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Best Day in a Long Time – Roasted Butternut Squash Soup of Amazingness

I had a good massage
I have tried several times since I moved to find a good massage therapist without much success. So I found out this was spa week, when spas offer a variety of enticing packages for $50, and decided to try again.

I decided to try the Total Serenity Day Spa because they were close and easy to find and because their website wasn’t too woo-woo.

The reception are was fairly busy, and I spent a while sitting on a comfy chair (which I had not expected to swivel!) waiting to check in. Then I was shown to a restroom with elegant lockers for my stuff and a robe and flip flops I was supposed to change into. Every other massage place I have been has just had me disrobe in the room, so I was a bit dubious… but the XL robe fit with room to spare. I was quite comfy. The shoes, however, were too big and made a funny noise.

Once in the robe, I was shown to a different waiting room with plush couches, a fountain, and barely any lighting.

Then my massage therapist showed up. Lana. Oh, man. I have never before had a therapist who could work on my lower back without making walking incredibly dubious, but she was good. And she scritched my scalp with her strong little fingers. MMMMmmmm… Really a very good massage. The only part that was a bit iffy was that when I was on my back, she put the single folded towel that had been under my ankles to support my knees, and I really wanted more of an angle.

The sad part was that she then spent the massage asking me about my job and asking for advice on changing her profession. Apparently, when she emigrated from Russia some 20-25 years ago, she had been a nurse but was unable to pass any of the competency exams here because she did not put much effort into learning English – especially since much of her time was taken up with rearing three young children. So she ended up in massage. But it is hard work, and she is on her feet much of the day, and the leaning over hurts her back.

So I asked whether the other massage therapists at the spa would give each other massages – and she said no! They did not. Instead, once a month or so she’ll go to the Hyatt on Broad street for a spinal Sunday and pay for her own massages.

I went for a walk
When I left the spa, the weather was all mild sunshine and raw winds. I walked over two blocks to check on [redacted] and then walked with her to Rittenhouse Square. It was so hard not to stop somewhere for a decadent lunch, so I had to keep reminding myself that I had soup on the stove and a loaf of bread that I had started in the bread machine before I left for the spa.

After we parted ways, I hopped on a bus to go home.

I had an amazing lunch
And waiting for the soup was the best plan ever! It was amazing soup!

So I’d had a brilliant idea that I could make a creamy chowder-ish/bisque-ish soup and then put roasted butternut squash in it. Seriously – brilliant plan!

So I had grilled onions in a bunch of butter, added flour, added some milk, and then added some chicken stock. Then I scooped the butternut squash out of its skin and cut it into chunks.

Then I added a whole pod of roasted garlic.

Salt. Pepper. There was also some rosemary, thyme, and savory.

Then I dumped in a bunch of frozen corn straight from the bag.

Then more roasted things – roasted red pepper and one hot pepper that had been roasted.

And I finished by slicing three or so collard green leaves into small, thin pieces.

So I had that with fresh pumpernickel bread.

It was like an orgasm in my mouth.

So good.

*yawn*
*stretch*

Food lists

So I haven’t had much interest in cooking the past couple days. This is a problem, since I have a lot of lovely produce waiting to be eaten… or go bad. I’m hoping some lists will get me more in the cooking mood.

lists! of food!
Produce
onions
last of the farm grown tomatoes
~~a couple small turnips~~
hot peppers
~~a few tomatillos~~
red potatoes
collard greens
~~spinach~~
2 zucchini (now grilled)
carrots
turnip greens
1/3 butternut squash
grapefruit
most of a can’s worth of refried beans

dairy
greek yogurt!
sour cream
gorgonzola
italian seasoned cheese (open)
mild cheddar (open)
~~2% milk (shouldn’t last much longer)~~

meat
~~cooked chicken (1 meal)~~
cooked ground beef (1 meal with a extending)
ground beef
chicken stock (about 8 4 cups)
(and chicken breasts are on sale this week, so I’ll buy some of those)

Meals
I want to focus on gravies and cream sauces: a) because they are tasty, and b) because I’m about to pitch about 3lbs worth of store-brand flour because it was cheap and makes nasty bread.

Hee – let’s call this Chicken Florentine:
Creamed spinach – clean and cut all the spinach, cook an onion and some garlic in 2T butter, add 1 heaping Tablespoon flour, make roux, add spinach.
I can add the cooked chicken to that. And a hot pepper.
I could add pasta to that to make a real meal, or I could just eat it with a spoon. I’m thinking spoon.
ETA: Done. Wasn’t as tasty as I had hoped. No idea what went wrong.

Soup:
I’ve been wanting something bisque/chowder-ish with corn. And I have corn in my freezer. So onions, white roux, and then… how about butternut squash chunks? Roasted garlic. The rest of the roasted bell pepper I have in a jar with oil in my fridge. And some collard greens cut into thin ribbons. Sound decent? Does it need anything else? ~~I could roast the turnips and tomatillos for a side dish.~~ This sounds like it needs fresh parsley.
ETA: Started. I have the cream base with squash in it. I have a sprig of rosemary floating in it today. I roasted some hot peppers yesterday, so maybe I shall add them as well.

Hamburger Helper:
Shut up – it makes a great starting point.
Onion, garlic, ground beef. Zucchini. Collard Greens. And shred cheese on top and slices of tomato.

