Butternut-Acorn Squash and Sweet Potato Soup

Nothing says fall like rich, hearty, warm, luscious soups. It's raining (or snowing) outside and you are curled up cozy with a fire going, something yummy on the stove, chilling and reading a book under you're favorite blanker right?

Of course! I mean, that is the best part of soup! You can throw together a bunch of ingredients and sit back and relax for awhile.

I had a butternut squash chillin' in the fridge that I had intended to use to make a pasta creamy squashy dish that involves wild mushrooms. MMMM Mushrooms.

I digress.

There isn't enough there to make a whole pot of soup, but maybe I could combine some other stuff with it...Hmmmm there is an acorn squash that I bought...ummm....let me think...ummmm...well, it's still ok, and some sweet potatoes.

Those 3 sounds good together.

So we need:
1 butternut squash
1 acorn squash
2 sweet potatoes
4c chicken or veg broth
2c milk or half and half (i used fat free half and half)
1 onion cut into small pieces
3 cloves garlic, murdered thoroughly
a little smoked gouda to sprinkle on top
salt and pepper to taste

Let's get down to business. We must cook the squash an potatoes. Get out your handy dandy baking sheet. Slice the squash' in half and clean. If you garden, save a few of those seeds for the garden next year. Slice the sweet potatoes in half as well.

Brush with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Put in oven uncovered and bake about 30-45 mins at 350 or until squishy.

When squash is about done, saute onion and garlic (poor murdered garlic) in a tablespoon of butter, salt and pepper until onion is thoroughly cooked through. Add chicken stock and let simmer while squash finishes.

Take squash out of oven and let cool a little, enough you can handle it. Mind you, I don't wait. I just dig right in and say ouch a lot. I'm impatient.

Scoop out flesh from all veggies and discard skins, add flesh into pot.

*Giggle* Flesh..

It's like flesh... you know...

Oh nevermind...

Add the milk and heat.

So now you have options. There are a few ways of handling this.
Option 1: If you have an immersion blender (the stick) the blend away. Make it all kinds of creamy and yummy by liquifying the veggies.
Option 2: If you have a regular blender and do not like chunky butternut squash soup, then scoop the flesh into the blender and get it al creamy then add it to the onions and broth, then add the milk.
Option 3: (what i did because I am immersion blender-less and my regular blender I got mad at for being stupid and put in the giveaway box) Use a whisk to break up the squash/potato in the soup pot. You get a well textured soup, but not creamy.

Heat thoroughly and serve. I topped mine with some shredded smoked gouda and a sprinkle of parsley. The parsley was mainly to make it look all pretty for the pictures...but it didn't taste half bad either :-)

Pair with some french bread or a spinach salad. (make salad while squash is cooking and chill) MMMMM.

This, by the way, can easily be adapted to a crock pot (peel and chunk the veggies and dump into crock with liquids) or can cook for a length of time on low heat. You know, so you can finish that book.



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Butternut-Acorn Squash and Sweet Potato Soup______________________

1 butternut squash
1 acorn squash
2 medium sweet potatoes
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
4c broth (chicken or veggie)
2c milk (or half and half)
salt and pepper
1/4c shredded smoked gouda

Cut squash in half and potatoes. Brush or spray with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast in oven uncovered at 350 for 30-45 mins. Saute onion in stock pot with garlic. Add broth. When squash and potatoes are soft, scoop out flesh and follow one of 3 options.


Option 1: If you have an immersion blender (the stick) the blend away. Make it all kinds of creamy and yummy by liquifying the veggies.
Option 2: If you have a regular blender and do not like chunky butternut squash soup, then scoop the flesh into the blender and get it al creamy then add it to the onions and broth, then add the milk.
Option 3: Use a whisk to break up the squash/potato in the soup pot. You get a well textured soup, but not creamy.


Add milk and heat.
Serve with shredded cheese on top.

