Roasted Butternut Squash and 10(?) Bean Soup

Last night, as a side dish to our roast, I made butternut squash. I roasted it in the oven with sage, oil, salt, pepper, and then finished it with cheese. For some reason, I wasn’t feeling it last night. Something didn’t quite taste right. Maybe I didn’t salt enough or maybe I was just feeling stressed about the evening and decided to take it out on the poor, unsuspecting squash. Disappointed, I just put it aside, and decided to make soup out of it later.

After the dishes were done and kitchen cleaned, I sauteed onion and garlic, and then added the squash cubes and simmered everything in stock for an hour or so, smashing the orange flesh against the sides of the pot until they were broken up. I seasoned it to taste, simmered it a bit longer, then put it in the fridge to be dealt with today. Today, when I thought about what I was going to do with it, I decided that I wanted to add some protein and substance to it instead of pureeing it and calling it good. I plan to take it for lunch this week to work and I need something more substantial to get me through the day. I hunted through my cabinet, peeked through various mason jars I have on my counter filled with broken pieces of pasta, lentils of all colors, beans, and barley–eventually, I stumbled upon a jar of assorted legumes. It has two types of lentils in it, white beans, garbanzo beans, split peas–so many different types of dried legume.  Definitely too many to count. So I settled on 10(?).

The first thing I did with these legumes was soak them in water for awhile.  Then I added them to my mashed butternut squash mixture with more  stock.  Now it’s simmering on my stove until the beans are tender.

It’s not much to look at, but it’s the perfect soup to take to work this week!

 

 

Sunday Menu Planning Session

Morning

BY BILLY COLLINS

Why do we bother with the rest of the day,

the swale of the afternoon,

the sudden dip into evening,

then night with his notorious perfumes,

his many-pointed stars?

This is the best—

throwing off the light covers,

feet on the cold floor,

and buzzing around the house on espresso—

maybe a splash of water on the face,

a palmful of vitamins—

but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso,

dictionary and atlas open on the rug,

the typewriter waiting for the key of the head,

a cello on the radio,

and, if necessary, the windows—

trees fifty, a hundred years old

out there,

heavy clouds on the way

and the lawn steaming like a horse

in the early morning.

______________________________________________________________________

 

My husband and I are ending this Saturday in the same way we usually start them: in our bed, with coffee, in our underwear, with our laptops, books, and cat.  He’s (the husband, not the cat) reading From Max Weber:  Essays in Sociology. It’s homework, and he’s not enjoying it.  I’m reading Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain.  I’ve decided in the past few days that I want to be a food writer when I grow up.  I’m 24 now, and I’m not quite sure when “growing up” happens.  I have a full time, professional job.

Did I miss the boat?

Anyway, the husband and I are ending the day as we usually start it, which makes me quite disoriented.  Our normal routines have been thrown off as we’ve had a guest for a couple days.  But we love our Saturday morning rituals, so here we are, starting our weekend.

I asked the husband what he wanted to cook this weekend and he said he wants to make a Thai curry.  I’m tired and I have a stomachache right now, so I didn’t enthusiastically receive that request.  But I didn’t dismiss it outright.  I found an interesting recipe, Thai-style coconut butternut squash, which looks really good.  I’m not necessarily keen on making this tomorrow, but squash does sound good.

I roasted two acorn squash a couple nights ago with brown sugar and chili powder.  I really didn’t have a plan or a menu to incorporate them into–I just wanted to eat a bowl of squash.  So, I did.

Here’s another recipe, from that same website (Closet Cooking):  Roasted Butternut Squash with Carmelized Onions, Gorgonzola, and Crispy Fried Sage. That recipe is just asking to be made into lasagna.  Hmm.  Or soup.

(Tentative) Menu Plan:

1.  Thai Curry of Some Sort

2.  Squash Dish of Some Sort

Sorry for the lack of enthusiasm in this post.  I tried to keep my stomachache-mood from coming through. I don’t think this coffee I am drinking is helping much.

There isn’t enough hummus in your life

Hummus: The Rap

I never liked hummus until I made it myself.  Most brands of store-bought hummus are gritty, chemical-y, sour, or bitter.  But I bought it time and time again, slathered it on freshly toasted pita, hoping that one day, I would find a brand that didn’t taste terrible.

When we moved to Oregon, I noticed something strange.  At every potluck we have ever attended, there were multiple types of hummus brought to the party.  Multiple.  Some store-bought, some homemade.  Oregonians love their hummus.

With the intention of fitting into our new culinary culture and finding something easy, nourishing, and vegetarian to eat for dinner this summer, my husband and I ended up making and eating hummus homemade nearly every night of the week.

It became an obsession:  I began googling hummus recipes, always searching for the perfect recipe.  It was the ideal summer food: no cooking required, cool, creamy, easy.

I was so very diligent in my search. Some would say monomaniacal.  I never found the perfect recipe, but my husband created his own and it was our go-to recipe when we were too afraid to try the weird ones I had been unearthing.

His recipe included: 2 cans of beans (garbanzo, cannellini, red kidney, etc.), a rounded tsp. of sunflower seed butter, 1-2 cloves of garlic (crushed), salt and pepper to taste, the juice of one small lemon, and enough olive oil to lubricate the blending process.

We made so much hummus this summer that we broke our brand new blender.  We bought it in May and it was toast by August.

Here is a list of the strangest and most delicious recipes we came across:

red lentil hummus

 

cilantro lime hummus

 

yellow curry and butternut squash hummus

 

white bean and roasted eggplant hummus

 

beet hummus

Sunday Menu

Every weekend, my husband (when he’s not working) and I try to cook as many of the week’s meals as we can.  We usually make a casserole of some sort, a pasta dish, and a rice dish.

Sometimes we follow recipes; sometimes we don’t.

Tomorrow, we plan on making:

1. Stuffed bell peppers (stuffed with tomatillo rice)
2. Vegetarian shepherd’s pie (with zucchini, butternut squash, mushrooms, and whatever else I can find in my fridge)

I’m not really sure what else we’ll make.  Today, we went Thistledown Farms and bought a poblano pepper, four gargantuan bell peppers, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, (advertised as bodacious) corn, sweet onions and tomatillos (and of course, pumpkins.  It was a pumpkin patch after all).    I have some Laura Chenel’s goat cheese in the fridge that I bought last week at the MoC.  That might be good with fresh roasted tomato sauce and penne.

Tomorrow, I will attempt to write down recipes as we create so that I can share them.  Pictures would be nice to offer as well,  but I am downright terrible at photographing food.  I’m only good at taking mediocre facebook pictures.  Hopefully, my husband has an unknown talent we can exploit.