Butternut Squash and White Bean Soup

OK, I know I said I wasn't going to be focused on Legume Wednesday on Wednesday anymore. But this Wednesday I happened to make this really great Legume dish and so I'm going with it. I think I'll clarify the whole Legume Wednesday to be Mostly Legume Wednesday. Or should that be Sometimes Legume Wednesday? Oh I don't know.

I can tell you that I had my first exam yesterday. In Adolescent Psychology. And it just figures that the test, like adolescence, was pretty much taken up by puberty. And I can also let you know that having to write letters to my imaginary son and daughter about what will happen to them in puberty as I desert them for the next five years was almost as painfully awkward as puberty itself. I hit the bare facts and then told my imaginary son to go ask his dad. I know, not all kids have active and involved dads, but as long as we're dealing with imaginary kids, I thought it perfectly reasonable to have this imaginary kid have a good imaginary relationship with the Brain. I also imagined that they were gifted children with an extensive vocabulary. I mean of course my imaginary children are brilliant. Geniuses really. Socially adept, popular, well behaved geniuses anyway.

Today in school we sang songs about means and averages. I'm not kidding. Yeah, this is graduate school. I'm not sure how to handle it all to be honest. But every day I drive down to the next county through rolling hills of farmland. The farmers are starting to plow the crops under. The corn is ready to be harvested and there are some huge golden soybean fields. Even the cows are starting to look furrier. Sooner rather than later it's going to be fall. I'm so ready. I love fall. And I think my drive is going to be beautiful when the leaves change colors. I just hope I'll be able to get that song out of my head by then.

SO in honor of fall, I made this healthy and delicious squash and white bean soup. It really took very little time. I mean I wouldn't beat out Rachel Ray and her 30 minutes business, but I don't think it took an hour and she has a prep team so that's just not fair. But the soup was mighty tasty and the bacon added a delicious smokiness to it. If you're a vegetarian you could probably substitute some fake bacon or just leave it out. There were some surprises too. Adding such a little bit of cream still made it so wonderfully creamy and it's not a sweet soup as most squash soups tend to be. This was a really flavorfull warmly spiced soup. It was a great lunch. Happy Wednesday.

Butternut Squash - White Bean Soup

lightly modified from Cooking Light

3 bacon slices

1 medium onion, chopped

4 stalks celery, minced

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 (1/2 pound) butternut squash, peeled and cut into 3/4 inch cubes

1/4 cup dry white wine

4 cups fat-free, less sodium chicken broth

1 tsp ground cumin

1/4 tsp ground red pepper

1/8 tsp ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp ground cloves

1/4 cup whipping cream

1 Tbsp chopped fresh oregano

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

2 (15 ounce) cans Great Northern beans, rinsed and drained

Cook bacon in a Dutch oven over medium heat until crisp. Remove bacon from pan, reserving 2 tsp drippings in pan. Crumble bacon and set aside.

Add onion, celery, and garlic to pan. Cook 3 minutes or until tender. Add squash and cook for 3 more minutes. Add wine and cook until most of the liquid is evaporated. Stir in broth, cumin, red pepper, cinnamon, and cloves. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes or until the squash is tender. Stir in the cream, oregano, salt, black pepper, beans and bacon. Bring to a boil and then remove from heat.

Yields 6, 1 1/2 cup servings.

Tuna and White Bean Salad

For a while there I thought Fall was just around the corner. Apparently it was a trick. No sooner had we pulled out the air conditioner for the end of the summer than we get to have 90 degree F. weather. Yay. And I don't know about you, but when it gets hot, I get stupid. Like really, not too bright. A prime example was today. I reached for a can of garbanzo beans. I thought I grabbed a can of garbanzo beans. I opened a can of cannellini beans. Oops.

SO today's Legume Wednesday selection is, yet again, not what I had planned. However, this is a really good dish for today. It's packed with protein so it's a great stand alone lunch. And there's no mayonnaise so it doesn't have to be vigilantly refrigerated. And it's a really satisfying and tasty dish. I changed the spices up from the original Bon Appetit recipe. Mostly because my parsley plant has finally bit the dust, and for some reason I don't have any sage in the cupboards. Don't worry, I didn't have a meltdown.

