winter soup!

Is anyone else relieved that it FINALLY snowed in NC? I'm hoping that was mother nature getting winter out of her system and not a foreshadowing of things to come.

After oohing and ahhhing for a couple minutes, taking pictures of the snow covered cars, and having a brief but intense snowball fight (i won), I promptly lost interest in the pretty white fluff and went back to wishing it was summertime.

One of the redeeming features of the after-Christmas-winter-blues is soup. I've already made 3 or 4 different soups this winter, but this was my favy so far.    Acorn squash-pumpkin soup.


Adapted from A Cozy Kitchen.

Ingredients:

1 tbs of butter
1 tbs of olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, minced
15 oz can of pumpkin pure
1 acorn squash peeled and cut into cubes   (this process goes faster if you have a really sharp knife or strong male nearby...those acorn squashes don't like to be chopped)
3 cups of chicken stock
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 cup half&half

How to:

1. melt butter and oil in big stock pot. add garlic and cook for about 2 minutes (not burn, as i did).
2. add pumpkin, squash, chicken stock, salt&pepper. cover and simmer for 20 minutes.
3. here i went through a long process that involved transferring the soup to the blender in 1 cup quantities and yelling at the machine angrily. if you aren't a perfectionist, i would just suggest squishing the squash with a potato masher.
4. return to pot, add half&half, and heat slowly.
5. if you want the bread/croutons, you could go through the process of browning them on the stove and then baking them at 350 for 8 minutes or so... or you just slice up a baguette, throw some mozzerella on it, and toast them in the toaster oven.

VOILA! (i hope)

p.s. now that i've discovered all the photo editing stuff i can do with Phixr, it's unlikely that i will ever get anything done again.

p.p.s. lest you think i'm being too negative/ are offended by my dislike of winter:
girl scout cookies are another good thing about this season.