Squirreling Away Butternut Squash Soup

We're soup people, and we love to have a big stash of quart sized bags all lined up pretty in our deep freezer to choose from. On a night we don't feel like cooking, we'll eat a chunk of bread and grab a couple of bags downstairs. As we eat, I'm a little jealous of the asparagus cream he's chosen, and he's eying my chicken tortilla. 

Our soup rations in the deep freezer are dwindling, which means it's time for our garden to get back to work! Too bad our garden beds looked like this, before we got an additional 6 inches of snow:

 

 There's garlic somewhere under all that snow!

 I'm trying to envision end of August tomatoes here.

We've been doing our best to eat up our bumper crop of butternut squash, and while we're overwhelmed with the quantity, we are not in the least ungrateful. This squash has been eaten simply roasted with a bit of butter and brown sugar, made into hearty soups and comforting sweet breads. 

Today we all stayed home due to the snow, and I made a big batch of simple puréed veggie soup.

It turned out so smooth, flavorful, and tasted wonderful with a chunk of Beer Bread

I started by roasting de-seeded squash in the oven with an inch or so of water.

This is what's left after scooping the flesh from the skins

Diced onions, carrots and celery and simmered them in 3 cups bone broth and 3 cups water

Puréed the veggies before adding the mashed butternut squash, then added one oz. of my preserved garden basil/oregano/garlic in oil

It's a good start to a long year of preserving our food, God willing.

Today's Butternut Squash Batch:

3 cups Turkey stock

Enough water to get a good consistency. I started with 3 cups and kept adding here and there

1 bag carrots

5 stalks celery

4 small white onions

2 large squash, 2 small

1oz pesto with no nuts

Salt to taste

I'm linking to:

Homestead Barn Hop

Homemade Chocolate Syrup

  Kid friendly chocolate milk, mom friendly mocha and a shared squash muffin.

My parents have a thing about mochas. They have a fancy espresso machine that they fire up every day. They have big opinions about which espresso makes the best mocha, and which chocolate has let them down in the past. A long time favorite of theirs has been Ghiradelli powder, but it is so expensive. They have tried throwing in chocolate chips, but it clumps and sinks to the bottom. For the past few months I've been making them this syrup, which is super cheap and simple to make. It stirs into hot or cold milk, and doesn't clump or sink to the bottom.

Start with a 2:1 simple syrup

Have your blocks of unsweetened chocolate ready to go

Not ready yet! I'm always impatient and end up with grainy syrup. Wait until it's clear.

The syrup will be done when it's clear when taken off the heat.

 Throw in the chocolate, salt and vanilla, and let it melt. At this point it'll look like a total globby, nasty chocolate froth, floating on a sugar pond. Don't worry!

Blending it up turns it into a smooth sauce, which stays smooth after cooling off.

The syrup should coat the back of a spoon when still hot, and tastes amazing!

 This amount makes four pint sized jars plus a little left over. It should keep my folks happy for a week or two!

Homemade Chocolate Syrup:
3 cups water

6 cups sugar

4 bars unsweetened chocolate (4oz)

1 tsp salt

1 T vanilla

Canning experts: can this be safely canned next time around? We just keep it in the fridge, but I'd love to know!

I'm linking up to

 

Homestead Barn Hop

The Seasonal Chef - Butternut Squash Soup Recipe

Trying to cook with what's available or what's left of the harvest in the middle of winter is a challenge. We're eating a lot of soups and stews these days, along with other meals we've squirreled away in our deep freezer.

My fairy kitchen helper searching for goodies in the pantry

Onions and shredded carrots from the garden we kept in the freezer. Potatoes and celery past their prime. Butternut squash from the garden that we're desperate to work our way through. Amazing, fatty bone stock from our Thanksgiving turkey.

It's still good!

Last year's garlic is over-eager. Can't wait for fresh garlic again!

How I preserved some of our garden herbs - in shot glasses

Throw it all together, cook 'till tender and blend till smooooth

 

Looks like baby food. Would totally work for baby food. And adult food too. It's very tasty.

I added some of the purée to turkey bone broth and shredded turkey we had in the freezer along with a little extra sage and thyme. The veggie purée thickened the soup and gave it some amazing flavor. No extra veggies or noodles required. My husband and I have been eating on this turkey soup for several days.

As for the rest of the purée, we may eat it just as a thick soup with a chunk of bread or I might add some meatballs to it to stretch it for a few more meals. I love experimenting with ingredients I have on hand mainly to see if it can be done. Our great grandparents wouldn't have thrown out those potatoes, I'm telling you.