Makes about 8 servings

Pumpkin Cranberry Orange Pancakes with Caramelized Pecans, Cheesy Eggs and Bacon

Yes another pumpkin thing. You'll live. It's fall. I like pumpkin. So there.

I had some leftover pumpkin and cranberry sauce from the pumpkin cinnamon rolls and cranberry pancakes made about a week ago and they needed to get used.

I decided that pancakes would be a good idea. I was tired of my fried egg on toast that is the usual morning breakfast. Along with coffee. Must have coffee.

And its Saturday, which means for some odd reason I need to make a real breakfast. Something from the kids about since I'm home and they are home and we have no place to go, I should make a real breakfast...vs cereal or toast. Whatever.



What you will need:

• Pumpkin
• Cranberry sauce
• Flour
• Eggs
• Baking powder
• Baking soda
• Sugar
• Vanilla
• Orange extract or frozen orange concentrate (if you use concentrate, eliminate the sugar)
• Vinegar
• Salt
• Pumpkin Pie spice
• Eggs (1-2 per person), salt and pepper, milk (1tbs per egg more or less)
• Bacon

So this is super simple. These are fat fluffy pancakes so therefore are filling. 

Get your bacon started now, get eggs mixed up with a pinch of salt and pepper and little milk. Use paper towels (or we have a cloth towel dedicated for draining grease to be more environ friendly) to sop up grease as bacon gets done. You can also cook the bacon in the over on a baking sheet with edges. This makes them all done at once.

In a medium mixing bowl, mix together with a fork, flour, soda, powder, sugar, spice and salt. Add vanilla and orange extracts, 2 eggs, 1c pumpkin, 1/4c cranberry sauce, 2tbs vinegar (to make baking soda all fizzy and happy. This is why they are sooooo fluffy!) Mix together with dry ingredients.

Warm up 2 skillets, one large for your pancakes, unless you have one of those electric griddle thingy's, then use it. The other skillet is smaller, for pecans. MMMMM pecans. If you made bacon, you can use some of the grease to coat your pan for pancakes and for eggs. Just makes for added yumminess.

In the smaller skillet melt 1Tbs butter, 1/4c crumbled/chopped/not whole pecans. When butter is melty, coat pecans and add 1Tbs of brown sugar. 

Coat your big skillet/griddle with butter (hold a stick by the wrapper and with open end, rub all over pan. Hands stay clean, no excess of butter.)

Cook until edges look dryish. Sorry, no bubbles on these. Flip and cook on other side for a few seconds.

Keep pancakes warm in oven at 250 on an oven safe dish. 

Turn off the pecans, and let them cool.

Finish off bacon/sausage (if you didn't use oven method) and use same pan for eggs (minus a lot of the grease). To get rid of the grease, I keep a tin can or jar with lid next to stove. Sometimes I am lazy and run it down the garbage disposal (gasp) with hot water. You can keep bacon warm with pancakes in oven, as the get cold fast.

When pancakes are ready sprinkle with pecans and drizzle with syrup. Make the kids set the table and enjoy!

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Pumpkin Cranberry Orange Pancakes____________________________________

1c flour

2t baking soda

1T baking powder

2t pumpkin pie spice

1t salt

2T vinegar

1t vanilla

1t orange extract or 2tsp orange juice concentrate

2 eggs

1c pumpkin

1/4c cranberry sauce (canned)

Pecans:

1/2c pecans

1T brown sugar

1T butter

Mix dry ingredients together. Add wet ingredients and mix gently with a fork. Heat pan of griddle to medium-high heat. Drop pancake batter by 1/4 cupfuls onto greased pan. Cook until edges start to look dry and pancake puffs. Flip and cook for a 1-2 minutes on opposite side.

Pecans: Heat butter in small skillet over medium heat until melted. Add chopped pecans and brown sugar. Heat until glazed evenly. 

BBQ Pork Tenderloin with potato salad and baked beans

Lately there has been a great influx of pigs jumping of cliffs, running in front of cars, and hanging themselves or other means of suicide. Due to this terrible tragedy, prices on large cuts of pork tenderloin have dramatically dropped at the grocery stores. I mean really dropped....1.50 a pound kind of dropped.

