Fall and Winter Recipes Ideas

Last Updated: January 21, 2024

We hope that the tips and links below will inspire and guide you in your meal planning for fall and winter. If you’ve tucked away a little bit of summer (maybe tomatoes, peppers, berries, or herbs) in a freezer or canning jar, now is the time to call on those items to round out some of these hearty winter foods. The following list represents items that have made appearances in our fall and winter shares over the years. This season’s share will not necessarily contain all of these items.

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Apple Cider Vinegar

We hope you enjoy this offering from Eden Acres, an organic apple orchard just next door in Waterboro. Try your own at-home apple cider vinegar tasting and you will really notice that this vinegar has a unique and delicious flavor. It would be great in any salad dressing, stir fry sauce, or any other recipe that calls for vinegar. It is also great for sipping and adding to beverages. Here’s a link to some apple cider vinegar recipes from their website.

Beans (Dry Beans)

Great in soups, salads, baked beans and more! There are as many takes on how you should cook beans as there are cooks, but it can be simple.  Check out bean cooking methods from The Kitchn and The Spruce. Then check out these recipe ideas. Bean varieties in the share will vary, but most types of beans can substituted in any of the recipes below. If you have an instant pot, check out this bean cooking reference — we use this all the time.

Slow Cooker Green Chicken Chili
Very Versatile Baked Beans with Cabbage
Basic Refried Beans— Great for dips, tacos, and burritos
Refried Beans in the Instant Pot — This recipe calls for black beans, but you can use Pinto or Boston Cranberry beans.
Cannellini Beans with Spinach
Tomato and Cannellini Bean Soup
Fast White-Bean Stew
White Bean and Pasta Soup
Chorizo and White Bean Stew
White Bean Ragout with Toast
White Chicken Chili with Cannellini Beans

Beets

Beet, beets, beets… Some love them, some don’t.  Here is a Classic Russian Borscht Soup for those of you who do love them and a Beet Burger recipe for those of you who may want to try them disguised and topped with lots of condiments.  These beet burgers are some of our farm favorites!  Here’s the Moosewood Cookbook’s Borscht for a slight variation, or try Balsamic Marinated Beets — they’re great on top of spinach or salad greens. Lately, we’ve gotten into a rhythm of making a version of this Fast or Fancy Beet Salad somewhat frequently. For whatever reason, it has made its way into the lineup of fast-food staple at our house. We like it… and it’s pretty quick to pull together — especially if you’ve got the beets cooked ahead of time.

Black Futsu Squash

Is it a squash or a pumpkin? A common question when someone sees the squat, warty, mottled, Black Futsu. You’ll see it called both in recipes and seed catalogs — Johnny’s says butternut, High Mowing says pumpkin — and really it doesn’t matter, but most seed companies agree that Black Futsu is a Japanese heirloom squash closely related to the butternut squash. The taste and texture are also similar to butternut, but we think there is a distinct flavor difference that is delicious and interesting to pay attention to. For best tasting, roasting brings out the full flavors, but you can use this squash in any way that you would use butternut. Since its skin is edible, and it would be a challenge to peel, avoiding a recipe that calls for peeling is probably a good idea. For the simplest preparation try cutting it in half, top to bottom, seeding, and then slicing it into wedges along the ridgelines. Toss with oil and salt and roast at 375°F until tender.

Here are some Black Futsu recipe ideas to get you started:
Roasted Black Futsu Squash With Coconut Cream
Roasted Black Futsu with Jasmine-Kale Rice
Spiced and Roasted Black Futsu
Japanese Black Futsu Squash With Hazelnuts

Blueberries

We’re pretty sure you’ve already got plenty of ideas for these!  Here’s how we love to use them:  multi grain* blueberry pancakes with freshly made maple syrup, blueberries on top of oatmeal or yogurt, blueberry smoothies, blueberry muffins.  *Mix some cornmeal, buckwheat, or assorted other grains into your favorite pancake recipe in place of some of the wheat flour.

Bread

We do feature a hearty loaf of bread with Maine-grown ingredients from time to time in the share. Many of you will eat it up in a couple of meals, but just in case you are not a huge consumer of bread, here are a few ideas for how to turn your loaf into a useful ingredient for many meals.

