Autumn in a bowl!!!

“The falling leaves drift by the window

The autumn leaves of red and gold….”

I found a beautiful song by Nat King Cole, and really wanted to share it with you.  I wish I could say this inspired me to make my lovely soup today, but the butternut squash inspired me more.

I just adore butternut squash, the flavor is amazing, and it is so good in everything.  A few weeks ago we went to a chili cookoff in Charlotte.  There was a vegetarian chili with chunks of butternut squash.  OH MY! DELISH!!!

So today I decided to make a Vegan vegetable soup, with lots of colorful vegetables.  I did not want to use a store-bought vegetable stock, because of the high amount of sodium.  I wanted to create a beautiful stock from all the wonderful flavors in the soup.

I found a beautiful butternut squash that was grown in North Carolina.  I love buying locally-grown fruits, and vegetables!

First, I peeled the squash.  I used a different peeler then I normally do, it is so much easier to use for the squash.  Also, MUCH faster!

I took each piece, and first sliced them in half.  I then cut them into cubes. Be very careful though, the squash is really hard.

I love my dutch oven!  Seriously, a dutch oven is the best investment anyone can make.  You may not have $200-$300 to spend on a Le Creuset brand dutchoven?  Then the  Cooks brand is just as wonderful.  Cooks brand can be found at JC Penney’s, and I believe this dutchoven was $60.00.  I have had it for a few years already, and use it all the time.  So you can see it is still just as good, but about a quater of the cost of the Le Creuset.

Take the cubes of squash and saute’ in the pot with about a 1/4 cup of olive oil.  Stir it around for about 5-10 minutes, or until starting to soften.  I added in a medium onion that was diced, along with about 5 cloves of garlic.

I specifically looked for vegetables that would be really colorful in the soup.  Along with, vegetables that would give a lot of flavor, since I was not using a stock.  I chose a red bell pepper I diced up, sweet corn I cut off the cob, carrots sliced.  Also, Kale – which I remove the stalk from the leaves, and roughly chopped.

To give some extra flavor I decided to add a bunch of sage I picked in my herb garden.  I chopped the sage up finely, and added half of it when sauting the squash.  Then the last 15 minutes of the cooking process I added the other half of the chopped sage.  I think I should have added a bay leaf in the beginning for extra flavor, but forgot of course.  Add salt and pepper to taste through out the cooking process, get it to your taste preference.

There is probably 5-6 cups of water, it was a really hearty soup.  I let it cook for about 45 minutes, to almost an one hour.  I added the kale the last 14 minutes of the cooking process, otherwise it would really start to lose the viberate green color.

Seriously doesn’t this look like Autumn in a bowl?  My tummy was soooo happy, and I was full for at least 4 hours.   I served with socialable crackers from Trader Joe’s, and Earth Balance butter.

It was that good!  My hubby and I are members of the clean bowl club now:)

Today I decided to try it with some sausage to see how the flavors would work.  My husband loves meat, so I wanted to see how the dish would be with a spicy sausage.  It was really, really good, and spicy sausage complements the dish.

What is your favorite thing to make with butternut squash?

Until next time, Come on in, Have a seat,

Hugs, Terra