So, to do my duty as a good, sympathetic citizen, to aid the ranchers in their time of mourning over the loss of pigs to suicide, I have been regularly purchasing said cuts of meat.

What the hell do you do with a 15 pound pork tenderloin?

So there I sit (or really, stand, because sitting in front of the freezer on a stool the tall is just silly), staring at this long, tube-like thing in my freezer, wandering a) Do I have a pan big enough for this thing b) how do I season it and cook it and c) do I have a platter big enough to hold it when its done.

Well...hmmm...its still nice outside...the grill is huge so could do that...I could season it like I do ribs and such, and make potato salad (which, btw the way the roommates were beside themselves excited about...), baked beans and devilled eggs and we could have ourselves a big ol' barbecue. Hell, I may even invite my friend from across the street, because goodness knows, there is enough for half the neighborhood...(and between my house hold and hers, we do, have, literally, half the neighborhood)

Now for the pan...how am I to lay this thing out and actually get it seasoned...?

Oh yes! That's right. Granny bought me that set of baking sheets and one was ginormous...you know, the size you use when you don't want to make 47 trips to the oven to bake cookies so you use the largest pan available and squeeze the cookies as close as you dare to try to get the entire batch on one pan.

Don't act like you don't know what I mean. I know better.

So... what do we need?

Seasoning:
Brown sugar
Salt
Garlic powder
Cumin
Oregano
Coriander
Thyme
a little olive oil

Glaze: 

Bbq sauce -  ok we have to get into this discussion. Bbq sauce is like...wine. Some good, some great, some amazing, many different flavors, and some is well...just don't buy it. Like Kraft... Get a good bbq sauce. If you need to do cheap, do cheap well like KC masterpiece, or Sweet Baby Ray's. Locally made tends to be the best. My personal fave is Cookies. 

Yes those cookies too, but Cookies is one of the few that has NO corn syrup, just good old-fashioned ingredients, and boy can you taste it. Jack Stack is another fave, but its a midwest local only. Teag's is good as well as Jack Daniels. No matter what you choose, please, for the respect of the pigs who committed suicide, do not use 98 cent or less bottles of bbq sauce. That's just, well, not yummy. 

liquid smoke
garlic

Potato Salad:- The link here will give you the portions and recipe. 

Potatoes

Sweet pickles (I use 14-day pickles mom makes and sends to me)
Hard boiled eggs (funny, we are going to make those too)
Onion
Mayo ( I use either half real, half miracle whip, or use miracle whip's olive oil mayo which tastes about like half and half)
Apple cider vinegar
Sugar
Dill
Garlic

I have a weird thing for crunchies in my potato salad, therefore, no celery or peppers. Add them if you are not odd like me. It's all the better.

Beans:

I am lazy most days, and buy Bush's Beans, Homestyle 'cause they are sweet and need little doctoring.

I do have a recipe for the real deal, but in the essence of time, canned is ok here. 

To Doctor pork n beans or other canned beans...(trust me on this, no canned bean is perfect out of the can, and if you think so up to now, just try it my way and then make judgement!)

Brown Sugar
Ketchup
BBQ sauce
Onion
Sweet Peppers
Garlic
Chili Powder
Bbq sauce

Deviled Eggs:

Eggs
Mayo
Mustard
Salt
Pepper
Apple cider vinegar
Sugar

Whew! Lots of stuff, but most should have these things on hand. Let me know if I should do a mini post on what spices to keep in your cabinet or basics to keep on hand. I try to aim this blog to the not so proficient in the kitchen all the way up to the usual home cook. I am sure restauranteurs or pro's look to, but doubtful. They have their own vibe.

Let's start

Mix the dry rub ingredients together (see below for measurements)

Place loin on giant pan and drain off the liquid. Trim off any overly excess fat. You want some for tenderness.

