my life 2007

MMMmmmMMMM!

Yesterday, a couple of friends came over to help rake leaves because (1) I went to the mountains with them Saturday and helped them harvest and cut almost a cord of wood and (2) the two leaf-producing trees in my yard shed approximately two metric tons of leaves per season. By day's end Saturday, I was so exhausted I almost had to be carried to my front door from the car, and by Sunday morning, my body was screaming that it didn't know what I'd been doing, but I should cut it out this red hot minute. So raking leaves seemed innocuous enough.

We worked out a system to make it move quickly, involving a scooper, a holder and a squisher. The scooper uses the rake to shovel leaves into bags, the holder holds a bag open, and the squisher (with her own bag) sits on or otherwise squishes her bag of leaves in the interim. I think we ended up with about sixteen bags of leaves from my tiny yard, and with breaks, the chore took about three hours.

We all enjoy cooking, and trying new recipes, so we thumbed through the new issue of Cooking Light for ideas, then made a supply run to the commissary.

The recipe's original name is Velvety Squash Soup. The recipe calls for 2 lbs of acorn squash and 3 lbs of butternut squash, but we couldn't find anything butternutty in the beautiful, incestuous squash rack at the commissary, so the recipe...transformed. As these things do.

What we cooked was delicious, healthy, and perfect for freezing/saving portions and eating all week. I record what we did here in the event I wish to repeat the experience, but also for those of you what are kitchen adventurers.

We had probably three pounds of white acorn squash and just buckets of pumpkin. From the start, we had more than the mere 5 lbs of squash the recipe called for, so being too tired and, in any event, too lazy to actually measure and calculate, we altered the other ingredient recommendations by feel as we went. (For those of you who don't cook like this, I really don't know how you do it. I can't even paint by numbers properly.)

Preheat the oven to bake at 425.

Halve the acorn squash then scoop out the seeds and lining. Complain about the difficulty of removing the stringy, gooey lining. Chop into the 12-lb pumpkin (much of which will evolve into pumpkin bread, methinks). Wrestle with its seeds and lining. Wish you had the acorn problems back. Wonder how you'll get the orange film off your fingers.

Chop two onions coarsely. Mix in a couple of tablespoons (or so) of cooking oil. The recipe calls for canola, but we had peanut. Whatever.

Use cooking spray on a couple of large casserole dishes. Spread the onion mixture on the bottom, then invert the squash selection on the casserole dishes. We had enough squash to fill both. I figure we had over the requisite 5 lbs the soup required. Bake for 45 minutes.

Take this opportunity to sit around, sip a glass of wine, sniff the air, and discuss how nice the yard looks, how tired you are, and how you think the soup will taste. Also, gossip.

Remove the squash and remove the pulp from the rinds. (Be careful to burn your fingers. It's all part of the experience and it makes the food tastier.)

Dump three cans of chicken broth into a Dutch oven. Add a cup of apple cider, about 8 teaspoons of molasses, a rounded teaspoon of curry seasoning, a teaspoon or so of salt, and about a 1/4th teaspoon ground red pepper. Dump the pulp and onions in the pot, bring to a boil, stirring occasionally, then simmer for a bit.

(Incidentally...when I was growing up, we would eat sugar cane syrup. Grandpa raised his own sugar cane and would give us cans of the syrup. It has a...robust flavor, to say the least. I realized just last night that this is what the rest of the world calls "molasses.")

Remove the mixture from the fire and ladle a few cups into a blender at a time. Puree, then pour into a large bowl. Do the whole thing this way. When finished, add a cup of half and half, stir it well, then simmer for another five minutes and serve.

I never thought I'd make a dish that combines molasses and curry powder and squash, but the end result is slightly sweet, slightly spicy, and completely delicious.

Try it!

d