Vince, we have similar resolutions. I am an avid gardener, so summertime is major veggie time, but I need to do more in the dark and cold months, even if not from my own soil.
But I do have some suggestions, based on my own cookifying experience with vegetables:
1. Sweet potatoes and/or yams, peeled, cubed, and steamed, along with a similarly cubed apple (or pear or mango or papaya) and a bit of cinnamon. Steam for 15 minutes or so, enough to make everything soft, mash it up, and serve. It looks like baby food, and probably would make any infant happy, but it is really good, naturally sweet, and a great side dish. Plus being dead easy. We eat it a lot.
2. Try some less commonly-used things, like kohlrabi, daikon radish, bok choi, tomatillo, lotus root (the latter probably only available at Asian groceries). All of these are great in stir-fry dishes, and the lotus root, sliced and chopped into bite-sized pieces, is extraordinary. It has a light, nutty flavor, and remains wonderfully crisp when cooked.
Tomatillos also go very well on pizza, in casseroles, chopped fine in rice-pilafs, etc. And they are ridiculously cheap, even in the benighted far north where I dwell. Just peel off the husk, rinse in cold water to remove the standard stickiness, and treat them like a tomato, of which they are a close relative. But they are less sweet, with a natural saltiness that works in a lot of dishes.
3. Rutabagas. These orange relatives of the turnip are terrific in soups and roasts with beef or lamb. I crockpot such things when enough family are in town for a big meal, and rutabagas are a staple, along with potatoes, carrots and onion. Also the daikon radish, which I previously mentioned. These big white Asian radishes are now commonly available, and not expensive, yet few people seem to know how to use them. They are mild in flavor, not spicy like smaller salad radishes, and are great both sliced or cubed, raw, on a relish tray, or cooked, where they develop a wonderfully mild mellow flavor. Kohlrabi, cooked, is quite similar, and also is great as a raw snack on a relish tray.
4. Winter squashes. Aside from spaghetti squash, which is unique, quite good, but very different in cooking characteristics, most hard-shelled winter squashes I've used work about the same way. I like butternut squashes, because they have lots of edible flesh. Also the huge banana squashes, which you usually get as cut-up pieces at the grocery, because they are so damn big. But real easy to cook and make good. For a butternut, cut lengthwise in half, scoop out the seeds, put some butter, honey and cinnamon in the cavity, and bake at ~300 degrees for half an hour, contained in some bakeware to prevent fluid spillage. I haven't tried this, but you could probably cube these up much like the sweet potatoes mentioned earlier, and steam the stuff in the same manner. I think I'll give that a go sometime.
5: If you garden at all, try some leafy lettuces. There are bazillions of varieties of these things, almost never available at the major groceries, because they don't keep and travel well. But freshly-picked, they make magnificent salad stuff. Similarly mustard greens. If you've never eaten raw mustard leaves in salad or as a sandwich garnish, you've missed a real treat. Leafy greens generally don't do well in transit or storage, and need to be available fresh. Among the best also are mizuna, arugula, cilantro, chervil and dill, all very easy to grow. And, if you do garden, use radish leaves as well.
caw