Squashed

I am hurrying to get a blog posted for November to keep my not-so-sterling five year streak untarnished....

I will have to just say, I had a LOT of squash left over after Thanksgiving. Sweet Girl was determined to completely decorate the herewegoagain shack, and Martha had encouraged her to go the "edible centerpiece" route. The pears were actually cute on the mantle, and have been pretty much gobbled up. The squash? Cute, but um, that is a LOT OF FOOD represented in acorn, butternut, spaghetti and other forms.

So, tonight, in lieu of the regular endless roast turkey leftovers, I made butternut squash soup.

I felt like quite the chef as I perused recipes online and chose the one with the fewest ingredients and easiest cooking level. It looked like the hard part was going to be pureeing everything in the blender, but heck, how hard could that be?

I was a little concerned over the combination of spices. Perfect Daughter had made it perfectly clear that she is grossed out by any sort of sweet and savory combination in food. This was perfectly proven by a trip to Costco over the weekend and the "spitting out the chocolate covered caramels covered in sea salt" episode. Therefore, I decided to definitely double-check the "addition of curry, nutmeg and cinnamon" to the butternut/onion/potato/garlic concoction would be okay with her.

She assured me that it sounded divine and added, "I love Indian food". Hmmmmm.

So, I cooked, chopped, sauteed and pureed. I had a perfectly pumpkin looking creamy soup simmering away and I trepidatiously added the 1/8 tsp. of basic pumpkin-pie-made-in-Mumbai ingredients. I tasted it.

Oh, um, well, hmmmm.

I kind of hated it.

Since this was DINNER and there was nothing else planned and I had four hungry faces looking at me, I smiled and said, "Yum!".

Then I grabbed Perfect Daughter and hissed, "You told me these spices would be divine...here, taste this!".

She did. She didn't kind of hated it, she really hated it. She took a step back and said, "UGH! I hate nutmeg. And really, curry???".

When I reminded her that SHE had actually encouraged me to buy the blasted curry just two hours earlier at the grocery store, she had one piece of advice for me:

"Add brown sugar".

to which she added,

"Add more brown sugar. A LOT more".

So, I did. The result, as I sat down to the table was something not unlike eating soupy pumpkin pie filling without the crust and for the main meal. It was suggested online to serve "with a dollop of sour cream"...which did help. Croutons did too. As did the rolls. And anything else to dull the taste and fill the belly.

Everyone stared at his/her bowl. We all dipped our spoons. I looked around the table. Sweet Girl said, "It's yummy, mom, really" (that is just her, I never pay attention to her sweetness because she would be sweet to Attila if he came knocking at the front door). Perfect Daughter said, "It's much better with the sugar". Rowdy looked up sharply and said, "There is SUGAR in this soup?" and DH simply ate his. With a lot of croutons.

I actually liked it enough to eat two bowls, but that is likely due to my diet. I'll eat anything with sour cream and sugar.

The girls ate theirs. DH had two bowls.

Rowdy? He told me the rolls (store bought) were great and he went to the fridge for a ziploc bag of old turkey. "What?" he asked, "You made the turkey, too, right?"

And...now there is a LOT of soup left over. Yay us.