Tuna and White Bean Salad

adapted from Bon Appetit

1 6 ounce can tuna

3 Tbsp olive oil

2 Tbsp red wine vinegar

1/3 cup chopped onion

1 Tbsp dried oregano

1 15 ounce can cannellini beans, rinsed and drained

salt and pepper to taste

Whisk olive oil and vinegar together in a medium bowl. Add onion and oregano. Mix in beans and tuna. Season to taste with salt and fresh cracked pepper.

Chickpea Salad with Parsley, Lemon and Sun-Dried Tomatoes

OK, so Legume Wednesday is happening on Thursday this week. I have a good excuse for being late though. I got two days off and realized that if I didn't zip up to Michigan to visit some friends and family, then I wouldn't get to see them until after the school semester ended. I'll be in school Monday through Friday and I rarely get a weekend off from frying donuts.

I figure that you don't want to hear about the 6 loaves of bread I brought back from Zingerman's, or how much fun I had sampling cheeses at Morgan and York. How the Queen Geek and I hung out together, or how delicious lunch at Sweet Lorraine's was with my best friend T and her son. And really, did you want a play by play of my stay at my mom's house? I've seen their new vegetable garden they're putting in next year and it looks pretty big. And their cats are crazy as always.

But I'm totally off subject. Let me tell you about tonight's legume dish, Chickpea Salad with Parsley, Lemon, and Sun-Dried Tomatoes. I have to admit, when I woke up today it was with a little bit of dread because I had no idea what I was going to post on today. The day started to wear on and my mind kept running because I just was drawing a complete blank on bean dishes. Finally, I sat down with my Bon Appetit cookbook. I knew I wanted a salad. I knew it couldn't involve dried beans because it was already noon. And I wanted something different and tasty. Yowza did I get it! This chickpea salad has the strong sun-dried tomato flavor balanced by some pungent cumin oil and mellowed by the coolness of the cucumber and zing of the lemon juice. It's served at room temperature and with no mayonnaise it would be perfect for a barbecue or a picnic. I think this salad makes a lovely lunch all by itself.

Chickpea Salad with Parsley, Lemon, and Sun-Dried Tomatoes

from Bon Appetit

1/4 cup olive oil

1 Tbsp cumin seeds

2 15oz. cans garbanzo beans rinsed and drained

1 cucumber, seeded and chopped

1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

1/3 cup drained oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, thinly sliced

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

1 garlic clove, crushed in a garlic press

1/4 tsp dried crushed red pepper

Combine oil and cumin seeds in heavy small saucepan. Cook over medium heat 5 minutes to blend flavors, stirring occasionally. Cool completely.

Combine remaining ingredients in large bowl. Add cumin oil and toss to blend. Season salad to taste with salt and pepper. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and refrigerate. Bring to room temperature before serving.)

Booze Soup!

The night before the Brain and I left on our honeymoon, a week after the wedding so we could relax and sleep and get all those thank you notes out, his parents took us to a restaurant by the Cleveland airport for dinner. There we were, grateful the wedding was over, ready to start our lives together, fairly exhausted from the wedding planning and execution, excited to go on our honeymoon, and ready for some quiet time. The weather was beautiful and sunny, a dramatic change from the snow on our wedding night (in APRIL). Yes, winter never ends here. Anyway, poised on the beginning of adventure, there we were at this really good restaurant, and I had the beer soup.

I'd never had beer soup before. I think on some level I mourned the 35 years of my life that went by without me having tasted it. Kind of like how I feel about sauerkraut balls and fennel and other such delicious things I grew up not knowing about. It was delicious and cheesy and tasted definitely of beer. And up until now I've simply lived with the memory. The Brain doesn't do so well with dairy.

But then a couple weeks ago, my sister in law handed me a cookbook with this recipe marked. It is the Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread cookbook. The recipe was the Tomato and Potato Cheddar Soup with Beer. She had thought it looked like a good recipe, but her terrific kids happen to be mighty picky eaters and the cookbook just had more elegant tastes than the kids would eat. I happily took the cookbook off her hands and decided that I would make the soup (or my version of it) and eat it for lunches while the Brain was off with the older men on Thursday afternoons, and during Rotary and times like that.

