Tag Archives: recipes

Easy, To Die For Butternut Squash Soup

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I can’t get enough of this stuff.

One of my favorite things to eat is butternut squash soup. Trouble is, when I have a flavor in your mind and I find myself eating something that just isn’t quite as good, I get seriously disappointed. You know what they say: If you want something done right, yadda yadda yadda.

Here’s the recipe I like. It’s remarkably easy to make, but in case you have a serious case of lazy bones, I’ve included a few shortcuts to make it even easier.

Ingredients

  • 1 medium onion, chopped. I use sweet onions. Lazy? You can buy them pre-chopped in most supermarket produce departments or the freezer section.
  • 2 tablespoons margarine or butter.
  • 2 cups chicken broth. I use canned. Although one can is 15 ounces (I think), that’s close enough.
  • 1 pound butternut squash, pared, seeded and cut into 1-inch cubes. This is probably the most labor-intensive part of the process. Those squash are a real pain to pare. And where have you ever found one less than 2 pounds in size? I usually do it the hard way, but today I stopped off at Trader Joe’s and picked up a 2-pound bag of butternut squash already prepared. (So, of course, I made a double-batch of soup.) You might be able to use frozen squash if it is unseasoned; I’ll leave that up to the seriously lazy cooks to experiment with.
  • 2 pears, pared and sliced. I use fresh pears whenever possible, but I suspect that you could get away with canned pears, as long as you rinse off the sugary syrup they insist on canning them with.
  • 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves. Yeah, like I’ll find fresh thyme in Wickenburg. I use dried but only half as much.
  • 1/4 teaspoon of salt. I usually omit this, especially if the broth does not have reduced salt. You can always add salt later; you can never take it away.
  • 1/4 teaspoon white pepper. I use regular pepper, which I grind as I need it.
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground coriander.
  • 1 cup whipping cream. This is killer stuff and makes the soup very rich. I suspect you could use half and half to make it a little less deadly.

Cooking Instructions

  1. Cook and stir onion in margarine in a medium pot until tender.
  2. Butternut Squash SoupStir in broth, squash, pears, thyme, salt, pepper, and coriander.
  3. Heat to boiling; reduce heat heat and cover.
  4. Simmer until squash is tender, 10 to 15 minutes.
  5. Puree soup in a food processor or blender. You may have to do this in batches. You might also want to wait until the soup has cooled a bit; I cracked my food processor bowl by processing hot soup. I now use my glass blender.
  6. Return pureed soup to pot.
  7. Stir in whipping cream and heat until hot.
  8. Garnish with pear slices and toasted pecans if desired.

Yields 6 1-cup servings.

This is a great soup for Thanksgiving. The squash and pears are in season right now so it’s the perfect time of year to make this. Treat yourself. You won’t be disappointed.

The Best Smoothie I Ever Made

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Here’s the recipe.

I hate dieting, but I love an excuse to make smoothies. If done properly, they’re very healthful and low in calories. They’re also very filling, making a good meal substitute.

I have a basic smoothie recipe I’ve been following, using whatever appropriate fruit is handy. But today’s was the best.

Ingredients
1/2 cup plain, fat-free yogurt
1/2 cup orange juice (I use Tropicana Premium because it’s not from concentrate)
1/2 cup fresh strawberries, halved
1/2 cup frozen mango (I buy frozen because I’m too lazy to peel and cut them)
1 whole banana, broken into pieces

Instructions
Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.

Any combination of berries or stone fruit usually works, but today’s was the best I’ve tasted. There’s no added sugar, but it’s plenty sweet. The frozen mango chills down the mixture, making it almost frosty. I’ve used frozen berries in the past, but I really think it’s the fresh strawberries that made the smoothie so good today.

Total calorie count comes in just under 300; you can read the rest of the nutritional information here. If you give it a try — or make your own version — let me know what you think.

And if you like smoothies, don’t fall for those mixes you’ll find in the supermarket. They usually full of added sugar and other crap. You’ll get a healthier treat if you make it yourself using simple ingredients.

Cherry Chutney

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A twist on my Mango Chutney recipe.

I love chutney as a condiment with grilled pork and roast turkey (instead of cranberries). There’s always a batch of mango chutney in my fridge at home. Unfortunately, when I left with my RV for the summer, I forgot to bring some along. But since I’m currently surrounded by cherry trees with ripe fruit, I figured I’d try making cherry chutney for a change.

Cherry ChutneyI found a recipe for cherry chutney online and made a batch of it. It had some major differences from my mango chutney recipe — for example the inclusion of onion, spices, and mustard seed — and I had mixed feelings about the result.

Yesterday, I decided to try again by simply substituting cherries for mango in my mango chutney recipe. The result was quite tasty. Here’s the recipe as I made it.

Ingredients:

  • 1-1/2 pounds cherries, pitted and cut in half or quarters. I’d picked the cherries the night before, choosing small fruit from the tree since I knew my client wouldn’t pick and sell it. (Shame to see it go to waste.) The small fruit fit well in my cherry pitter and most cherries didn’t need to be quartered; halved was enough. If cherries aren’t in season, you could probably use frozen. Do not use cherry pie filling.
  • 1 cup golden raisins. You can use the regular kind if you can’t find golden.
  • 1 cup packed brown sugar. This is an excellent recipe for using up brown sugar that has solidified in an improperly closed bag. But fresh brown sugar won’t hurt it.
  • 1/2 to 3/4 cup vinegar. I usually use white vinegar, but the only vinegar I had available was apple cider vinegar (from the other recipe). Didn’t hurt this recipe at all.
  • 1 jar (2-7/8 ounces) crystallized ginger, finely chopped. I don’t know what kind of jarred ginger my source recipe is talking about. This time, I found crystalized ginger in a 6-oz bag and used half of it.
  • 1 clove garlic, chopped. I cheated this time and used about a teaspoon of jarred chopped garlic.
  • 1 teaspoon salt. This time around, I skipped the salt.

