Fall!

Autumn, Fall, the season between summer and winter...whatever you may call it, it is my favorite season of the year. The temperature is perfect. The leaves on the trees are so pretty. It starts getting darker earlier, and there's just a nice, comfy feeling about everything. I've really enjoyed just walking around outside and enjoying the crisp cool weather. The air just smells so good. It also is the season for Halloween, which is one of my very favorite holidays...even if it's not as fun as when I was little :)

One of my favorite things about fall is all the yummy foods you can make. Obviously, I could make the foods during other times of the year..but for some reason, they just don't fit. My personal favorite is pumpkin cookies, which my sister Cindy started making a few years ago and I have copied her. It took me forever to find pumpkin, but eventually I found it at Macey's. I have made at least a couple batches of these cookies, and I'm slightly ashamed to admit how many of them I ate ;-) Forrest thought they were some of the best cookies too.

A few weeks ago, Forrest and I participated in a food co-op, with Bountiful Baskets. We got lots of fruits and vegetables, some of which were kind of random, like Asian plums. One of the less-than-normal vegetables was an Acorn squash. I had never heard of this before, but it looked interesting--just like an acorn, but green and a lot larger. It has been sitting in the box that the vegetables came with, pretty much untouched.

Well, a few days ago Forrest suggested that maybe I make a soup out of it. Since he has been sick the past few days, I decided to Google it and see what I came up with. After a few searches, I came up with a couple of choices. I eventually knocked one of them out, because it required a dutch oven. I finally decided on this recipe, after reading a lot of reviews on it. Can I just say that Allrecipes.com is probably my favorite recipes? I'm pretty sure most everything I've made lately has come from that website!

Anyways, I decided to improvise a little bit on the recipe, because, cooking is more fun that way. I think that the recipe turned out pretty well; it smelled delicious and I thought it tasted delicious! I texted my mom and told her about it, to which she proceeded to tell me sounded gross, but it definitely wasn't. This will be a recipe I will be adding to my collection for sure; it was really easy to make as well! If I had a blender, I would have used it to mash up the acorn squash, but since I didn't, I just used my hands. It probably would have been a finer consistency otherwise. Here is the recipe, with my alterations:

Acorn Squash Soup
1/4 medium sized onion
About 1/2 a stalk of celery, chopped
2 tbsp of butter or margarine
About 4 tbsp of flour
1 tsp dill weed
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp red cayenne pepper
1 tsp nutmeg
1 can of chicken broth
About 1 to 1/2 cups of fat free half and half
2 medium sized acorn squashes, mashed
1/4-1/2 lb cooked sausage

Start by bringing a pot of water to a boil. Put in the acorn squash, divided into 1/4's. They are kind of tricky to cut; I would recommend looking instructions online. Let the squash boil until you can put a fork through it. When you can do this, put it aside and let them cool in a bowl. In the mean time, melt the butter and saute the veggies. Once they are sauteed, add in the 2 tbsp of butter, the dill weed, curry powder, and cayenne pepper. Once these are mixed well with the veggies, add in the chicken broth and half and half. Bring to a boil, and then let it simmer. Go back to the acorn squash and mash or puree it. You will want to remove the skin at some point, either before or after mashing it (I would recommend before. I did it afterwards and it was kind of annoying). Add the squash to the soup and bring to a boil again. I added two more tbsp of flour to make it a little thicker. End by adding the sausage (you could leave this out if you want, or add bacon, chicken, etc.). and Enjoy!