Ambitious Deliciousness – Dont Eat Lazy.

I was inspired by the beautiful photos in a blog post by Kitchen M to use shells of the squash as serving bowls. But all the kabocha squash at the store were the size of basketballs! After much consideration, I used acorn squash since they are smaller and make better sense as bowls.

Not only did I have to buy extra squash, but I boiled the acorn squash in two batches while the kabocha squash was roasting. Go ahead and use extra kabocha squash if you can find small ones, or just use acorn squash for the soup part too.

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Lately, I’ve been asking myself: do I still live in New York? We’ve gotten some combination of slow/sleet/slush every single week. I shouldn’t be complaining; I don’t have to shovel (benefits of living in an apartment), and I even got a snow day last week! I made some Bawston clam chowdah in the comfort of my warm apartment, then watched a couple of really bad daytime court shows. Ah. The joys of daytime TV.

This recipe is inspired by my friend Cate, who told me that she makes Boston clam chowder at home. I am a HUGE fan of clam chowder, and though I’m a New Yorker, the tomato based Manhattan clam chowder doesn’t do it for me. I looked up a few recipes to get a general idea of what to include, then came up with this version. Just a warning: this soup is far from healthy. My version of the soup contains bacon, half and half, and butter. This recipe is starting to infringe on Paula Deen territory, no?

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Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is when a farmer offers a certain number of “shares” to the public. Interested consumers then purchase a share to receive a box of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season. The produce is fairly priced, local grown, and in my case, organic.

Thanks to readers Tom and Christina for pointing out that I had the wrong name of the squash in my last post. It’s good to know that my readers are paying attention!

As I mentioned before, this is the second dish that came out of all those  roasted vegetables. I realized that while kale, in all of its goodness, is a wonderful green vegetable, it can get a little bit bitter if you cook it for too long.

I added some of the squash mixture from my last post into this dish, giving the broth a slight orange color and contrasting the kale with a hint of sweetness. Some stewed tomatoes would also help cut the bitterness of the kale. The soup was also perfectly flavorful with a surprising kick of heat at the end, which I absolutely loove! Try making this with whatever vegetables you have on hand.

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Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is when a farmer offers a certain number of “shares” to the public. Interested consumers then purchase a share to receive a box of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season. The produce is fairly priced, local grown, and in my case, organic.

There was a collection of beautiful vegetables from my CSA share. I hate wasting food, so I wanted to make something to incorporate all of the goodies I had on hand. I asked for some squash suggestions on my Facebook fan page and one of them was a soup. (thanks!!)

My initial goal was to create roasted kale and butternut acorn squash soup. But after roasting and blending squash, garlic, onion and green pepper – I felt that it would be a waste of superb flavors to just dump it into the soup. So in one pot, I made a kale soup with chicken broth, roasted carrots and potatoes, and in another, was this soup. I added a hint of cream to finish.

This soup is jam packed with flavor, stemming from the flavors of the roasted vegetables. It is so yummy that I have a feeling that you’d want to make this soup at least five more times before squash season is over. It’s sweet, earthy with subtle hints of garlic and green pepper, juxtaposed with the cream, which adds a light creaminess.

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It’s that time again! As the weather gets colder, all my body wants to do is drink hot soup and sleep all day. And that’s when soups become a part of my every meal ;). This chili would go excellently with the whole wheat bread from my previous post!

I soaked dry beans overnight, then cooked it for about 2 hours before adding the other ingredients. But feel free to use canned beans to save time. What are some of your favorite winter soups?

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This is a post about being patient.

I had read somewhere that you can take leftover bones and make stock with it. The only problem was, I didn’t have internet access all weekend, so I couldn’t look it up to be sure. So what did I do? I just winged it.

I used the leftovers from my last post to create this delicious stock. It only took about 4 hours to make. Who would have guessed that it would take so long?

If you’re like me and don’t have four continuous hours to spare, do it in batches. I ended up working on this for about an hour, on three separate occasions, in the span of two days. Talk about patience!

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Notice the little spots on the side of the bowl? It’s bothering me! I should have wiped it down with a napkin. Or Photoshop it out now. But instead of fixing it, I will purposefully leave it there and try to be cool with it. After all, a few spots never hurt anyone!

So I decided to make this for my friends the other night because the weather is getting colder. And since I had a meat dish to go with this, I made it vegetarian cuz I don’t really like ground beef that much anyway.

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