I made this amazing butternut squash soup yesterday. You may remember last week I had some of this at Bruegger's and while I was grocery shopping yesterday I saw they had some butternut squash so I figured I would give it a go. I bought the ingredients I figured I would need and when I got home I did my best to copy what I had had at Bruegger's. I have to tell you it was better. Oh my gosh, but it was good. I'm going to work on the recipe to get this right so I can write it down and make it again, but here is roughly what it was:
1 butternut squash, cubed and then roasted with a little olive oil, salt and pepper
2 medium apples, cored and peeled, diced (I actually didn't peel them but that was a mistake, even with a fine puree there were chunks of skin.)
1 medium onion, diced
little olive oil, tablespoon butter
2 cans vegetable broth
fresh tarragon (ok I used dried), just a few generous pinches
freshly grated nutmeg (yes I do have actual whole nutmeg, keeps forever), a couple of pinches when making then a tiny pinch when serving
salt, white pepper
half and half
In your 5 quart Le Creuset Round French Oven (what? You don't have one? Buy one!) add the olive oil and butter and sweat the onions, add the apple and season with a little salt and white pepper. Once the squash is roasted fairly soft add it to the pot and add the taragon, stir around a little bit to mix the flavors and then add the broth. Let simmer for awhile (don't let go to roiling boil, but don't ask me why), then use an immersion blender to puree as smooth as you can. You could also let cool and put into a regular blender but immersion blenders are so much easier. Add some nutmeg, check the salt and pepper levels. I use white pepper. Blend some more. Right before serving stir in a little half and half and then top with a tiny pinch of nutmeg. So good. Probably not so great for you, but can't be that bad either. See why I don't write recipes up? I'm better at making it up as I go along than writing. In fact when I was shopping for the ingredients I didn't even consider the tarragon or nutmeg they just seemed like the right things to add and I think they made it work.
OK, well that was a long intro to what I ate today, so here it is:
Breakfast was oatmeal with a couple of tablespoons of blueberries and a tablespoon of chopped walnuts, an orange and yogurt. Banana for a snack. Lunch was a Subway turkey sub with apples. The amazingly observant among you will notice I am using a recycled picture there since I forgot my phone at lunch. Snack was a protein bar. Dinner was an herb salad with a little poppyseed dressing, half a fennel bulb, 3 Triscuits and a small ham sandwich with 3 thin clises of ham, 3 slices of tomato and some baby arugula all on a new kind of thin sliced sandwich bread my wife bought for my daughter. Oh, and the second to last bowl of my butternut squash soup. I had a bowl last night chilled and it was great chilled too but for dinner tonight I did warm it up. So good. I've got one bowl left for tomorrow. I can't get anyone else in my family to try it so I'm confident it will still be there waiting for me. Might just have it chilled.
Sipping some decaf cinnamon apple tea right now, no sugar so no pic. But I mention it because it is keeping me away from dessert.
So how do you think I did? Click a star!
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