Rub the loin down with olive oil.

With your fingers, take take a handful of the spice rub and rub it into the meat, pushing down gently. Rub it all over front, back, sides and ends. Cover and toss in the frig for a couple of hours to get happy.

Cut and boil your potatoes. Boil your eggs, peel, and devil them. They are better when they have set and mellowed for about 30 minutes or so. While everything is boiling cut the necessary amounts of onion, pickles etc into your bowl for the taters and for the beans too, in another bowl.

Eggs: Let cool so you can handle them. Room temp is good. Cool by dousing in ice water (which also makes for an easy peel, and stops the cooking which causes the yolks to turn that funny color on the outside). Cut in half and gently squeeze out yolks into a bowl. Squish them to crumbles with the back of a fork or a pastry blender. Add, for every dozen eggs, 2 Tbs mayo, 2 teas mustard, a pinch of salt and pepper, and a teaspoon each of vinegar and sugar. Mix together and taste. You want it to have a zip but slightly sweet and slightly savory.

Dump taters into bowl and throw in frig to get cool.

Go...do laundry. Or whatever.

In a couple of hours, start the grill. Get it all happy.

Happy=gray and ashy but red coals. For non coal users, shame, shame, shame. Not the same. But nevertheless, use your temp gauge thingy on the grill. Wait till its about 450.

Drag out your loin and olive oil. 

Spray, brush or otherwise lube up the grill. Caution: spraying with mister will cause flammage, and where it is pretty and cool to look at, just be careful k?

Lay loin on the cooler part of the grill, not directly over the coals. We will do that later. Right now we want to cook it, not burn it. Close the grill lid.

Go back inside and mix up the bbq sauce with some liquid smoke and garlic. If you are using the cheap stuff like we discussed not to, add a couple tablespoons of brown sugar, a pinch of cumin and coriander too.

After about mmmm...8-10 mins, go flip your loin and glaze the cooked side with bbq sauce.

Go assemble the rest of the potato salad. Get the beans to heating. Saute the onions, garlic (yes real garlic) and peppers in a little olive oil. When onions are translucent, add the mix to the beans then (for large cans or 2 cans of pork n beans) add 2 Tbs brown sugar, 1/4 c bbq sauce, 2 Tbs ketchup, 2 teaspoons of chili powder. For the ketchup, I just give the bottle a hefty squirt. Trying to get it out of a measuring spoon is...fun.

Go flip the loin again and coat the other side. (about 8-10 mins)

At this point the loin should be cooked through. Sear it directly over the coals on both sides for a minute then take off grill and let it set for 5 or 6 mins to let the juice inside stay inside. If you cut it straight off the heat, all those yummy juices will come spilling out and we want yummy juices.

Mix the sauce up for the tater salad. Its always best fresh. Pour over and mix gently! Potatoes break easy and we don't want squished potato salad. That is another recipe :-)

Slice the tenderloin into thick slices. 

Take your hard work to the table and enjoy!

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Recipes

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Pork Tenderloin:
10-15lb Pork Tenderloin
Olive oil

Seasoning - 2 T brown sugar
1t each garlic, cumin, coriander, thyme, pepper and oregano
1 T salt

Glaze - 1 bottle of barbecue sauce
1/2 t liquid smoke
1 t garlic

Mix seasoning ingredients together. Drain liquid from pork loin and trim of excess fat leaving a thin layer. Place on large pan and rub with olive oil. Massage spice mix into loin flesh by gently pushing and rubbing. Cover all sides. Wrap and set aside for a minimum of 2 hours.

Heat grill to 450 or until coals are gray and ashy. Brush olive oil on grill and place loin over indirect heat. Cook 8-10 mins on each side, depending on size of loin.

Mix Barbecue sauce with garlic and liquid smoke. Glaze loin after each turn.
When cooked through, place over direct heat to sear for 1 minute. Remove from grill and let rest for 5-6 mins. Slice.


Potato Salad - click link above.

