New Toys & New Re-Sip-EEEs

You don't need a lot of fancy kitchen gadgets and gizmos to make healthy meals....but they sure make it easier and more fun!

Between Christmas and my Bday (two days after Christmas), I (or we rather) received the following kitchen items:

• stick blender
• Kitchenaid professional stand mixer
• Kitchenaid food processor
• mandolin
• calphalon sauce pan
• 3 blade slicer/peeler
• mixing bowls
• strainer/sifter
• measuring cups
• large non-stick saute pan
• grill

And I'm probably forgetting something. ;) Needless to say, it was a great holiday and I got a lot of great cookware.

You know how you always think of things you need like shaving cream, but then when you get to Target you forgot what they were? Well, as I sift through recipes and watch the food network I always think of things I would like for my kitchen. And then when I get them I can't seem to remember why I specifically wanted them in the first place. So I've been looking for ways to use my new toys.

Here's what I've come up with so far:
Last week I made a "salsa" of sorts and served it with seared tuna. I can't take credit for the recipe, I got it from the cooking class I took. But I can take credit for my creative use of leftovers. I took the extra salsa, which consisted of finely sliced onions, oranges, fennel, and more (recipe to come later), and mixed it into plain whole wheat couscous. It was sooooooo good! Now we have a whole new meal using something that would've gone to waste.

Then last night I made a butternut squash soup with cilantro pesto and homemade croutons.
Here is the recipe.

Butternut Squash Soup

• About 1 pound of butternut squash. I used the pre-cut kind, as it was actually cheaper than buying, peeling and cutting a whole squash (always check for the best price!)
• Bouillon for broth
• 1 onion
• olive oil or fresh butter for sauteeing
• S&P
• The original recipe also called for a can of pumpkin to make the soup creamy, but all of the stores I visited were out of pumpkin, so I omitted it.

1. Slice or dice your onion
2. Heat about 1 T of EVOO or butter in a stock pot
   
3. Cook onion in pot until fragrant and slightly browned
4. Add water to the pot (be careful this will produce steam) As usual, I can't say how much to add. I guessed and just filled the pot about halfway. The end goal was to have the water just covering the squash after it was added.
5. Add bouillon cubes to the water. I used 2 large cubes. Don't be afraid to add bouillon, but don't add too much, it can make it salty. You can always add some salt and seasoning at the end, but you can't take salt away if you add too much in the beginning. So if you want to be more precise than I am, start by adding maybe 6 cups of water and the correct proportion of bouillon based on what it says on the box (varies by size and type of cube.) Then add more water and cubes if needed.
6. Add the squash to the pot. If the squash is not all submerged, add a little more water.
7. Season the soup with salt and pepper.
8. Cover and bring to a boil.
   
9. Reduce to a simmer and allow to cook ~10 minutes or until squash are soft.
10. At this point I used my new stickblender to blend away the chunks and produce a creamy soup. Unfortunately, because I didn't add the pumpkin and I used a little too much water, this left with with a very liquidy soup....but it's soup, right?!? And it still tasted great, but read on for those results.

Homemade Cilantro Pesto

• ~2 cups of roughly chopped cilantro or any fresh herb you have
• 2 T of fresh thyme (0r half the amount of dried thyme)
• Lemon or lime juice (I think we used about 1 T) (I don't know for sure because Sir Cakewalk made this part of the meal)(but you really can't go wrong, cause you can always taste it and adjust...just start with a small amount)
• 1/4 cup EVOO of good quality
• Salt (no P)
  

1. Place cilantro and thyme in food processor and blend until finely chopped
2. Add lemon juice and salt and pulse to combine
3. While it is mixing, slowly add in the EVOO
4. Taste and adjust (ours was a tad too liquidy, so we added a little more cilantro and salt)

Homemade Croutons

• Bread with a hardish crust (I like Rye from Trader Joe's)

1. Slice your bread into cubes
2. Place on an ungreased baking sheet
3. Cook in oven at ~350 until bread is crunchy

Now put it all together:

1. Ladle soup into bowls
2. Spoon about 1/2 T of pesto into the center of the soup
3. Top with a few breadcrumbs
4. Enjoy!

This meal was delicious and very simple to make! Plus we have tons of leftovers. We also used some of the uncooked bread to dunk into the pesto like a dip. Yum!!!! It left us with stinky breath, but it was worth it.

Note: If you are watching your waistline, just go easy on the pesto since it is mostly oil. The soup has very little calories but tons of vitamins and fiber. So overall this is a very light meal, even with the pesto accent.