Well now, the Brain looks at my soup and I keep telling him, "no no no, you can't have this soup". It's mean of me. I know. But this soup is REALLY good. And it would make his tummy REALLY hurt. And I did, after all, make him Manwiches *shudder* for lunch today, so it's not like I don't cook what he likes to eat. In fact we've had so much pizza and Chinese and spaghetti and more pizza this week, that I really have to apologize that I didn't try anyone else's recipes this week. I barely made enough to blog about. Sorry, it's been a lazy lazy week.

Tomato Potato Beer Cheddar Soup

adapted from the Daisy Hollow Soup & Bread Cookbook

1 bottle Ale

6 large potatoes, unpeeled, cut into 1/4 inch slices

4 cups chicken stock

3 bay leaves

1/2 tsp dried basil

1/2 tsp dried oregano

4 Tbsp (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

1 large onion chopped

1 rib celery chopped

1 carrot peeled and sliced

5 cloves of garlic crushed in a garlic press

1 15oz can petite diced tomatoes, undrained

1 Tbsp soy sauce

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

2 Tbsp flour

1 cup heavy cream

1/4 tsp Tabasco sauce

1/2 tsp dry mustard

12 oz. extra sharp cheddar, shredded

salt and pepper to taste

fresh flat leaf parsley for garnish

1. Pour the beer into a heavy dutch oven. Add the potatoes and stock. If the potatoes aren't covered add enough water to cover them. Add the basil, oregano and bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat to medium low and simmer for 30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile in a large skillet, melt the butter and saute the onions until they begin to soften, about 3 minutes. Add the celery, garlic and carrot and saute about 5 minutes more. Add the tomatoes, Worcestershire, and soy sauce, and cook, stirring frequently, for 10 to 20 minutes until the liquid evaporates. Sprinkle the flour over the mixture and cook, stirring constantly for 1 to 2 minutes. Gradually add the cream and stir while cooking until the mixture thickens. Add the dry mustard and Tabasco. Transfer the entire mixture to a food processor or blender and process until smooth.

3. Stir the cream mixture into the dutch oven.Turn down the heat so that the liquid barely simmers. Add the cheese and cook, stirring frequently until the cheese melted and the potatoes are falling apart, about 20 minutes more. Once the potatoes are falling apart, blend the soup with an immersion blender until smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Let sit for about an hour to let the flavors develop and then bring back up to temperature and serve garnished with parsley.

Pretty Radish Sandwiches

Tonight, I had to do a late run through Meijers for butter because I have some cupcakes that need frosting. How did I run out of butter? I was up there anyway because I had killed my cell phone earlier this week and I had a library book that was due today that I didn't finish, but that's ok because I didn't really enjoy it. But I had to drive up to return it. But I digress....

Anyhow, so I'm wandering hungrily through Meijers and this happy little radish bunch lept off the shelf and into my cart. Ok I'm lying. I picked them up and put them in my cart. They were just so pretty and fresh looking and promised that spring was right around the corner. Well that and I remembered seeing a picture of an open faced radish sandwich in the latest issue of Bon Appetit. Sheesh I love that magazine!

These little radish sandwiches were so easy and quick to put together. I'm now in full anticipation for spring and the first peppery radishes to come out of my backyard garden. Because although my little radishes were downright cute, they weren't as peppery as the ones I grew last year. Now those were good.

Radishes, by the way are really good for you. They are relatives of the turnip. They are high in ascorbic acid, folic acid and potassium. They're also good source of vitamin B6, riboflavin, magnesium, copper and calcium. They also have a low calorie density. They also can be used for a variety of homeopathic medical remedies.

For all of that, there really is no recipe for these sandwiches. Well Bon Appetit came up with one and if you want to see it you can read it here. But what I did was use unsalted butter to butter as many cocktail slices of bread as I was going to eat. I then sprinkled the butter with kosher salt. Then I carefully thinly sliced as many radishes as it took to cover the bread. Then I ate it. Deeeeeelicious!