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