thai red curry squash and coconut milk soup (and toasted seeds)

So I read this blog, SouleMama, which is written by a woman in Maine. She tends to make pretty and delicious things. I don't manage the pretty things much, but I do aspire to the delicious.

The other day, in her post about fall's harvest, she recommended a recipe from 101 cookbooks. It was perfect. I had an acorn squash, a sugar pumpkin, and two butternuts at home aching to be eaten. it's been too warm for them to store well, and I knew I needed to cook them before they started to rot.

I split them all in half, scooped the seeds out into a separate bowl (so I could make Simply Recipes toasted pumpkin seeds - recipe acquired via 101 cookbooks' toasted pumpkin seeds) and then lay them all out on a cookie sheet with the cut side up. I sprayed them with a little canola spray, and then rubbed them with butter and ground salt over them, letting most of each pat sit in the holes formed by the scooped out seeds. I put it in the oven at 375 for an hour.

When they came out, the squashes smelled and tasted delicious. I almost gave up on making soup to just eat them right there. but then I decided that was too much squash for little old me and I settled into just a few bites and scooped the rest out laboriously into a big soup pot. (this was probably the hardest part - the squash skins were so tender they just sort of fell apart - and there was butter everywhere).

then I turned the heat to medium high and added two cans of coconut milk (first press - not light.) once it was getting simmery, I turned off the heat and hit it with the immersion blender till it was very smooth. Then I added a little more than a teaspoon of red thai curry paste and some smoked paprika, and blended some more.

Then I went out dancing.

the next day the soup was still sitting on the stove with the lid on. Iw as going to have some friends over, so I heated it back up, added some water (I have no idea how much - just until the thickness seemed good) and some salt, and... voila! serve with bread. delicious reheated.


while I was out dancing I also put the bowl of squash seeds in the fridge covered with a towel. The next day I rinsed them in a colander as best as I could, picking out the squash-meat chunks, and then I put them in a saucepan of boiling water with some salt. I simmered them for 10 minutes. I drained them in the colander, and then tossed them with about 3 tablespoons of melted butter in a bowl.

I spread the seeds out on a cookie sheet and put them in a preheated 400 degree oven for about 12 minutes. I took them out, sprinkled them with smoked paprika, and put them in a bowl. they were the best snack ever. soo good. and they were nice and tender so they didn't need shelling. and it wasn't just the pumpkin, but also the other squashes, and all the seeds were good.

(p.s., while I was making these foods, I may have dropped gina marie's camera on the floor and broken it... I will try to salvage some pictures when I can...)

butternut squash & sweet potato soup (vegan)

I have had a bowl full of butternut squashes on the counter for awhile now - ever since mi- december when the last farm share drop-off happened. They were starting to get moldy and rotten in some places, and I decided it was time to take action.

I took them all out of the bowl, tossed the rotten ones, and cut off the bad piece of the only partly gone ones. Then I seeded them and peeled what was left with our new peeler (hallelujah!!) and cubed it up. I ended up with probably about 3-4 cups of cubed butternut squash. I also have a lot of sweet potatoes left - although those are doing much better. I got out 4 of those, peeled them, and cubed them up too. Then I diced an onion (actually half an onion and two big farm share shallots) and about 4 cloves of farm-share garlic. I tossed all of that (squash, potatoes, onions, garlic) into a big soup pot.

Then I got out a box of Imagine No-Chicken broth and dumped that in there.

It didn't quite cover, so I filled the Imagine box with water, shook it up and poured in water until it covered everything in the pot. I turned on the burner, gave it a quick stir, and covered it.
Thinking better of it, I uncovered the pot about 5 minutes in and let it simmer on medium heat for about 40 minutes - stirring every once in awhile, but mostly watching TV.

When the veggies were nice and soft (poking with a fork yielded no resistance) I took out my hand blender and blended the soup nice and smooth. I added a little salt and some pepper during this process as well.

Overall, the soup came out pretty well. It tasted a little too "chicken-y" for my taste. I think next time I might add more water and less broth, maybe put some celery in with the veggies, and stir in some soy yogurt at the end to give it some creamy depth. I also wonder if I'd sauteed the onions and garlic in some oil first, if that would have made a difference.

On the plus side, this soup had a much more liquid feel to it than a lot of the blended soups I've made. I think it's because it has no beans - but it's a nice change! I'll post pictures of the finished product next time I heat some up!