Slaying My First Butternut Squash

          Yes, another food blog.  Is that three in a row?  Look at me getting all busy in the kitchen!  I set a goal for myself to try making one new food item each week while I'm at school.  Since I'm living on my own and I don't have any witnesses to my massive failures (haven't had any yet), I feel confident enough to search the internet and try making foods I've never even heard of before.  I like making sweets and main dishes.  Side dishes I concoct without recipes for the most part.

Cottage cheese, Super Orange Emergen-C packet, mandarin oranges. Yum!
Just keep mixing until it stops fizzing so much.

          This week I really want a main dish because the past two weeks I've been living off of leftovers and microwavable foods.  I finally went grocery shopping after I turned my lab report in Tuesday evening, and my body was very happy to have fresh fruits and vegetables again!  I bought two whole bunches of bananas so that I can let a few bananas brown for bread, eat a few fresh, and freeze the rest.  Frozen bananas are great for smoothies and shakes.  The Chunky Monkey Shake is one great use for bananas that also temporarily satisfies the chocoholic in me.

Mixed veggies and chipotle ranch dip with my cottage cheese concoction.

          As my lab report was printing I hopped onto Pinterest and checked my food board.  I looked around a bit dismissing recipes that called for lots of ingredients I don't have, or lots of complicated steps or equipment I don't have.  I really wanted soup because that's my favorite fall dish.  I finally found a recipe for a butternut squash soup.  My only experience with butternut squash was a dish my mom made over a year ago and I loved it.  I don't even remember what it was anymore, but the happy part of my brain lit up so I checked the recipe and decided this is something I can do.  My next step was researching how to pick a good butternut squash.  I took notes, wrote down the ingredients on my shopping list (my sister-in-law got me a magnetic to-do/grocery list pad that is really useful), grabbed my lab report and  headed out.

Got this idea from Pinterest, sadly no directions, just a pretty picture.
I had an old egg to use up and a fresh bell pepper to play with.

          I headed to Aldi as my first store since they usually have better prices on everything.  I got about half the items on my grocery list there, skipping a few that I am willing to pay more for a specific brand.  Then I headed across the street to that big box store we all love to hate.  You know what?  That big box store had butternut squash twice the size of mine for a third the price as Aldi!  I wanted to go back across the street and return my little squash in favor of one of these big, cheap ones, but I didn't.  Does anyone know of a website that you can type in a grocery item you need and it will tell you the cheapest place to get it within a certain radius?  That would be really useful.

          Today was a pretty easy-going day and I was hungry after class for something real and something not frozen.  By real I mean a meal that's actually prepared, not just a frozen item or a few odd items eaten separately and called a meal.  Yesterday after I got home I finished my egg that was past its date and since it tasted so good, something with egg in it sounded good for today.  So I grabbed an egg, my potato that is growing eyes or sprouts, dark orange bell pepper, that leftover mozzarella cheese from this weekend, butter, and spring mix salad.

          I melted the butter on a frying pan, added the bell pepper, baked the potato and added that in chunks then cracked my egg onto it all.  I remembered to add the pepper while it was all cooking but I threw the salt on afterwards.  I melted the cheese into everything until I had a lovely mass of egg and potato.  I scooped all of that into the bowl that had salad already waiting in it, then added a few more leaves on top with the hopes that this bag of salad will disappear into my stomach before it gets a chance to mold like last week's spinach.

          This was surprisingly yummy!  I called my mom while eating and inquired about how one cuts up a butternut squash.  See, I may be living on my own, but I still need my mama.  She has so much practical knowledge from years of working in the kitchen, raising kids, owning a home and yard that when I have a question about life, I know I can turn to her for the answer.  And even if she doesn't know the answer she can usually point me in the right direction or we can just chat for a while.

          After I said goodbye, I got to work stabbing that squash!  It felt like carving a pumpkin, but this time I was eating it instead of displaying it.  Butternut squash smells a lot like pumpkin, too!  So I cut it open, scooped out the guts, and got to work skinning it.  Two things to be grateful for: longish fingernails and my kitchen guardian angel.  It's amazing anyone lets me hold a knife!  Remember that confidence I mentioned earlier?  Let's be honest, I have false bravado and determination when it comes to cooking, and lots of luck. I don't have confidence or skill, yet.  I am clumsy with knives and incompetent with a lot of other equipment. If you want something blended, though, I'm your girl.

Butternut Squash Soup

          I chopped up the squash into non-uniform pieces.  How do people get uniform pieces from round foods?  Then I chopped up the leftover onion from egg drop soup that D and I made a few weekends ago.  I got that recipe from high school foods class.  It's much better than what most restaurants call egg drop soup. The onion got thrown into the baking pan with the squash and I started my oven at 450 F.  I added the salt, pepper, and oil and mixed everything together before spreading it out.  While that started roasting I prepared the chicken by cutting up two breasts and adding salt, pepper, and oil.  After 15 minutes of roasting I added the meat and let it roast about 25 minutes longer for a total of 40 minutes, then the squash was softened enough.

          The roasted meat and veggies (is squash a veggie?) got thrown into a large pot (whew, I wasn't sure I had one large enough) and the broth and spices got added.  Wow, coriander and cumin smell good.  My spice rack is really growing.  I started that simmering with my scary gas stove.  I grew up with electric so using gas just makes me nervous.  It's a really old appliance so it's hard to adjust the temperature.  I have a habit of accidentally turning it off when I'm just trying to turn it down.  With a stroke of genius I brought out the blender and blended several large chunks of squash and some bits of onion instead of just squishing the squash (haha, that's fun to say) against the side of the pan.  I probably should have blended more squash since the chunks aren't really tasty to me, but it worked at thickening the soup.  Simmer some more and eat!

          I am happy I made this recipe because it is much better than frozen food or leftovers and I just love soup.  So I have to call this a success!  As orange as it is it must be packed with vitamins, too.  The spices definitely make the soup taste complete.  There is something sweet about it and I think it might be the squash.  The squash has a texture like potato.  If I could find a faster way to cut up the squash without potentially losing body parts then this recipe would go on my "make again" list.  I give it a Grade: B based on first impressions.  It is nowhere near the "choking it down" flavor range but it might take a few bowls before I start dreaming about it.  As I continue eating it, though, it is growing on me more and more. So perhaps by the time I post this I'll be in love with this soup.  Hey, it could happen!  I'm excited to find more recipes that call for coriander or cumin.  I know my mom uses them because this soup is reminding me of her home cooking.  I mentioned she's a great decorator, did I also mention she is an amazing cook?  That's why I've never felt the need to really practice cooking.  Anything she makes would be better than anything I can make.

          The biggest downside to this soup is that it serves 6-8.  Convert that to Z sized serving and we're talking a dozen or more!  Well, the author says it freezes wonderfully so perhaps I'll split it between smaller containers and freeze them to pull out when I really want soup.  We'll see how much of it I can finish this weekend, first.

*** Edit 11-1-12
          I am now on my last bowl of this soup and I can definitely say I like it.  I blended up the rest of the onion and squash bits and added a little extra water to the individual bowls if I felt they were too dry.  I added more salt and pepper until it reached my liking.  Today I added leftover mozzarella cheese and that was the trick!  Cheese, to me, completes a meal, so I am now happy and will be sure to have shredded cheese on hand next time I make this.  There will be a next time.

          As you can tell, I love trying new foods.  If you have an idea of a recipe I should try please leave me the recipe or a link in the comments and there's a very good chance I'll give it a try.  The link for this recipe is the title, if you didn't notice.  I think I'll start doing that for recipes that aren't my own.  Have a fantastic Friday!