Butternut Carrot Soup

Adrian teases me that I buy butternut squashes and then forget about them. That can be said of a lot of the beautiful vegetables I have seen at the farmers' market. I try hard to remember them all and cook them. But a squash and some carrots have been lingering, so I made a wonderful soup with them. You could substitute any type of onion or seasoning. This is just what I used.

Cut the butternut squash in half from top to bottom, take out seeds. I baked that at 375 for about 30 minutes. Just bake until soft while you are doing the rest of the stuff.

One bunch new onions (they look like pregnant large scallions), diced to part way up the greens. Saute in a bit of olive oil, don't brown.

3 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed. Throw into the pot with the onions.

7-8 medium to small carrots, peeled and cut into large chunks. This was just part of a beautiful bunch of little carrots. Adrian bought regular ones from the store and they look big next to these beauties. Throw these into the pot with the onions and garlic.

1tsp dried thyme. I got a bag from Penzey spices. Lovely thyme. Threw that into the onion pot as well. Grated pepper in as well. You can add more pepper when you taste for saltiness at the end.

1 carton of low sodium chicken broth. Could be vegetable because there is no other animal in this soup. Added that to the pot.

3 inch piece of fresh ginger. I grated that while the carrots were getting soft. What a tedious task. The only thing tedious about this soup, but the fresh ginger is what makes the soup.

Peel the baked squash and throw into the pot. Add the fresh ginger. Use an immersion blender to make this mixture smooth.

Juice of 2 mandarin oranges. Actually I would have liked the juice and peel of one or two regular oranges, but I didn't have them and the Cutie mandarins that I got at Trader Joes needed to be consumed.

Fabulous. Adrian ate two bowls of it. Laughed when he said it was a little textureless for his taste. I think to remedy that you could put croutons or roasted pumpkin seeds on it. He laughed because he complains that my usual thrown together soups are more like stews because there is too little broth. But there are a heck of a lot of different textures. Can't win them all.

Today I'm baking more cookies. These are chocolate cake cookies with left over macadamia nuts, chocolate chips and peanut butter chips. Num. Throwing them in the freezer as soon as they cool. Adrian says they are too cakey, but I think all the women at his gaming party next week end will love them. Uuummmm chocolate. Homer should try these.