Deviled Eggs:
12 eggs
2 T Mayo
2 t mustard
1 t apple cider vinegar
1 t sugar
pinch of salt and pepper

After eggs have cooled, halve and squeeze out yolk. With the back of a fork or a pastry blender, crumble the egg yolks. Add rest of ingredients and mix. Stuff eggs. Garnish with paprika, chives, dill or parsley. 

Honeyed Apricot-Peach Cream Cheese Tart

Yesterday I kept toying with the idea of whether I was really in the mood to make something or not. I have these lovely apricots and peaches and pears I bought last week at the produce market that are in need of being used before they go bad.

Gorgeous right?

So, this morning, I made a tart for breakfast. With scrambled eggs and sausage of course, because, well, it's Saturday which means I have to make a decent breakfast before running off to work. Any other day of the week would be an egg on toast. Weekends, working or no, I feel the need to make breakfast.

Maybe I should have waited until Sunday. I'm off Sunday. Oh well.

Assemble thine ingredients:

Fruit (I ended up using 3 apricots and 2 peaches very thinly sliced)

flour

sugar

1 stick butter

1 block cream cheese

honey

ginger

coffee. It's saturday morning. Coffee is a necessity.

Get out your handy dandy food processor. Attach normal blade that can take off your fingers and the flat top with the hole in it. Grab the cap too, because we are playing with flour and well, the whole kitchen does not need to be dusted...unless of course you want the family to think you slaved all morning, then by all means, dust away.

 Throw in butter(cold) and 1 1/4 c flour and 1/3c sugar. Keep the butter wrapper. 

Why?

Why, why, why. SO many questions!

Prepare for history lesson... commencing in 3-2-1...In the depression era, there was little money and little food. You had to *gasp* make use of every tiny part of the things you had because there was no room for waste. Think pinching pennies to the max. Using things like the part of veggies you trimmed off for broth, water for boiling used for bread or other meals, and butter wrappers are excellent for lubing up pans and dishes before baking in them. 

Keep you butter wrappers in a plastic baggy and use them, instead of a cooking spray to lube up your bakeware. Not only are you saving money, but the environment (less waste).

..End of lecture for today...

Turn on food processor and make lots of noise until it is blended and crumbly looking and the butter stops clunking around. No clunking is usually a good sign.

 Turn off noisy machine. Add water through the top hole 1 Tbs at a time, pulsing between each. Wow. That sounded dirty.

Keep adding water until it just barely comes together to form a dough.

Drag out a small baking sheet or jelly roll pan. Lube up with butter wrapper. NOW you can recycle it. It is paper after all.

Turn dough out onto pan and scrape together and fold once or twice, just enough to make it into a solid dough. 

You are supposed to chill the dough for an hour before using it. I spread it out onto the bottom of the pan and threw it in the freezer for 10 minutes while oven was heating.

If you have some extra butter (or wrapper), baste over top of dough. Toss in oven for 5-10 mins just enough to get the dough to harden a little. The butter will make it a pretty pale goldenish color.

While dough is in oven, thinly slice your fruit. And I mean thinly, or it will take too long to cook and you'll have burnt dough and raw fruit. No good.

Nuke your cream cheese in a microwave safe bowl for about 30 seconds. Enough to make it squishy enough to work with. Add 1 Tbs honey and 1/8t (pinch) of ginger. Mix.

Pull dough out of oven and dump on cream cheese mix. Spread evenly over crust with back of spoon. Layer on your fruit slices in whatever arrangement is aesthetically pleasing to you. 

I did rows... because I did. 

Toss back in over on TOP rack for 15-20 mins or until fruit is starting to shrivel a little. Using your fancy basting brush, baste honey (heated works best) over top about 10 mins into cooking.

While in the oven, scramble your eggs and fry up your sausage. And have more coffee. We need coffee.

And you are done. This one takes about an hour start to finish, so if you are working, make sure you start it more than an hour before work so you actually get some. 

Damned computer. Always get sidetracked...

