Around this Thanksgiving holiday, cook and cuisine author, Nancy Mehagian shares a favorite and easy recipe for organic turkey meatloaf.The leaves of fall are upon us, and on our streets and yards. If you live on the East Coast, your trees may be bare by now. Here, in Southern California, we’re still raking and blowing. I love it! Fall just might be my favorite season, for all the color that abounds, the changes in the air and the sight of some of my favorite produce at the Farmer’s Market. To celebrate the season, I’ve offered a few of my recipes–the ones that taste best eaten around a blazing fire.

This is a wonderful Fall dish that uses two of our seasonal favorites: Butternut Squash, and Brussel sprouts. The natural sweetness of the squash and onion mellow out the brussel sprouts, and the black beans add enough protein to take this from a side dish to a main course, if you want.

Nettle Meadow Farm and Artisan Cheese is located about an hour north of Albany, NY. Lorraine Lambiase and Sheila Flanagan have tended to their beautiful farm in the Adirondack Mountains since 1990, with dozens of sheep, over 300 goats, chickens, ducks, and a couple of guard llamas living off of the land and providing their milk to be turned into some of America’s most incredible, award winning cheeses.

It’s the season for sweets, including pumpkin pie, but professional cook, Nancy Mehagian shares a side dish recipe for Japanese pumpkin that’s fast, healthy and delicious. Nancy has been a massage therapist and Jin Shin Jyutsu practitioner in Los Angeles for nearly 30 years. She is the author of the culinary memoir, “Siren’s Feast, an Edible Odyssey”.

Natto is a traditional Japanese food. It’s fermented soybeans that are rich in vegetable protein. Typically eaten with rice, natto has a mild cheese-like flavor and can be an acquired taste. It has a sort of sticky paste on its surface and once it is stirred, the paste increases its volume becoming even stickier. You will find that the paste pulls apart in such a way that resembles a web. This is another characteristic that sometimes turns people off. Still, the benefits make it worth exploring, and according to The New York Times, it’s catching on. If you’re the adventurous type or enjoy uncommon textures in your food, definitely try Natto! You can even make it yourself (video) if you want.

As more and more of us focus on healthy lifestyles and locally sourced ingredients, the public outcry for non GMO foods gets louder. Of course, we’d all love to have a great garden planted with heirloom seeds, but that’s not always possible. Fortunately, the resources for shopping and avoiding GMO products are growing.

Moringa (Moringa oleifera) is the latest, hottest craze in superfoods. It’s been touted on Dr. Oz, written about by Dr. Andrew Weil, and The Huffington Post, and featured in several health newsletters. The leaves, fruits and bark of this tree can be taken as a powder or a tea, and often offer the best nutritional supplement available in the Southeast Asian and African countries where it is grown.

A perfect accompaniment to any dish, I call my greens “nutritional dynamite.” For this dish, I prefer black kale, red Russian kale or collard greens. Feel free to mix and match. 2 bunches greens, washed well, chopped and steamed until tender. (If you don’t already own a stainless steel steamer basket, please buy this essential kitchen item.)

Long used in Africa, and touted for its reputed medicinal properties, redbush tea has been the subject of increased research over the last few decades. As we read on www.livestrong.com: “Redbush tea is a beverage brewed from the dried leaves of the rooibos plant, a low-growing shrub native to South Africa and known scientifically as Aspalathus linearis. The herbal tea gets its name from the English translation of rooibos, which means “red bush” in Afrikaans.