Butternut Squash Soup Discourse on Grad School

Grad school is an interesting phenomenon, because it leads to highly irregular events. Take, for example, cooking. As an undergrad, Brittany and I had an agreement: She cooked, and I cleaned. I was OK with this, because I only like cooking when it's a group activity, and sadly, such is rarely the case.

Mind you, this was in no way correlated with a lack of experience cooking. Learning to cook (and the mastery of hand-washing dishes of all sorts) is part of the mandatory Ariotti-household certification and life-training program. I just never really made it past the lazy stage when I wasn't under the direct threat of family sanctions.

This brings me back to grad school. The nice thing about grad school is that it is so supremely unpleasant that it calls up urges to do all sorts of things you had never been interested in when you hadn't been so busy hating what you were doing. For example, cooking. I started going to the farmer's market, buying real food (I'm herein precluding a discussion of what constitutes food, but suffice it to say I'm taking Hamburger Helper and Kraft's off the table [just realized that's a pun, I crack myself up]) and using the internet to find new recipes. And it's surprisingly fun, in spite of the fact that I'm cooking by myself for only me, with podcasts and Skype dates for company.

Tonight I decided that the time had come to address the butternut squash I had purchased in [early] October. I guess they must be some kind of resistant, winter-type vegetable, because this one was as good as new! Anyway, I have my mom's soup recipe (from the cookbook by Joey's), plus the one I found on this blog, so I decided to go buy the few ingredients I was missing and call it a night. 

I should maybe cop to the fact that I haven't changed so very much since the old days: as my former apartment roomies know well, any excuse not to address the work you need to finish is a valid one. My inspiration is thus in part derived from my lack of interest in analyzing beta coefficients and remembering how to read regression tables.

Anyway, back to important things, like the epic way in which I just ruled over my kitchen.

Note: I used way more squash than this, I just neglected to photo-document my awesomeness until midway through the prep.

(Yes, that's my cutting board. Is anyone really surprised?)

Forgot the intermediate step shot, but here's when I started scooping the softened chunks of squash and sweet potato into the blender that the greatest mother in the universe got me for Christmas in a burst of thorough brilliance (my kitchen knows no bounds -- wait until I start in with the eggbeater she also got me!) ... You may notice that the blender is small. This step was repeated a handful of times to get all of the soup pureed. This is after I first used it to chop onions, carrots and celery, which were added to the rest of the simmering pot (recipe at the bottom of the post). I left it a bit chunky because this isn't Campbell's, damnit, and I like texture.

I get that this is maybe not the most beautiful thing you may have seen in your life, but KEEP YOUR PANTIES ON, and let's put our aesthetic pants back in the closet, alright? It's delicious, I don't care how it looks. Making the food pretty is far more critical when it is deficient in DELICOUSNESS, which this is not.

Here is the part of the soup that went into a pot with some half and half and milk, for immediate consumption.

Here is the vegetable puree, sans perishable dairy products, that I'm planning to freeze unless the world's greatest mommy tells me that there's some reason I shouldn't freeze it. If such is the case, I'm going to be eating this soup for weeks straight (somehow, I think I'd be OK with that). First, the aforementioned world's greatest mommy must answer her phone, for such critical details as vegetable-freezing logistics and whether or not half and half is an acceptable substitute for heavy cream.

Voila! I'm so proud of myself I don't even feel a little bit guilty about the fact that it's 9:30 pm and I haven't touched my math homework. TAKE THAT, MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS FOR POLITICAL RESEARCH!

Anyway, here is the recipe. I'm sort of inventing Molly-measurements as I go, because I am a firm believer in eyeballs, not measuring cups.

1/2 butternut squash (mine was rather enormous, that said) ... peeled and cubed.

1 medium sweet potato, peeled and cubed

2 stalks of celery, chopped

a handful of baby carrots, chopped

2 chicken bouillon cubes (or powder, or stock, whatever you have lying around)

1/2 onion (I used yellow or white, I don't really know what the difference is), chopped

dollop of garlic (I cheated and used a dollop of the pre-chopped, in-a-jar-refrigerated kind)

butter.

salt.

pepper.

nutmeg.

water.

milk/half and half

Sautee the chopped onion in butter. Add the cubed squash and sweet potato, and enough water to mostly cover them. (Or if you're better equipped than I am, use less and put a lid on the pot. I suppose it's the same effect.)

Add in bouillon cubes and garlic, as well as the finely chopped carrots and celery. As the water boiled off I kept adding just enough to keep everything from burning. I also salted and peppered indiscriminately.

When everything seems to be pretty soft, turn off the heat and prepare for the puree fun. If you have a mini food processor from your awesome mom, you'll have to do a multistage blending process like I did. If you're fancy, well, do it all at once. GOOD FOR YOU.

Dump the now pureed (I left mine a little bit chunky because I like that better) mixture into a pot, add enough of a part milk, part half and half (so, does that make it quarter and quarter?) to make it the soupy consistency you so desire. Sprinkle some nutmeg in there, if you like. Heat it up, and you've finished!

Interesting, writing what I did is not only way faster, it also leaves far fewer dishes in the sink. 

Now I only have to find a recipe to use up the OTHER half of the butternut squash that isn't a part of the weeks' supply of soup puree I made tonight. Suggestions?