Slow Cooker Butternut Squash with Ginger & Dried Fruit Recipe ♥ Recipe

Today's Thanksgiving recipe: A plain-looking but anything-but-plain tasting butternut squash side dish, bright with ginger and slightly sweet with orange and dried fruit. It's cooked in a slow cooker, oh-so easy and oh-so good.

On Saturday, I stood in the detergent aisle at the Walmart, already confounded by too many choices only to be blasted by a perky Jingle Bell Rock from the sound system. As if the detergent decision wasn't enough, to hear, you know, Christmas music in September, I could have melted into an anything-but-red-and-green puddle right then and there.

But an early Thanksgiving? Bring it on! American Thanksgiving is early this year, which actually makes the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas almost manageable. But the Canadians are even more sensible with an October Thanksgiving, this year a week early too, on October 8. Most years, I cook a turkey for Canadian Thanksgiving, a sort of prelude to the big family gathering in November: not so this year, I fear.

But this is an easy, oh-so-tasty side dish for Thanksgiving, especially since it's cooked in a slow cooker because we all know how quickly the oven gets overloaded cooking that big meal.
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Pennsylvania Dutch Green Beans with Bacon ♥

Today's vegetable recipe: A hearty late-summer or fall side dish. (Thanksgiving? Yes that too, especially Canadian Thanksgiving which falls in mid October when it's often still quite warm.) The beans are topped with a sweet 'n' sour sauce, crispy bacon and a chopped egg.

Cookbooks are always welcome gifts but The Farm: Rustic Recipes for a Year of Incredible Food by Ian Knauer was an inspired choice. For starters, these inscriptions were penned by two of my favorite cook's grandchildren. Yes, they brought tears:

Dear PopPop, I like gardening with you. Teach me how to cook from the garden. I love you, A.J.
Dear Grandpa, I like your garden! Here's a book on how to cook with it! Love, E.

Two days later, "PopPop" aka Grandpa and the kids selected recipes from the cookbook, shopped for groceries and set up to cook dinner. What a feast! A venison loin rubbed with mustard, oil and fresh herbs. Homemade biscuits, light as air! Green beans topped with a sweet-sour sauce, bacon and a chopped egg. "How are the green beans?" I asked at the table. "Fantastic!" murmured E., reaching for another bite.

Twas grand.
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Swiss Chard Skillet Supper Recipe ♥ with Tomatoes, Corn, Feta, Fresh Dill & Toasted Walnuts

<< Today's vegetarian supper recipe: A quick 'n' easy way to cook Swiss chard with other vegetables, here, tomatoes and corn. One of the best vegetarian dishes I've made all year! Low carb, low fat, and just Weight Watchers 3 points. Healthy and delicious, no beating that combination! >>

Call me late to this party, the online project that health-conscious food bloggers launched while I was off for awhile this summer. The idea is to explore a new "power food" every week following the list from Power Foods: 150 Delicious Recipes with the 38 Healthiest Ingredients. I'm arriving near the tail end of the vegetables, these are the ones the book identifies as "power food" vegetables: artichokes, asparagus, avocados, beets, bell peppers, broccoli, brussels sprouts, carrots, kale, mushrooms, spinach, sweet potatoes, swiss chard, tomatoes, winter squash. Of all these? The one I have the least connection with is Swiss chard so after all, the timing is excellent.
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Mighty Perfect Cabbage & Broccoli Coleslaw ♥ Recipe

Today's healthy coleslaw recipe, a mix of colorful fresh cabbage and broccoli, cooked a little - just a little - in the microwave before adding a low-calorie vinaigrette. It's a slaw recipe with ambition, eager to please. Pretty green broccoli slaw? Yep. Low carb slaw? You bet! Weight Watchers-friendly slaw? Of course! Plus not just vegan, "Vegan Done Real".

So let's talk straight about all the things that can go wrong with a coleslaw recipe, the things that so easily and all too often do go wrong with a coleslaw recipe, turning out cole slaw like this:

Too soggy, too watery. (How many coleslaw recipes are victims of this?)
Too raw and well, cabbage-y.
Too bland and unseasoned. (Such a waste of good cabbage, these coleslaw recipes!)
Too much dressing which translates into "too many calories". (How many coleslaw recipes turn out to be complete disasters, calorie-wise?)
Like a plain-jane slaw with not enough going on, but some times, a cole slaw that just tries too hard, with too much going on. (Poor sad things, these coleslaw recipes.)

This coleslaw recipe fixes all those cole slaw problems! (Maybe we should put the Cooks Illustrated folks onto the European debt crisis.) This recipe is all about technique. (You could even apply the steps to your own favorite recipe.) There are two extra steps:
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