Thanksgiving Prep...

Perfect Timing!  My favorite green box ever!

Methods

Ingredients
Onions: cut!  Note to self: wear contacts instead of glasses next time!  You'd think I was crying my eyes out!  I like to do all onions at once so then I can distribute them into various dishes without repeating the onions step...Used to pans at once and then combined the results.

Peels have been put into the strainer, carefully washed, and plopped into the large pot for veggie stock (see below).




Squash: Peels went directly into the pot.  Rest of the squash has been cut

and prepped for roasting!

Part 2: Vegetable Stock...
Background: I haven't had much luck with vegetable stock from stores...  They're always too strongly flavored so I'm trying the vegetable scrap version of making homemade stock.  I keep hearing that restaurants tend to use scraps to make their stocks.  We are going to try the veggie scrap /environmentally sound thing...worst case scenario, I'll throw the whole thing way and have wasted some water.  The nice thing about organic vegetables is that having scrubbed them well, the skins really should be flavorful and good for stock...we'll see!  I'm kind of excited to try something new.

Methods: I'm trying a combination of these:
http://www.squidoo.com/vegetable-broth
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Vegetable-Stock-14411
http://kitchen-parade-veggieventure.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-to-cut-butternut-squash.html

olive oil, onion peel, sliced garlic (peels still on), butternut squash peels and gunk, kale stalks, thyme, black peppercorn, sea salt, some caramelized onions thus far...

Buttersquash soup

Adventures in saving soup!

I am in love with butternut squash soup.  Every time my coworker goes to ABP for lunch and returns back with a bowl of butternut squash or pumpkin soup, I find myself incapable of fighting against the power of the soup...and despite having brought lunch to save money, I end up finding my two little feet at the cash register of ABP paying for soup.

It is sad that I am usually too lazy to make soup myself.  Well, I finally took the effort to roast my butternut squash from my last two organic veggie batches and was proud of myself for being so motivated...I roasted the quash with a little olive oil, garlic, basalmic vinegar, and brown sugar... The squash itself was delicious, so I expected the soup to be as well.  I could not have been more wrong!  It was so sad!  As if I don't have more important things to think about, I have been driving myself nutty the last few days with trying to tinker with the soup until all items were in the perfect ratio...  On day 3, I have finally achieved success!

The final ingredients:

• 1 onion, caramelized with several cloves of garlic
• Chunked butternut squash, roasted with garlic, olive oil, basalmic vinegar, brown sugar, freshly ground peppercorn, and sea salt
• Reduced red wine
• Milk (I used soy)
• And the missing ingredients that finally made life oh so much better that I forgot about?
• Carrots!!!!!!!  Improved the texture dramatically
• Cumin
• Thyme
• Cinnamon
• 2T of butter

Finally...  perfection in a bowl!  Phew!

I was feeling uninspired last night when I received my biweekly case of produce... I mean, yes, it's cheap to make soup but how many times a month can one have kale and white bean together? 

This week's list: green bell peppers, broccoli, carrots, butter lettuce, onions, pea shouts, squash, kale, apples, bananas, oranges, plums...  But just in time, these recently came up!




First, check out the NY Times Vegetarian Thanksgiving Pictures
 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/08/health/20101108_thanksgiving.html


Second, check out the following: http://fiveandspice.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/cheesy-winter-squash-muffins/