If this is your first visit to my blog, you won't know that I tried a Mark Bittman recipe for raw butternut squash salad and served it as part of our Thanksgiving dinner. Other than substituting dried cherries for raisins, I followed the recipe very closely, expecting a fresh, crisp, refreshing accompaniment to the rest of our meal. Suffice it to say there was a lot left over, and I didn't personally want to eat it because I found it weird and slimy. Nor did my husband like it.
But I sure didn't want to waste it, either, so last night it became soup. As salad it was icky, but as soup it was fantastic. The salad, including the dried bing cherries, was tossed into the pressure cooker along with a finely diced medium potato and enough water to barely come to the top of the veggies. The pot was brought to pressure, and the soup cooked at pressure for five minutes. The pressure was brought down, and an immersion blender was used to blend everything to a luxuriously creamy soup. I added some parsley and fresh ground black pepper, but that was all.
It was rich and incredible tasting. Even my memory of its origins couldn't dampen my enthusiasm — and you know how that can happen sometimes. The only thing I might change if I were making the soup again on purpose would be to add much less oil, because it is, after all a soup, not a salad. But it sure tasted good with all the fat. Do you think marinating the squash for two days had a huge effect on the soup's flavor or could I just start from scratch with the salad ingredients (minus some of the oil) and make a similar tasting soup?
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A good book and a smoothie
The day after Thanksgiving, Miss E came to visit at noon, with plans to spend the day and sleep over. We had a great time playing with legos and blocks, chasing each other around, and dancing to Caspar Babypants. Miss E slept very well Friday night, and woke up hungry for a pancake breakfast. We had our favorite oat and wheat pancakes covered in leftover cranberry-apple sauce. For a late morning snack, I offered Miss E a smoothie, and of course, she accepted.
Got smoothie?
She enjoyed her blueberry-almond butter-mango-banana-soymilk smoothie while Grandpa read her a book.
When it was time to go home, Miss E tried to delay her leave-taking by putting on the wrong shoes. What a rascal.
