Vegetable Gratin and Beans with Greens

Wow!! December has been a whirlwind for us, and it doesn't look like it's going to slow down until the Holiday's have passed. I apologize for the sparse blogging of late, but I've been cooking very little and making a lot of easy repeats (pizzas, quesadillas, and soups). We've also been eating out a lot.....in fact, way too much.

I did find some time for cooking last night though. It's been cold, gray, and rainy here for days. We've been so busy, running around from here to there, Christmas shopping, Christmas parties, School Programs, and Dance Recitals. Yesterday we finally got to take a breather from all of our running and it was the perfect day for some hearty comfort food. So, I made a rainbow vegetable gratin and some crusty white beans with rainbow chard from Super Natural Cooking. It was delicious and perfect for the cold, rainy weather.

The vegetable gratin is a combination of red potatoes, sweet potatoes, shallots, carrots, and green onion all browned on the stove-top and then sprinkled with whole grain bread crumbs and grated Parmesan cheese before baking to a crispy golden brown in the oven. I've been wanting to try this one out, because I was planning to use it as part of our holiday meal. Well, it definitely makes the holiday meal cut, it was outstanding.

The beans are just some white kidney (cannellini) that I cooked up in the crock pot over the weekend. They too are browned on the stove top along with some onion and garlic, rainbow chard is then wilted in and the whole thing gets sprinkled with grated Parmesan cheese before serving. Again, delish!! This would actually be a great meal all on it's own, possibly with some corn bread....yum!!

This isn't the type of meal that Rob is very keen on, but he did enjoy it none the less. Mairin of course, didn't even try any of it. And Stella, well, Stella is digging the beans lately, so she ate a big bowl of beans and some applesauce.