Arrrrgh!! Happy Halloween!!

Hope your Halloween was full of many treats, and not so many tricks!!

From Captain Kid and First Mate- Mommy :)

Butternut Squash Soup

So I set out to make a butternut squash soup this weekend, I had no recipe... just a few ideas from various recipes I've made recently.  I found this beautiful huge butternut squash at the grocery store, and just went with it

I peeled and "gutted" the squash, drizzled with olive oil, salt, pepper & brown sugar...

Meanwhile I chopped up a large yellow onion

Put it in the frying pan with some butter to soften up

Peeled 3 carrots...

Julienned them

Chopped 3 stalks of celery

added these to the mix as well in the frying pan and let them soften together a bit.

Took the squash out of the oven and gave it a rough chop

and dumped it all into the crock pot

I added one box of chicken broth, a tsp of nutmeg, a tablespoon of cinnamon, and some more salt and pepper and let it simmer for a couple hours...

I came back and tried to mash it, but it was still pretty chunky, so I added a pint of cream, and put it in the blender little by little to make it smooth.  It was SOOOOO good!!! Not bad for winging it.  I'm really glad it turned out so I didn't waste my time taking all these step-by-step pictures I'd then have had to destroy so you all wouldn't see them :) 

Recipe:

The King The Kid & I

Butternut Squash Soup

1 large butternut squash

1 large yellow onion

3 carrots

3 celery stalks

32 ounces Chicken Broth

1 pint heavy cream

1tsp brown sugar

1 tsp Nutmeg

1 Tbsp Cinnamon

Salt & Pepper

Olive oil

butter

1. Cut the squash in half, peel & "gut" it.  Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and brown sugar, bake 1 hour at 325 degrees

2. Chop onions, sautee on medium heat with butter just until transparent and softened

3. Chop or julienne carrots and celery (I'd skip the julienne if you plan to puree it anyway, too time consuming)  and add to pan with onions

4. Chop squash, add with other veggies in a crock pot, add chicken broth, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt and pepper, stir and allow to simmer, about 2 hours (you can adjust this, at this point it's just to further soften the squash and let the flavors come together)

5. Mash the "soup", or use an immersion blender (I covet an immersion blender), or a regular blender to puree the soup

6. Serve hot with biscuits. Enjoy!! Yum :)

It's A....

Baby Girl!!!

Our family of 4 is soon going to have 2 little girls :)

The Kid's birthday party

I love planning parties, most of the time, but after the HUGE Sock Monkey bash we had last year for The Kid's party and the big Ready to POP shower we had for my sister, I just wasn't up for a huge family/friends party this year. That's okay, The Kid was more than happy to have just pizza, cake, and presents with a few family members... so long as ELMO was there :) I did mostly store-bought stuff this year, with the exception of the cake (Momma made), and the Make-Your-Own grilled pizzas, courtesy of Nana Linnie I hope you enjoy the photos!

Blowing bubbles with cousin Michaela :)

I Love MELMO! :)

Mama made Elmo cake :)

Grampy "Bampa" lighting the candles on the cake...

Singing Happy Birthday :)

The aftermath... showing the cool "tie dye" cake center.

The Kid is two!!

Two years ago today our beautiful little girl was born at 7:10pm, weighing 8lbs 2oz and was 20.5 inches long. We're very excited today to be able to celebrate with an Elmo party, I'll be sure to share photos later! In the mean time I'll share some photos from the last two years!