Boneless Fried Chicken, Corn Casserole, and Mashed Potatoes

Today was a comfort food day. I'd been hungry for good, deep fried, rib-stickin' yumminess for a couple of days and finally after much pestering from the 12-year-old, I gave.

It was all his fault. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Let's start with the corn casserole. It will take the longest to make. Yes I know, it is tempting to jump into the chicken part because... mmmm... who can resist fried chicken? (Other than veggie people?)
But we must do this in order to make it come out on time and hot, right?

Stop grumbling at me and just listen. Yes you could snack on the chicken while you make the rest but then not only will you jot have enough to feed the masses but it'll be all soggy and cold by the time you're done.

Ok. See. I told you.

Onward to corn casserole. You will need a stick of butter, a can of corn, a can of creamed corn, a box of cornbread mix, a tub of sour cream, and 2 eggs.

Melt the butter and dump into and 8x8 or 9x13 pan.

Mix corn bread mix with creamed corn, corn, 1/2 tub (8oz) sour cream, eggs and mix. Pour into pan.

Throw into oven at 350 for about an hour. 

Now would be a good time to chop your taters for mashed potatoes. I generally use 2 potatoes per person as we are mashed tater-aholics. Boil them in water infused with chicken bouillon, 1 tbs butter and a couple of garlic cloves.

Now you can start on the chicken.

Start your oil heating up. Or Crisco. Crisco is even better. If you have some bacon grease, mmmmmm.

Ok. So I have this weird thing about chicken. I can't deal with veins, dark meat, tiny bones and tendons. I grosses me out. I buy boneless breasts in giant bags at Costco. They are clean and require nothing but a tiny bit of trimming and de-thawing.

This recipe requires boneless chicken breasts, about 4 large ones, into 1-2" sized pieces.

You will also need two additional containers. One with 2 eggs slightly beaten, and one with 1c flour, 1/4 c bread crumbs, 1/4 c cornmeal, pinch of salt and pepper, dash of garlic, dash of chili powder.

Dredge the chicken first in the egg.

Then through the flour mix.

The into the pan with HOT liquid cooking lubricant.

Cook each 4-5 mins per side. Wait until the oil reheats between batches, you want it hot to get crispy chicken. Set the finished pieces onto a plate lined in paper towels or a cloth towel you don't mind being dedicated for this particular task. 

Drain the potatoes as soon as they are done, or keep the liquid and freeze for things like soup or bread. 

Squish them with some milk and butter and a pinch of salt. 

Check on corn casserole. Throw in next batch of chicken.

You chicken should be done about the same time as the casserole. Take it out and let it sit for a few minutes. 

Dinner is done. Proceed to serve to the masses.

Fried Chicken

1c flour

1/4 corn meal

1/4c bread crumbs

1Tbs garlic

pinch of salt and pepper

4 large chicken breasts

2 eggs

1 bar of crisco or vegetable oil for frying.

Heat oil or crisco in heavy skillet. Mix dry ingredients. Cut up chicken into 1-2" pieces and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Beat egg slightly. Dredge chicken in egg then coat in flour mix. Fry 4-5 mins on each side until cooked thoroughly and brown. Drain. While warm, sprinkle again with a little salt or seasoned salt. 

Corn Casserole

1 box corn muffin mix

1 can creamed corn

1can kernel corn

1 stick butter

8 oz sour cream

2 eggs

Melt butter in bottom of 8x8 or 9x13 pan. Mix rest of ingredients together and spread evenly in pan. Bake at 350 for 1 hr for 8x8, 35-40 mins 9x13.

Mashed Potatoes

2 potatoes per adult. 1 per child, cut into chunks

3 Tbs butter

3 teaspoons chicken better than bouillon or 2 cubes of bouillon

4-5 cloves of garlic

1c milk

Boil potatoes in water with bouillon, 1 tbs butter and garlic. Drain. Heat butter and milk. Mash potatoes. Add milk and butter and mash some more.