Mid-Winter Garden Leftovers Soup:

8 small russet potatoes, peeled

2 butternut squashes, cooked and puréed

4 stalks celery

1 cup diced sweet onions

2 cups carrots

3 cups bone broth (I used turkey. Vegetable broth would work, too)

2 cups water

8 cloves garlic

1 oz pesto with no nuts

Pinch rubbed sage

Pinch ground thyme

Pinch ground black pepper

Salt to taste

Using up Butternut Squash - Muffin Recipe

Our butternut squash went just a little bit crazy last year. We had a really nice, mild summer for our region and I had the time to take much better care of the gardens. The result was that this cute little flower bed-turned-veggie patch went wild:

Not bad, we thought! Maybe we'll get luckier this year and get a dozen before the squash bugs kill the plants.

This was before it had a growth spurt. No joke.

It was beautiful in there. I wish I could have shrunk myself and gone camping in there.

This was just our first harvest. The plants survived the squash bugs and we got another round with even more than this.

We've eaten a lot with butter and brown sugar, we've puréed a lot and frozen it for later use, a lot has gone in soup and we've given it away. But we still have a squash problem. Today I made some muffins to chip away at the pile:

They're keeping beautifully. Only a few have gone bad so far.

These turned out great, but my picky little girl isn't too keen on the oatmeal texture. I keep trying with her and she's just not an oatmeal person. You win some, you lose some I suppose. Next time I'll stick to whole wheat flour for the whole recipe, even though I love the oats.

Butternut Squash Oat Muffins

2 cups puréed butternut squash (one 15 oz can pumpkin with one oz water would work, too)

4 eggs

1 cup melted butter (not too hot!)

2 1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup water

1 tsp salt

2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 T pumpkin pie spice (see below)

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 1/2 cup oatmeal (or sub this with flour if you'd rather have softer muffins)

350 degrees, 20-25 minutes for muffins, 30-35 minutes for mini loaf, 60-70 minutes for a large loaf

Pumpkin Pie Spice

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp allspice

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp ginger

I'm going to try and link up to it, I hope it works. I love checking in every week to find some inspiration in other people's blogs. I hope to have more to contribute when we expand a little more this spring!

Homestead Barn Hop

Healthier Chocolate Chip Oat Muffins

I made these to try to satisfy the whole family. Low in sugar for my Type 1 diabetic husband, high in good fats for my kiddo, and chocolate to make everyone happy.  I wanted to use up some eggs from my mom's neighbor's backyard chickens. The applesauce was from apples we picked from my sister-in-law's farm. There's melted Amish made butter. I may have eaten a few too many.

They turned out really good, but someone with a serious sweet tooth may want to add a bit of brown sugar. To me they taste just like heartier oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

Throw all the dry ingredients into the bowl

Mix in all the wet except for the chocolate chips. Make sure the butter isn't too warm, or it'll cook the eggs!

Be the hero mommy and let the kiddo be in charge of the chocolate chips. This meant my batch was one small handful shy of 1 cup.

The final consistency should be like extra sticky cookie dough that wants flour

But the resulting muffins are hearty and moist and wonderful. And definitely not glorified cupcakes.

Healthier Chocolate Chip Oat Muffins

1 cup oats

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 eggs

1 cup applesauce

1 tsp honey (if applesauce is unsweetened)

1 T vanilla

1/3 cup melted butter

1 cup chocolate chips

(Chopped walnuts or something would be great in here, too!)

Bake at 400 degrees for 16-18 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean

Spiced Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Bars

 Spiced Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Bars

I'm up and out the door by 6:15am most days to go to the family I nanny for. My husband drives our daughter over to me at a more reasonable hour on his way to work. In an effort to have a little more variety with a little more focus on health, I've tried and tweaked with an oatmeal bar recipe.
 

This recipe uses what we had in the pantry or in our freezer. Apple butter to use up what we had in the fridge, the bananas were sitting in the deep freeze forEVER, almond milk because I'm lactose intolerant, and chocolate chips because it tastes good. The spices in the apple butter are mild but add a lot of dimension. To be honest, these were only okay in a gooey-comfort-food-way the night I made them but phenomenal the next day reheated for breakfast in the toaster oven. Really, really good.

Add the wet ingredients and salt to the oatmeal

Mix it up and then add chocolate chips

Spread thinly in two baking dishes and bake. It couldn't be easier!

Spiced Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Bars:

4 cups oats

1 cup apple butter (mine was home made with no sugar added)

1 1/4 cup mashed overripe bananas

1/3 cup almond milk
2 T vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

Olive oil to spray the pans

Spread into two medium sized pans, bake at 400 degrees for 18-20 minutes