Breadcrumbs — These are very useful in everything from casseroles, to veggie burgers, to latkes. Learning to make your own using saved up scraps of bread is a breeze. You can use fresh bread too, but see the notes on that in some of the links below. Store small scraps of bread in the freezer to have on hand for breadcrumbs whenever you need them. How to make breadcrumbs — This blog link has a lot of information and suggestions about various methods for making breadcrumbs.Slightly simpler description — Same idea. Slightly simpler instructions.Beet Burgers — A way to use some farm veggies and some of your homemade breadcrumbs all at once. A perfect use for any beets that you haven’t figured out what to do with yet.

Croutons — Transform a fresh or stale loaf of bread into croutons for a great addition to salads or a French onion soup. Bake croutons in the oven or fry them up in a skillet. Add flavors you like such as garlic, herbs, parmesan cheese, or hot pepper. Try it out, for a fun way to liven up your next salad. Three Variations on Croutons— There are some typos in this link, but they seem to cover most of your options. Skip to the recipe at the bottom if you don’t want the analysis. Crouton Video — A video that helps to make it not only look easy but also fast!

Toad-in-a-Hole — A farm-family breakfast favorite. You may know it by some other name, but the concept is the same. Cut a hole in a slice of bread (use a favorite cookie-cutter if it fits), butter both sides, put it in a heated frying pan and crack an egg directly into the hole. Season with salt and pepper. Flip it when the egg is cooked to your liking. Serve with jam or eat straight up.

Grilled Cheese and Spinach Sandwiches— You probably don’t need a recipe. Add your spinach first for a wilted greens version of this sandwich or sneak it into the melty cheese after grilling for a fresher spinach experience.

Brussels Sprouts

You always hear about how much people hated these when they were a kid. Usually they were frozen, canned, or boiled. Brussels sprouts have come a long way since then. They tend to be available fresh (even when we no longer have them at the farm) and there are lots of great recipes out there. Check a few of these out: Brussels Sprouts for People Who Think They Hate Brussels Sprouts — A simple preparation. And… 10 Ways to Get Brussels Sprouts on the Table — Whet your appetite with this slideshow of great Brussels sprout recipe photos and a recipe link with each slide.

Butternut Squash

The simplest preparation is to cut the butternut in half (skin on), scoop the seeds out, brush the squash with a light coating of olive oil and perhaps a sprinkle of salt. Roast the halves or slices on a cookie sheet at 350-400 degrees until squash is tender (from 30 minutes to about 1 hour). If you are using the squash in a puree you will want to make sure that it cooks until your finger can make an indentation in the skin of the squash. Serve slices or halves warm or let the squash cool peel it with a knife and then mash or puree for dishes calling for squash puree.

Butternut Soups
Butternut Squash and Parsnip Soup
Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

Roasted Butternut Squash Dishes
Roasted Winter Squash and Parsnips with Maple Syrup Glaze
One-Skillet Roasted Butternut Squash with Spiced Chickpeas
Butternut Squash, Sage, and Goat Cheese Pizza

Butternut Pasta Dishes
Roasted Butternut Squash Pasta (vegan)
Vegetable Lasagna with Butternut Béchamel
Spicy Butternut Squash with Spinach — If you don’t have a NY Times cooking subscription, you might only be able to click into this once a month. Print the recipe if you think you’ll want to make it. See it on Instagram
Creamy Butternut Squash Pasta with Sausage and Spinach

Cabbage

Great in classic coleslaw with carrots, but it is also a nice addition to a green salad.  Cabbage can be shredded ahead of time and used throughout the week.  Just store in a ziplock bag and squeeze all the air out of the bag to keep the slices from browning.  From soups to stirfries and salads cabbage is a workhorse vegetable that can be used in many different types of dishes.

