One of the first vegetables that’s ready to harvest is rhubarb each year. I love this tart first vegetable of the season and with all the rain we had recently, my rhubarb plants are growing like crazy right now. The first stalks should be ready for harvest in just a few days.

Usually I have just enough to make a couple of rhubarb pies, but this year looks like quite a bit more. So I guess my question is what do you make with Rhubarb?

Here’s my favorite rhubarb pie recipe:

* 4 cups chopped rhubarb
* 1 1/3 cups white sugar
* 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
* 1 tablespoon butter
* 1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie

Preheat oven to 450F

Combine sugar and flour. Sprinkle 1/4 of it over pastry in pie plate. Heap rhubarb over this mixture. Sprinkle with remaining sugar and flour. Dot with small pieces of butter. Cover with top crust.

Place pie on lowest rack in oven. Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350F, and continue baking for 40 to 45 minutes.

I almost always have a bag of baby carrots in the fridge. We love to much on them as a snack or appetizer and I serve them as a side dish of sorts with lunch. Everyone in the family enjoys them dipped in a little ranch dressing, but we don’t really like cooked carrots all that much. I toss a few handfuls of them in when I make pot roast, but that’s about it.

Needless to say, I need some new ideas on what to do with carrots. Do you prefer ready to eat baby carrots or do you use the whole regular ones? What are your favorite ways to prepare them? Share your recipes as a comment below.

My daughter, who is five, decided last week that she will no longer eat animals and that she’s a vegetarian now. So I’ve been cooking more beans veggies and the likes and we also picked up a pack of garden burgers and some veggie dogs at the store this week. I’ve fixed the veggie dogs for her like regular hot dogs twice now and am running out of ideas. Since they are full of protein, I’d like her to eat them frequently, but I also don’t want her to get tired of them. Any ideas on what I can make with veggie dogs? Do you have any recipes that call for them, or maybe something that you would usually use regular hot dogs in? Thanks for your help.

One of my favorite winter vegetables is red cabbage. I stew it with some grated apples and a touch of vinegar until it’s nice and soft. It’s really good with a pork roast and some potatoes. I just got back from the store with a nice head of this purple looking cabbage and was wondering if anyone had any other ideas on what to make with it.

Share your recipes and ideas as a comment below.

One of my favorite comfort foods is pinto beans and corn bread. In fact, I have a pot of beans cooking right now. The problem is I can’t seem to judge how many dry beans we actually end up eating. I keep forgetting how much they swell up in the cooking process. The result? We end up with way to many cooked pinto beans.

Any ideas on what I can make with them? My family loves beans and cornbread, but isn’t big on eating the leftovers and I end up tossing them. What a shame!

Take a moment to share your favorite recipes and ideas as a comment below. Can’t wait to hear how you eat your pinto beans.

Down here in the south, we have a tradition of eating mustard greens or collard greens on New Year’s Day. It’s supposed to make the new year prosperous for you and bring you lots of money (thus the green).

As a result, I am now seeing sales on mustard greens in just about every grocery store around and of course would love to take advantage of it.

I usually cook them by steaming the greens in a little bit of water in a large pan and season them with salt and pepper. When I’m ready to serve them, I also pour a little bit of white vinegar over them.

That’s about the only way I’ve prepared them, and I would love to hear your recipes and ideas for mustard greens.

I’ve always liked mashed potatoes with turkey and gravy for Thanksgiving. Since my mother-in-law, whose house we usually go to for our big Thanksgiving meal makes both potato salad and scalloped potatoes instead, I haven’t had them in a while and thought it would be nice to bring them along as a side dish. So I made a big pot of homemade mashed potatoes this year. Guess what… when I got there, my mother-in-law had the same idea. It got really funny when my sister-in-law showed up with a big pot of steaming mashed potatoes as well.

Obviously there are only so many servings of mashed potatoes a person can eat in one meal and I am now stuck with a big tub of them in my fridge and we are all tired of eating them and have run out of the gravy to go on top.

So, what can I make with prepared mashed potatoes?

The Halloween candy is about gone and now it is time to focus on Thanksgiving! I love this holiday because it is so traditional. The family meets, we eat, we relax, watch football and skim the papers for the big sales for the following day.

Thanksgiving dinner is planned a week before the big day with my mother calling everyone to tell them what they are expected to prepare and bring. My dish for the last three years has been a recipe I received from a coworker.It is simple to make and is obviously delicious or she wouldn’t ask for it three years in a row!

Corn bread Casserole

1 can (12 oz) creamed corn
1 can (12 oz) sweet corn, drained
1  8.5 oz. Jiffy Corn muffin mix
1 cup sour cream
1/2 stick melted butter
1 cup cheddar cheese (optional)

Heat oven to 350.  Mix all ingredients and place into a casserole dish. Bake for 40 minutes. Remove and layer with cheddar cheese. Return to oven until cheese is melted.

I double the recipe for my larger family. The double batch feeds at least 12 and more if there are various other side items to eat.

Since we’re getting close to Thanksgiving, I’m seeing sweet potatoes on sale everywhere. Like I do with my turkeys, I’d like to stock up and take advantage of the super low prices. But once I get all these bags of sweet potatoes home, what do I do with them or how do I store them?

We like to eat baked sweet potatoes with a little butter and sugar throughout the year … it’s a sidedish and dessert all in one. Other than that, I only use them for sweet potato pies that I usually bake just for Thanksgiving.

Any other ideas and / or good recipes?

Last May, I decided to make a very small garden of fresh fruits and vegetables. My soil is terrible so I left the plants in their containers. I picked up strawberries, cherry tomatoes,  green bell peppers and cucumbers.

By mistake, I picked up two plants that I thought to be red bell peppers but they were actually red hot peppers. I was able to produce a lot of cherry tomatoes, some strawberries and green peppers (though smaller in size than what I am use to eating/buying at the grocery store), only four cucumbers, and an oversupply of hot, red peppers. In fact, while all the other plants had stopped producing by July or August, my hot red peppers are still producing. And it is November!

Other than the fact that they are pretty and red,  I have  no idea what to make with them! They are too hot to add to a salad. My daughter and I have eaten a few as a “dare” by my son and I have added them to a vinegar and oil combination to make a pretty but only decent pepper sauce.

What can I make with red, hot  peppers? Any good recipes out there?