets, sweet potatoes, turnips, apples and cabbage. It was nearly 2:00 and I still had to plan recipes and get to the grocery store, so we decided to cut back the "fall festival" a bit and spread the spoils over a few different meals.

Tonight's dinner ended up being rotisserie chicken, sweet corn (which was just as good as advertised!!), and spaghetti squash. We had a late start on the squash and had to resort to microwaving it. After rejecting several methods that involved cooking with plastic wrap, I found this method on About.com.  It worked out really well, although I cooked it twice as long as was suggested (20 minutes.) A year ago, I made spaghetti squash for the family and it was just ok... I realize now that I didn't cook it long enough. The softer the better as far as I'm concerned.  For the family, I dumped some tomato sauce on top. Since I can't eat tomatoes, I added some cottage cheese and surprisingly, it was a good fit.

As for the rest of our farmer's market purchases, we'll be working them in to meals over the next few days.  I've never cooked a turnip before and and planning on roasting them with some of the beets and sweet potatoes, but I'd be open for suggestions... 

Have you ever made turnips before?  What's the best way to cook them?