Or, I could just go with Mama Pea's (apparently my only blogger friend) appraisal that this doesn't seem like a lot of diet coke.
I wish there was a $1.00 'sin' tax on each bottle of it. That would get me to stop drinking it. I could try putting a $1.50 in a jar every day I go without, and then monthly spend the $ on whatever I want. Or save it up to buy something big. Like the West Wing DVD collection I want. That would be 200 days without diet coke. Hmmm...
New topic.
I made 2 delicious soups last week. We've been getting acorn squash in our CSA (community-supported agriculture) boxes, and I didn't know what to do with them. I've heard that butternut squash soup is good, so I googled 'acorn squash soup' and found Emeril Lagasse's recipe here. By the way, it's copyrighted by Martha Stewart Omnimedia, Inc. What does that mean, anyway? I'm a plagiarism-cop when it comes to my students' work, but how does this 'due credit' thing work on the Internet? I'm not passing this off as my own recipe. I'm giving the website and the copyright. Does the copyright prevent me from copying and pasting the recipe (which I wouldn't do anyway)? I hope I'm not doing anything wrong by sharing how I made his soup. I know not to use the picture. Unfortunately, I didn't take any of my soup, but you can be sure I'll make it again and tweak the recipe some more and post a picture.
If you want the recipe, go to the site and then come back here for the 'what they don't tell you' stuff. You'll notice I change amounts and omit items.
I washed each acorn squash (3) and cut in half. Cutting them was hard! I scooped out (with a spoon) the seeds and as much of the strings as I could
I sprayed a cake pan with Pam and placed the sqush cut side down. I added about a 1/2 cup water to the pan.
I roasted them in at preheated oven at 390 degrees for about 35 min. I let them cool about 30 min. The skin will kind of peel away from the flesh so when you go to scoop out the flesh, be careful not to take the skin with it. Scoop and set aside.
Pour some olive oil in a large saute/frying pan (I rarely measure olive oil...I would guess about an 1/8 of a cup or 2-3 tablespoons) and sautee a small to medium onion, chopped. The recipe calls for carrots, but I didn't have any. It also calls for a Granny Smith. I used a Melrose. I peeled, cored, and chopped it and added it to the onion after about 5 min. Sautee for about 8 min. NOTE: Did you know that olive oil has a lower break-down (or smoking point) temperature than other oils, like canola? Really high quality (the expensive stuff) olive oil usually has a higher break-down temperature, just so you know. I don't buy the expensive stuff. The issue here is that at high temperatures, the oil breaks down and that results in a nasty taste. So, saute with olive oil carefully. Generally, I don't go above medium on my electric stove top, just to be safe.
Add ginger and allspice, 1/4 tspn each. Stir til just mixed. Add the squash. Mix. Add a small box + 1 can 98% fat free chicken broth. Stir. Simmer 15 min. (You could totally make this vegan with vegetable broth!)
I don't have a handheld immersion blender, so I blended in a blender in batches. I chose the highest setting and blended (liquefied?) for about a minute. After blending, I poured in a sauce pan/small stock pot and brought to a boil then immediately turned on low. Leave on low for at least 10 min, but I left it on for 30 or so. Serve with a crusty whole grain baguette fresh from the oven. Yummers.
Creamiest soup you will ever eat. And healthy! No sugar, just a bit of fat and it's the healthy kind (olive oil).
Rhett bought a rotisserie chicken to go with our soup and bread. After dinner, I cleaned off the carcass and boiled it to make my own chicken stock. Yeah, I know. Sometimes, I just don't like a good chicken carcass to go to waste. Next post, I'll share the soup I made with that!
Sounds really good. I really like squash soup. My mom used to make acorn squash all the time when I was a kid. I love squash. She would cut them in half, scoop out the seeds but leave the flesh. Put them on a cookie sheet with the cut part up. Then, she would bake them in the oven. How long? Not sure. Probably at around 350 degrees. She would put a dollop of butter in the hole where she had scooped out the seeds. Also a dollop of brown sugar. That would all melt into the squash. She'd put a little more on before taking it out. She may have even turned out the broiler a bit to crisp up the brown sugar. Then, when she took it out, she'd cut the halves up into fourths and put them on our plate. We'd scoop up the meat and eat it. DELICIOUS!
ReplyDeleteI saw a lot of recipes like this online. Sounds heavenly, but I get way more sugar than any one person should eat, so I was going for healthy. I'm tempted to do it your way to ease Carmi into liking squash. She spit out the squash soup.
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