Thursday, November 11, 2010

Creamy Roasted Butternut Squash Veggie Soup With Garlic, Cilantro, and Basil

First of all, thank you for your kind comments on my last post. I’m doing better, and I reminded myself that what matters most is not what happens to us but how we react to it. A positive attitude truly goes a long way, and reading the Attitude Poem always helps me. And soup is also helpful…

I made several pots of butternut squash soup earlier this year. So when I bought a butternut squash, I looked on my recipes page to refresh my memory of how I made it.



I never really follow a recipe, but it’s nice to have something to go by. Unfortunately, the butternut squash recipe is not on there. And a search of my blog also didn’t turn up any results. So I guess, I never posted about it… I’ll try to be more consistent when it comes to posting recipes that I haven’t posted about yet as it’s really convenient to be able to look them up.

Since I didn’t have a recipe to guide me, I decided to roast the squash first and then sauté it with some veggies I had. Because I didn’t have any fresh herbs (which I prefer), I used some frozen garlic, basil, and cilantro cubes (which are really convenient and are a great way to add flavor when you don’t have fresh herbs). To roast the squash, I followed the instructions on the sticker, but I increased the roasting time by about 10 minutes.



Roasted Butternut Squash Veggie Soup 




Ingredients
  • 1 butternut squash
  • Olive oil
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 6 stalks of celery, chopped
  • 3 large carrots, chopped
  • 6 cups vegetable stock
  • Basil (I used two frozen cubes)
  • Garlic (I used three frozen cubes)
  • Cilantro (I used two frozen cubes)
  • Salt
  • Pepper


What To Do
  1. Cut squash in half , take out the seeds, and put it into a baking dish with 1/4 inch of water.
  2. Roast the squash at 375 degrees for about 50 minutes.
  3. Scoop the squash out of its skin and set it aside.
  4. Sautee the onions, celery, and carrots in some olive oil and then add the roasted squash. Sautee for a few minutes.
  5. Add the vegetable stock and the herbs to the pot and cook the soup for about 30 minutes.
  6. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
  7. Puree the soup with an immersion blender.


The soup was very flavorful, and we all enjoyed it.

The toddler and I had the day off today. We started it by going to Trader Joe’s to do some shopping. The toddler spotted some gingerbread men cookies. I doubted he would eat them, but I bought them anyway. They were just too cute to pass up, and I thought we could always use them as decoration… It turns out that he loves them! I got a tiny piece of the leg; the cookie is crispy and quite gingery. He ate the cookie on our morning hike. He only walked half the way and enjoyed his gingerbread man while I was pushing him in his stroller the other half of the hike (which I really enjoyed as I know that I can count the days that he’ll agree to ride in a stroller…).





Questions: How do you keep track of your recipes? Does your system work for you? I try to update my recipe page frequently. I also try to post about recipes (but I obviously don’t always do it). I also have a word document on my computer called “recipes” which is color coded (appetizers, soups, etc.). The document mainly contains recipes I find on other blogs and is getting really, really long. I think it’s time to break it up into different files… Finally, I have a really old box with index cards (that’s how I collected recipes when I first started cooking about 20 years ago. It’s a mess, but going through the recipes brings back so many memories…). Finally, I often just make up a “recipe” as I cook. It’s fun, but I begin to realize that I should write down more… Do you like gingerbread cookies? When was the last time you had one?

Be well,
Andrea