Coconut Cabbage — Check out this delicious recommendation from Kim.
Russian Borscht Soup A great cabbage-focused soup. You may just want to google until you find a borscht recipe that looks perfect for you. It is a soup that can definitely be altered to your taste. For a few more borscht variations see beets.
MOFGA Sauerkraut Demonstration Video from the virtual Common Ground Fair — A good starting point if you are interested in learning more about sauerkraut.
Better-than-Takeout Stir-Fried Udon (& Cabbage!) — This is one of our top favorite family dinners… even for the vegetarian in the family. We don’t use instant udon noodles, we just use regular udon noodles and cook them using the package directions. They get drained and rinsed and added back to the hot pan later. You can get creative and add other veggies. The browned bits of cabbage and sausage along with all of the seasonings make this a mouth-watering stir-fry. We also tend to go a bit crazy with the cabbage! Sometimes we’ll use a full head (or at least double what the recipe is calling for). We’ll use two pans to make sure it all gets browned nicely. Be sure to increase the sauce and seasonings if you are using more than 14 oz. of noodles.
Cabbage Stir Fry — A simpler cabbage stir fry, very similar to the Cabbage Udon recipe above, but easier because the noodles/rice are optional and on the side, not cooked with the sauce.
Asian Cabbage Salad — A colorful, crunchy salad.
Easy Taco Slaw — A great addition to taco night.

Carrots

Carrot Lentil Soup is one of our all-time favorite soups.  It’s so easy to make that it gets top billing for ideas for what the kids can make when it is their night to cook dinner. Our best tip for making sure the carrots are always snackable is to scrub and trim the whole batch and pack them in an easy to reach location in the fridge.  Raw carrots are great with dips like hummus and served alongside apple slices.  A little shredded carrot turns a bowl of greens into a colorful salad.

Celeriac

Here are some easy ways to use celeriac. This veggie is simpler than it seems. Remove the knobby exterior using a knife.  A peeler is not quite aggressive enough.  Once it’s peeled, slice thin for salads or cube it up for soups or roasted veggies.  Use it anywhere you would use celery.

Cornmeal

Locally grown and milled cornmeal is a great way to round out winter meals. Cornmeal will hold in a jar in the pantry quite nicely throughout the year. If you are going to keep it longer you can store it in a sealed container in the freezer. Cornbreads may be your go-to cornmeal idea, but polenta (a soft cornmeal porridge that can be served soft, baked, or fried) is another avenue you can take that gives you a base for many different kinds of meals. Here is a long list of polenta links to get you inspired. The links below are some of our standards. Note — the different recipes have very different suggested times for how long to cook the polenta. A lot of this will depend on the grind of the cornmeal and how much water you are starting with. You may have to experiment a bit.

Polenta Ideas
Rustic Winter Stew over Polenta — A hearty vegetarian stew. Click the link just to see the photo!
Lydia’s Beef Stew — Our go-to beef stew recipe that is perfect served over a bowl of soft polenta.
Basic and Fried Polenta — This link shows you a basic version that can just be served “soft” under a stew. The video link shows you how to fry the cooled, firmed-up slices of polenta. The suggested cooking time in this recipe is just 15 minutes.
Simple Polenta — We think that 1 cup of cornmeal will serve 4 people as a base for a beef stew, etc. If you want leftovers you may want to make a double batch. The suggested cooking time in this recipe is 45 minutes, but we think you can play with that a bit.
Polenta Mini Pizzas — A fun variation on pizza that has endless possibilities for toppings. The very short cooking time may have to do with the type of cornmeal being used.

Cornbreads & Muffins — Maybe you’re not a fan of polenta. These links will get you headed in other directions for using your cornmeal.
Cornbread Stuffing
Cheddar Cornmeal Muffins — Do a search for any other kind of muffin or cornbread and include the word cornmeal. You’ll get plenty of ideas!
Cranberry Orange Cornmeal Muffins — Yum! Scroll to the bottom for the actual recipe.
Sweet Potato Cornbread — A favorite recipe that our friend and coworker Su can be counted on to make for a fall farm dinner… or at any time of year.

Cranberries

If you are not planning on using your share of cranberries for Thanksgiving, remember that you can safely keep them in the fridge for at least a couple weeks.  If you don’t think you will get to them right away they can be frozen right in their bag. If you spread them out in a thin layer it will be easy to reach into the bag of frozen berries and pull out a small handful of to add to smoothies, muffins, oatmeal, or any recipe.

Here’s a link to some cranberry sauce recipe ideas.

If you want to keep it super simple try this — In a medium saucepan combine:

1 bag (1+pound) of cranberries
1 cup of sugar (adjust as desired)
1 cup of water, orange, or apple juice.