Kenyan Collard Greens:
greens, tomato, rice. (get my 5 spice powder back from my mother’s)

What’s left? Tomatoes, Potatoes, Turnip Greens, Refried beans, chicken stock – and I haven’t made use of the greek yogurt that was so hard to find!

All right – here’s a thing. These are fresh and tasty tomatoes, so I don’t want to cook them. I refuse to use the last tasty tomatoes in a dish where canned would work just as well. I’ll probably just end up eating them while I cook other things… but still.

Ummm… how about open-faces quesadillas – I know those have a name.
Tortilla, topped with a thin layer of refried beans, topped with shredded cheese, topped with tomatoes. With sour cream. Probably I won’t be able to eat enough to use up the refried beans, but maybe put a dent in them.

greens. Ummm… More soup? Turnip greens, diced potato, and carrots in chicken stock. That actually sounds rather dire.

Ummm… I could pickle the rest of the turnip greens and wait until I have leftover roast pork to make more of the excellent soup I made last night. My parents have a roast to make, so that should be soon.

Freeze the chicken stock.

Okay… Moussaka?
Layer a casserole with a mixture of ground beef and eggplant and potato slices, use lots of seasonings, pour a can or two of tomatoes over all, and serve with yogurt on the side?

That should do.

Swap one for the other

The original Battlestar Galactica, you know – the one with Lorne Greene, is so much better than the new one.

Driving on highways during the daytime is always worse than driving at night. Driving at dusk, dawn, and 3am joyous.

Dairy products are interchangeable.

The key to running an economic kitchen is just the right amount of storage space – too much, and those exotic sauces and fancy jams start looking sexy; too little, and you can’t stock up on sales. It’s the freedom to be able to buy the six boxes of pasta for $3 that saves you from running out of pasta and getting stuck with a box for $2.50. It’s knowing that you have enough meat in your freezer that you can wait for good sales and never pay more than $2/lb for any kind of meat (and can stubbornly wait for some to get even cheaper – like chicken thighs below $.50/lb, whole chicken and pork shoulders or picnic ham roasts for $.80 – and if you live somewhere these are cheaper, that alone will be enough for me to spend at least 5 good minutes considering moving there). Produce is pure luck, though – luckily, I have people selling lots of good produce cheaply off the back of a truck.

Sewing your own clothes from scratch doesn’t save a dime.

People think I can garden even though most of the pots on my porch are empty. The pots are empty because I have been systematically killing the plants that were passed to me when my neighbor moved out of state. They think I can garden because I have pots.

Applesauce

I have a huge jar of applesauce.

Seriously, you could feed a nursery for two weeks on this jar of applesauce.

No, I wasn’t stupid enough to buy it – my mother did. See, my father will only eat pork two ways – roasted in a pita with lots of condiments and roasted with applesauce on the side. Therefore, applesauce.

Now I had a few jars of tiny applesauce running around, and when I saw that my mother had a HUGE jar and only call to use a small amount of applesauce three times a year, we swapped.

I figured that I am brilliant and creative and always willing to try new food things.

But I can not come up with a single thing to do with a giant jar of applesauce besides starting in with a big spoon.

So it has languished unopened in my refrigerator.

But this is getting ridiculous.

So either I need a LOT of applesauce recipes (and none of that baking stuff, because they always seem to use applesauce as the magic low fat ingredient, and I don’t trust that logic), or I need someone with an applesauce fetish to take it away and have a delightful weekend. Probably the former.

ETA: Suggestions in the comments to this post included: baking; muffins; boil a cup or two of the stuff til it’s syrupy and pour it, still hot, over ice cream; a good addition to newfangled baked bean type things; buy some potatoes and onions and make a lot of latkes; pumpkin bread; curried chicken and apple stew, with a jar of applesauce in that as part of the gravy; pork roasts in a crockpot and instead of adding juice/wine/water added a jar of applesauce and some sauerkraut.

I have a muffin recipe that uses applesauce, but not as the magic low-fat moisture enhancer, oh no! My recipe uses applesauce as a tart substitute for buttermilk, to make the baking soda go BOOM and create fluffiness

I have an awesome set of friends.

Not food – politics, sorry

My views of politics are naive and simple, and I do my very best to keep them that way.

1) I do not trust the popular media. I know how easy it is to manipulate film and images. I know how hard it is to write a story that just relates facts… and that even then our opinions bleed through in which facts are more relevant. I have listened to the news on the radio change at 5am into a completely different story.

2) I understand that I am hypocritical. No matter how much I try for internal consistency, I can not stretch the logic all the way around. *shrug* So I just go for what feels right – and am willing to change some of my opinions with enough persuading… not most of them, though.

So what do I think that is all controversial? I think that all people are human beings.

I think that people in any country are human beings.
I think that poor and underprivileged people are human beings.
I think people of all sexual persuasions, identities, and proclivities are human beings – and that it’s probably none of my business.
I think that people in wheel chairs are human beings – and the guy who sometimes rides my bus who looks like he just stepped out of the makeup trailer on a horror movie; yep, he’s a human being, too.
I think that terrorists are human beings. And that the word terrorist does not define a country of origin or a religious belief.
I think that paedophiles are human beings.
I think that the perpetrators of domestic violence (of any gender) are human beings.
I think that the Tupperware lady or man is a human being.
I think old people are human beings.
I think that people of any race, ethnicity, and heritage are human beings.
I think even that religious extremists and republicans are human beings.
I think you are a human being