Recently in my area I have seen advertisements for community Celebrate the Harvest dinners. They all feature meat as the main part of the meal. When I think of harvest I think of fruit and vegetables. I decided to have a Vegetarian Celebrate the Harvest Dinner. My husband is very busy this time of year (harvest) so I prepared and ate this dinner with my parents.

This menu is a combination of easy and quite a bit of effort. The place cards were very easy – card stock with Chinese lanterns. The dessert was easy since I used puffed pastry and I enhanced vanilla ice cream instead of making my own pumpkin ice cream from scratch. I made the soup the night before. The biggest effort of this meal was the homemade ravioli. I started with a Hubbard squash and cooked it down the night before. I also made my own ravioli dough. (see menu and recipes below)

Menu

• Leaf Lettuce Salad with Apples, New York Cheddar Cheese, and Grape Vinaigrette – I did not like the Roasted Grape Vinaigrette recipe I used because of the garlic so I will not share the recipe. It tasted more of garlic than grape.
• French Potage with Pistou
• Hubbard Squash Ravioli in Apple Cider Reduction – I used Hubbarb Squash instead of butternut, used this ravioli dough instead of gyoza wrappers, I would not use the parsley again, and used a cider reduction instead of adding broth. I had shaved Parmesan to use as garnish but in the heat of the moment I forgot to use it.
• Apple Tart with Pumpkin Ice Cream – I used this recipe for the apple tart but I made mine smaller and did not look at the photo when placing my apples so mine is not as cute. For the Pumpkin Ice Cream I took 28 oz of softened Haagen Daas Vanilla Ice Cream and added 1/2 cup canned pumpkin, 1/4 tsp ground ginger, 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon, 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg. It was delicious!

New York Harvest Salad

French Potage with Pistou

Hubbard Squash Ravioli in Apple Cider Reduction

Apple Tart with Pumpkin Ice Cream