Cook over medium-high heat until the sugar melts and the berries start to pop a bit (around 4-6 minutes).  Optionally, add the zest of one orange and cook a couple minutes more. Turn off heat, allow to cool and refrigerate for up to several days before serving.  This should last quite a while due to the acidity and sugar content.  Leftover cranberry sauce is great drizzled into a bowl of oatmeal or mixed into smoothies.

Daikon Radish

Daikon is touted as having many nutritional and health benefits. It is a tasty addition to soups, salads, and we like to use thin slices of it in our homemade sushi salad bowls. If you have a spiralizer this is a great vegetable to try spiralized and served with a maple ginger sauce.

Chinese Braised Daikon — this recipe may have you looking up substitutions, but overall it is fairly simple.  Substitute hot sauce for the spicy bean paste, a vinegar for the optional wine, and you can follow their link to a homemade 5-spice powder that is made of spices likely to be on your spice shelf.

Spiralized Daikon Noodle Bowls — We’ve been loving our noodle bowls lately. You can either spiralize your daikon and use it as noodles or use other noodles and serve this with thin slices of daikon. Try their sauce and also try our maple-ginger sauce below.

Maple Ginger Sauce — This is easy in a small blender or food processor, but can also be mixed by hand — just be sure to grate the fresh ginger very finely. One small batch of sauce will top at least 4 noodle-bowls.

Mix all of the following ingredients together:
3 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari
5 tablespoons maple syrup (less if you want it less sweet)
1 teaspoon sesame oil (or toasted sesame oil)
2 tablespoons of ginger finely grated (or larger dice if you are blending)
1 tablespoon rice wine (or mirin, or cider vinegar)
1 teaspoon (or more or less to taste) of your favorite hot sauce (or 1/4-1/2 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes).

Serve this sauce in small bowls to each person or pour out of a gravy pitcher or ball jar.

Spicy Fermented Daikon — Maybe you are not into fermentation yet, but this recipe may inspire you to learn more. The description does do a good job of summarizing some of the possible health benefits of daikon radish.

Delicata Squash

This is one of our favorite winter squashes! Delicata squash is sweet and flavorful and can be prepared in so many different ways.  Don’t let it sit around too long just because they are fun to look at. They like to be stored around 50-60 degrees, so if they get too warm or too cool they won’t hold as long. You can cook them with the skin on and eat the skin (if you want to), so no peeling necessary! Also, no fancy recipe is necessary — just cut in half, scoop seeds out, brush with oil and roast at 350 – 425 degrees until tender (about 30 – 40 min). They can also be stuffed with a grain or meat-based filling.

Click here for delicata squash ideas to get you started.  And check out our recipe for delicata squash chips.

Leeks

Leeks are lovely in so many ways. If you are not used to cooking with leeks there are a few things to know to get the most out of them.
The dark green tops – Though not usually called for in recipes, the darker green tops are edible and flavorful! We save them and use them as additions to soup stocks. You can even cook them in small quantities in a pureed soup. They are a bit more fibrous than the rest of the leek, but you’ll never notice if the whole thing is well-pureed. Only do this if you are excited for a green tint to your soup and have a good blender. 
Washing leeks – Wash the leeks well before slicing. If there is dirt between the layers, be sure to rinse them well after slicing to remove any grit that might be there. 

Potato Leek Soup. This is a farm family favorite and so very quick to make. It is useful if you have an immersion blender, but it is not essential. It seems easier to just mash the potatoes in the soup pot than to pour hot soup into a regular blender. Both blended and mashed variations are included in this recipe along with some suggestions for variations. We’ll be adding to this leek section, so send us your favorite leek recipes!

Mushrooms

Enjoy these mushrooms from Mousam Valley Mushrooms in Springvale, just down the road from us. A first suggestion for how to use these mushrooms is to keep it simple. Be sure to keep them in the fridge until you are ready to use them. They do not need to be washed, just slice them a bit and sauté in butter with a pinch of salt until they are wilted. We usually just end up eating them straight out of the pan! You can, of course, use them in any number of other ways. Consider using them in a quiche with leeks, in soups, or sautéed with some garlic and sprinkled over a pasta dish.

