Coconut Curry Butternut Squash Soup

Talk about easy!  

This delicious seasonal soup was created in a few short steps! 

 Cut a large butternut squash down the middle and scoop out the guts.

Place the cut sides down in a pan.  Splash 1/2 cup of water into the pan 

with the squash.  Bake at 375 for 40-50 minutes. If I had a white

or yellow onion on hand I would have cut it up and tossed in the

pan to cook up, as well.

Remove from heat and allow the squash to cool a bit.

Glorious, cooked butternut squash. 

Use a spoon to scoop the cooked squash into a blender.

Then add one 14 ounce can of coconut milk and 3/4 cup coconut 

cream,1 T. yellow curry powder (you can find it most anywhere, I just

recently picked some up at Target).  Blend and add salt to taste (and if I 

wasn't serving this soup to my kids I would add cayenne pepper to taste).

Then add stock (vegetable or chicken stock) to desired thickness of soup.

If you have an immersion blender, just pop all this stuff into a large saucepan and start a blending.

I do believe Trader Joe's makes the finest of

fine coconut cream and coconut milk.

For a garnish I decided to bake some store bought naan.  

Used a pizza wheel to cut strips, then cut each strip in half.

 Tossed with sunflower oil (any light oil will do) and

sprinkled with flake sea salt and yellow curry powder. 

Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes.

Enjoy!

I think tomorrow I will try topping the soup with chicken & 

apple sausages.  Some other tasty add ins would be:

crispy pan fried garbanzo beans, sauteed greens (spinach or kale)

and grilled chicken.  Hmmm, what else?

Cheater Cheater Pumpkin Eater...

I love to bake.  I love every step of the process, but as of late I feel rushed in the kitchen because life with a toddler is busy.  My friends, you will not believe what I am about to write, but believe it as truth.  The following recipe starts with a box of white cake mix and is to die for.  I give you...Pumpkin Cranberry Muffins.

Muffins

• Box of White Cake Mix (pick your poison, I have used several brands and all turn out great, just make sure the box yields a 9x13 cake)
• 3/4 cup + 2 T Pumpkin Puree
• 1 + 1/2 cups Fresh Cranberries (it's the most wonderful time of the year...to buy a couple of extra bags of fresh cranberries and pop them in the freezer)
• 1/4 cup Oil
• 1/2 cup Water
• 2 Eggs  (or if you are weird like me, and can't handle eggs in shells, 1/2 cup liquid eggs)
• 1 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract
• 1 tsp Pure Almond Extract
• 1 tsp Cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp Nutmeg (I buy whole nuts and keep them in the freezer and just grate off what I need with a fine grate Microplane)

Scoop into paper lined cupcake pan (I use an ice cream scoop) and top with the streusel

 Streusel Topping

1 + 1/2 T Soft Butter

1/4 cup Quick Oats

1/4 cup All-Purpose Flour

1/3 cup Light Brown Sugar (packed)

1/4 tsp Cinnamon

Pinch of Sea Salt

I use a mini food processor to mix the streusel , but a fork would work just fine. 

Streusel Ingredients

Streusel Pulsed

Crumble the Streusel on to the muffin batter

Bake at 350 degrees for 19 minutes. 

Cool on a wire rack.  Enjoy!

Paper Mache Pumpkins

This is the first post of my brand new blog (yay, me!) and I am so excited to share a great little Halloween project (or heck, fall project) that you can enjoy year after year!

Here are the supplies you will need:

1. Fake pumpkins (now would be the time to go find them 1/2 off sales, and enjoy for the rest of fall!!!)
2. Glue
3. Tea Bags (4)
4. Computer, Printer & Paper (if you don't have a way to print, don't fret, just used a different paper application, such as scrapbook paper, grocery bags, newspaper)
5. Wax or parchment paper to cover your work surface
6. Plastic cups to set your pumpkins to dry
7. Clear acrylic spray paint (for a final dose of protection)

Here are some easy to follow steps:

1. I bought some cheapy 'fug-kins' (yes, they are often called funkins, but these were extra ugly and fake looking, so I will refer to them as 'fug-kins') at the grocery store. 
2. Googled 'lyrics to Monsters Mash'
3. Copy and Pasted the lyrics into a Word document (repeated the paste until I had a full page of lyrics). I changed the margins on the page so there was very little white paper around the edges.  Then I printed 10 pages of lyrics.
4. Tore the lyrics up into random sized pieces
5. Heated 4 cups of water, then removed from heat and added 4 tea bags.  Let tea steep (bags sit in heated water) for 10 minutes.  Then squeeze bags and remove from water.
6. Add the torn up lyrics to the tea, leave to stain in the tea for a couple of hours
7. Mix equal parts glue and water.  Run the strips of paper through the glue/water mixture and start placing on the pumpkin, starting at the bottom and working your way up.  Press into the groves of the pumpkins as you go.  Overlap, layer, you decide...can't mess this up.
8. I set  to dry with the stem sitting in a plasic cup.  I let them dry overnight.
9. The next morning, go check your cute, new creations (pinch yourself, it was that easy...), and have a few reserve strips of tea stained paper to 'patch' any areas you might have missed (just use a little glue/ water).
10. If you want (and I am thinking I will do this) spray with a coat of clear acrylic spray paint, just to preserve your holiday treasures for many years to come!!!
11. ENJOY!  I have received rave reviews already, and it is so gratifing to say, 'I MADE THEM!'

The pumpkins above were $4.95 each.  The little ones you will see paper mached were  $1...so great! 

  

Final Results!  What a fantastic centerpiece, right!  I am so excited to get a blogging, and hope you will find some inspiration from the things I do, and get aMUSEing today!