Instructions:

Place all ingredients in a sauce pan and heat to boiling. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered for about an hour or until slightly thickened. Remove from heat, cool. Place in a sealed container — a canning jar works well for this; I avoid plastic for anything I want to keep long term — and store in refrigerator. It will stay fresh and edible for quite some time. Serve with pork or roast turkey (as discussed above) or Indian curry dishes.

Yield: Approximately 4-5 cups.

Warning: It does not smell good while cooking.

Easy Cherry Cobbler for One

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When you have a limitless supply of cherries, you get creative.

Fresh-picked CherriesA few days ago, I asked my client if I could go into his orchard and pick some cherries. I’d finished off the 15+ pounds of Rainiers I’d picked in Quincy two weeks before and was fresh out of fruit. Across the street from my RV were 86 acres of ripening cherries. My client gave me the green light and I’ve had fresh-picked cherries in my fridge ever since.

If you have some kind of comment about the affect of cherries on my digestive system, save them. I seem to be immune to the usual effects. Indeed, I easily put away a pound of cherries a day with no significant side effects.

But I am bored with simply popping fresh cherries from a plastic container. Back in June, I began experimenting with cobbler. The results were so-so. I wanted an easier recipe so I turned to Bisquick.

Bisquick, in case you’re not familiar with it, is a Betty Crocker/General Mills product known primarily as a pancake batter mix. But what a lot of folks don’t realize is that it’s a good quickbread batter mix that you can also use to make biscuits and “shortcake.” (Shortcake is in quotes because it doesn’t make real shortcake.)

The trick is to mix Bisquick with milk and a small amount of sugar to make a batter. Then bake it for a little sweet breadlike cake. Add fruit to the batter and you have an easy cobbler.

Here’s my current recipe. It makes just one (because I’m by myself here) but I don’t see why you couldn’t multiply the recipe to make more. You might try making individual ones in large muffin tins.

Ingredients:

  • 1/4 cup Bisquick
  • 2 tablespoons milk
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 7 cherries, pitted and split in half

Instructions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
  2. Grease an ovensafe custard cup or other suitable baking vessel.
  3. In a small bowl, mix the first three ingredients until blended.
  4. Fold in the cherries.
  5. Place batter in custard cup.
  6. Bake 20 minutes or until batter is done.

This would probably be excellent with fresh whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. I have neither so I do without. It isn’t bad.

If you give this a try — with or without your own modifications — please do use the comments for this post to let us know what you think.

Get 20 Pounds of Apples for Christmas?

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Make pie!

20 Pounds of Apples

Got apples?

The box arrived yesterday via UPS. The labeling all over the box said, “Washington State Apples,” but I couldn’t believe it. Surely this big box couldn’t be full of apples! But when I checked the return address to see the sender, I knew it was: they’d been sent by one of my cherry drying clients from this past summer. Like most cherry growers, he probably has apple trees, too.

Fuji apples, to be exact.

The last time I had this many apples in my home was years and years ago, when I still lived in New Jersey. In those days, we’d go apple picking in New York State, just over the border. We’d make a day of it and pick too many apples to eat. I remember making apple pie, apple sauce, and apple butter. I remember being sick of apples. The year that we let a bag of apples go bad in the basement was the last year we went apple picking.

My husband’s comment when he realized that we’d just received 20 pounds of apples: “What are we going to do with them all?”

Make pie, of course.

Making apple pie isn’t difficult — if you cheat. Cheating means buying prepared pie crusts. Making pie dough, rolling it out, and lining the pie pan is 75% of the work in making fresh apple pie. If you get someone else to do it for you — like Mr. Pillsbury or Marie Callender — all you have to do is peel and cut up the apples, mix them with sugar and spice, pour them into the pie pans, and cover them up with another piece of prepared pie crust.

And if you’re like me, you probably can’t make a decent tasting pie crust anyway. It’s better to let the experts do it.

Here’s my recipe for the filling:

Ingredients:

  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1-1/2 tablespoons flour
  • 5-6 large, firm apples (they’re supposed to be “tart” but I always use whatever I have handy, especially when I have 20 pounds to use up)
  • 2 tablespoons butter

Pie under constructionInstructions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 425°F.
  2. Line a 9-inch pie pan with pastry dough.
  3. Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
  4. Peel, core, and slice the apples.
  5. Toss the apples in the sugar mixture until well coated.
  6. Pile the apples in the pie pan.
  7. Dot with butter.
  8. Cover the pieCover the pie with another sheet of pastry dough. Crimp the edges and cut vents in the top. (I usually cut in a pattern or design; I did cherries this time in honor of the apple sender.)
  9. Bake 10 minutes, then lower the temperature to 350°F and bake about 30-40 minutes longer or until the apples are tender when pierced with a skewer and the crust is browned.

If you’re using a “deep dish” pie crust/pan, you’ll probably need more apples.

Apple Pie

It smells way better than it looks.

Here’s what the finished product looks like. I’m not sure about this Pillsbury pie crust — it almost looks as if it melted over the apples. I’ll try Marie Callender next. And maybe some phyllo dough after that for a more strudel-like result.

After all, there are a lot of apples in my fridge and garage. I figured I’d just make apple pie every time we ran out it, until we ran out of apples.