Butternut Squash Soup

I know I’m jumping the gun on Recipe Thursday, but I have something special planned for that post, and in the meantime wanted to share a yummy soup recipe that Carl and I tried tonight. Julie (my almost mother-in-law) gave us a butternut squash over the weekend. I haven’t experimented too much with members of the fall squash family, so I saw this as an opportunity to expand upon my culinary skills. I borrowed this recipe from Giada:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/butternut-squash-soup-with-fontina-cheese-crostini-recipe2/index.html

With a few tweaks here and there, it made a deliciously creamy fall soup. First off, I didn’t make the Fontina Cheese Crostini, mostly in an effort to save a little money. We opted for croutons, which I thought complemented the soup very nicely. I replaced the chicken stock with vegetable stock, and used dried sage instead of fresh. Once I realized that our squash was not 3 pounds I decided to cut the recipe in half. That’s where all the fun started. I can pretty much guarantee that if I’m doubling or halving a recipe, I’ll forget to do so with at least one of the ingredients. Carl and I were so busy conducting an elaborate Google search to figure out how much dried sage we should substitute for fresh that we neglected to cut the amount in half. Sage-tastic! I added about a cup more of the vegetable stock to try to compensate, which I think made the soup a little less creamy than it should have been, once blended. This actually turned out to be a good thing, because it would have been way too heavy otherwise. Here it is, topped with garlic and onion croutons, shredded pecorino cheese, and freshly ground pepper.

Carl made the comment that he thought it was better without the cheese- we both gasped in horror as the words escaped his mouth, but he was right! So next time it looks like we’ll skip the cheese.

Here’s my smoothie from today:

1 peach

1 banana

a few pineapple chunks

1 stalk of celery

3 big handfuls of kale

a small handful of sprouts

1 teaspoon each of flaxseeds and hempseeds

ice water

I’m trying to soak up every last drop of peach season, but I think my peach smoothie days are numbered at this point. Speaking of numbered days… 46 more days till the wedding!!