Oats

These Maine-grown oats from Aurora Mills & Farm can be cooked just like any other rolled oats, but they are NOT “quick oats”. Here is our Simple Oatmeal Recipe for making oatmeal that is a somewhat creamy porridge. Here’s another oatmeal method that will be less of a porridge, leaving you with a tender, fully-intact rolled oat. It calls for a different water-to-oat ratio and is less hands-on. Not an oatmeal fan? Try our Basic Granola recipe. If you are not going to use your oats right away they can be stored in the freezer in an airtight bag or container for a very long time.  But, why wait? Winter is a great time for a nice hot breakfast cereal.

Parsley

A bag of parsley can stay fresh for several weeks in the fridge if it is kept wrapped up and doesn’t become wet or too dry — but take the parsley challenge and try to use up that bag of parsley in some fresh, creative ways. If you do want to store some of it away for later, try making a sauce to freeze or pluck the leaves from the stems and freeze them in a thin layer in a freezer bag. Later, you can reach in and take just what you need, a little bit at a time.

9 Great Things to Do With Boring Old Parsley — A cheeky look at parsley that might be a fun read when you receive a bag of parsley in your fall and winter share. The 9 ideas include: Put chopped parsley on everything. Make a parsley salad. Make a salad with lots of parsley in it. Make super-delicious creamy parsley salad dressing, and put it on a salad with lots of parsley in it. Put parsley in a smoothie. Instead of discarding parsley stems, stow them in a bag in the freezer, and throw them in when making stock. Make a super-simple parsley sauce, and put it on everything. Make garlic-parsley butter, and use to flavor seafood, grilled meats, vegetables.

Parsnips

The overall theme of the parsnip recipes below is that parsnips pair well with many other vegetables and fruits.  If you are stumped by what to do with parsnips, try one of these ideas:

Parsnip and Apple Soup
“Burnt” Carrots and Parsnips
Roasted Carrots and Parsnips
Scalloped Potatoes and Parsnips
Potato Parsnip Latkes
Mashed Potatoes and Parsnips
Mashed Potatoes and Parsnips with Caramelized Onions and Blue Cheese
Homemade Veggie Chips (Fried) — Do you ever buy a bag of those “Sweet & Beets” or other veggie chips in the snack aisle at the store? Making your own is a bit labor intensive (compared to opening a bag!), but a fun activity when hanging out with friends and looking for a hands-on activity that ends in some yummy snacking. Parsnip chips are lovely! You can also make chips with sweet potatoes, carrots, beets… whatever root veggies you have on hand that you’d like to try.
Homemade Veggie Chips (Baked) — Similar to the recipe above, but no deep frying necessary!

Popcorn

Here is our stovetop popcorn method.  Or check out these microwave popcorn instructions.

Potatoes

Potatoes and parsnips are a winning combo, see all of the recipes above in the parsnip section. Whether it’s Thanksgiving or just a regular-old-day… check out some of these mashed potato inspirations. If mashed potatoes aren’t your thing, here are a few more potato ideas to use the potato bounty in this month’s share. When you have potatoes and rosemary or other herbs don’t forget the simple pleasure of roasted potatoes. Check out this Rosemary Roasted Potatoes recipe.

Pumpkin

If you get a round pie pumpkin in the fall of 2021 you can be fairly certain that it is a “Pie-Pita“. This pumpkin is one of our new favorites because of the seeds. The green seeds lack a seed coat and so they are very easy to roast and to chew. Try making Pumpkin Muffins and topping the muffins with your Pie Pita seeds. Be sure to scoop these seeds out before cooking your pumpkin in the oven or the instant pot if you plan to roast them.

To roast a pumpkin for pie, cook your pumpkin in the oven or the instant pot. Before turning your pumpkin puree into a pie filling take the flesh from your cooked pumpkin and let it sit in a strainer. Letting any excess water drain out will make your puree hold up better in your pie. You can collect the juice that drips out and throw it in your next soup or smoothie. 

