Penne with butternut squash, ground lamb and kaseri

This is another quick delicious one-pot meal. Yay! My fave! Thank you, epicurious.com "Weekly Planner" section!

I've always been a big fan of the winter squashes. Well, all squashes, really, but particularly the sweet winter squashes. Butternut squashes, acorn squashes, delicata squashes, you give me some squashes and I will be a happy camper. Squashes. It's just fun to say.

Chicken saltimbocca with pesto pasta and sauteed kale

This is a great weeknight meal. Very quick and satisfying, but with a little touch of fancy too. It's another great find from the Williams-Sonoma cookbook series "Food Made Fast", specifically, "Simple Suppers". I highly recommend the series.

You could stuff your chicken breasts with any kind of melty cheese and salty ham you happen to like or have kicking around the fridge, although the original recipe calls for fontina and prosciutto or boiled ham. This time I used a delicately smoked Italian caciocavallo cheese with prosciutto. Twas lovely. It also calls for fresh sage but dried works just fine, particularly when it's 13 degrees outside and your garden is an ice skating rink.

Steaks with Swiss chard and sun-dried tomato mac and cheese

The other day, Allan jokingly suggested we call ourselves "Pure Land Organic Swiss Chard and Mint", since those are the only two crops that really flourished in the garden. Honestly, I'd be happy with a Swiss chard farm. The stuff is magical. But alas, the final Swiss chard harvest of the summer is upon us.

My plants produced huge gorgeous leaves for about three whole months. I think I'm going to plant some freshies to see if they'll grow for fall. My mustard greens are shaping up nicely in the mean time. And kale, I need to plant some kale! Big weekend of planting coming up in the garden.

I love the sweet, concentrated tomatoey-ness of sun-dried tomatoes. The other week I made some simple oven-dried tomatoes for eating with various cheeses on baguette toasts - just quartered baby plum tomatoes, sea salt, and olive oil. I will definitely make them again, but jarred ones work just fine here, since they're getting pureed to smithereens.