Here are a few pumpkin puree links:
How to Roast Pumpkin — A basic, cut-in-half method. Many of the comments discuss baking whole.
Instant Pot Pumpkin Puree
Pumpkin Pie Bars
20 Minute Pumpkin Butter
Pumpkin Pie Parfaits

Rosemary

Since our rosemary planting did so well this season, we’re giving out quite a large bag of it. Check out this list of Rosemary Ideas that includes more links to recipes, food preservation, and gift ideas. Make yourself a Cranberry-Rosemary Spritzer to enjoy while pondering all of the ways you might put your rosemary to use. If you are feeling snacky, maybe make a batch of Rosemary Sea Salt Roasted Almonds to munch on while you plan, or start collecting ingredients for a batch of this lovely Rosemary Shortbread.

Salad and Spinach

Cranberry Spinach Salad with Spiced Pumpkin Seeds — The key here is to use this recipe as an idea to get started, but don’t get hung up on having all the “right” ingredients.  Don’t have cranberries anymore? Chop up some apples or chop some orange segments if you happen to have an orange around. Dried cranberries or raisins would work too.  Don’t have pumpkin seeds?  Just use any nut or seed combo that you might have around.  Also, you can play around with using smaller and smaller amounts of sugar with these seeds.  Even just a little bit of that candied crunch adds an interesting element to the salad.

For another salad idea, try Balsamic Marinated Beets — they’re great on top of spinach, salad greens or a mix.

Savory

Winter Savory is a hardy perennial herb that has a flavor that is peppery and reminiscent of thyme, oregano, pine, and sage. It will store in a bag in the fridge for months if well protected from drying out and also not kept with any water in the bag. Always make sure herbs and greens are well dried before storing. We prefer to wash herbs and greens as they come out of the fridge. You should wash your savory because it may have bits of field dust tucked in the leaves and stems. To use savory, pluck the leaves from the stem and chop or use whole in soups, stews, beans, rubs for meats, salad dressings, soup stocks, and any number of dishes that you’d like to bring a bit of flavor to.

A Masterclass on Savory — A very thorough look at what savory is and how to use it.

Shallots

What makes a shallot special and not just a little onion? Their unique and mild flavor makes them perfect for use raw in salads and dressings where you don’t want the strong kick of an onion. Their mild flavor makes them great to add to egg dishes and baked goods. Try sautéing shallots with oil and salt. Simple sautéed shallots are perfect for adding flavor and texture to cooked greens, brussels sprouts, eggs and toast, or roasted vegetables.

Simple Creamy Vinaigrette with Shallots — This shallot dressing is quick and easy and pairs nicely with any simple salad you want to whip up from a bowl of greens to whatever your go-to salad is. Use right away or store for a week or so in the fridge.
Lemon Vinaigrette with Shallots — This dressing is similar to the creamy vinaigrette above, but with a focus on the lemon. This dressing pairs well with green salads, pasta salads, bean salads, and grain bowls.
Egg and Caramelized Shallot Toast — A quick brunch idea to elevate your eggs.
Shallot and Leek Quiche

Sweet Potatoes

To peel or not to peel? — Peeling sweet potatoes is optional. The skins can be eaten. Some dishes may be better with the skins removed. If you are cooking a dish that calls for peeled sweet potatoes it may be easiest to cook the sweet potatoes with the skins on and then peel them after they have cooked. If doing this, you can cook the sweet potatoes whole, or cut into chunks if you have large pieces, in order to speed up the process. You may want to slightly cover them with a lid, foil, or a cookie sheet to maintain a bit of moisture.

Sweet potato fingerlings— When harvesting sweet potatoes we end up with a large number of smaller spuds that we’ll call fingerlings partly because they do tend to be quite finger-sized. These small sweet potatoes are great tossed with a bit of oil, salt, and pepper and roasted whole. If you want more of a sweet potato fry you can cut them in halves or quarters. Roast them on a cookie sheet at 350-425 degrees for around 40 minutes or so. Test them frequently to see if they are fork-tender. A little longer might bring them to a bit of a crispy point. No peeling is necessary for these, but do trim off damaged tips or imperfections prior to cooking so that you can eat them straight out of the oven.

Sweet Potato Fries — This recipe calls for sweet potatoes, olive oil, rosemary, and salt. We sometimes also like to use pepper and garlic powder.
Sweet Potato Casserole — An idea for a decadent side-dish