The Sweatshop of Love Blog

I have just come around to squash soups. Actually, I’ve just come around to squash. They are kind of scary, right? But a combination of thriftiness and a need for more local eating has brought many of them into my life. Every Midwestern girl should know her way around a squash.

There are lots of recipes out there for some kind of squash and some kind of apple soup. They have weird ingredients, or a million ingredients! I based this recipe off this Keep it Simple Foods recipe for Butternut Squash and Apple Soup , but I’m here to tell you that you can use any kind of squash and any kind of apple. I’ve made this a few times now, each time with a different squash, and it always turns out well.

Squash and Apple Soup Recipe

Ingredients (makes 2-4 servings, depending on size of squash)

1 Squash

1 Apple

1 Small Onion

1 tbsp Oil (any kind)

1 Garlic Clove

3 cups Stock

Seasonings: Black Pepper and Cinnamon, to taste

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Cut squash in half and place both halves face down in a pan with about 1 inch of water. If you are using an acorn squash or other small squash, bake for 45 minutes. If you are using a butternut squash or other larger squash, bake for 60 minutes.

2. After squash is cool, skin and cut into chunks.

3. Heat oil in large pot. Cook diced onion until translucent. Add garlic, diced apple, and squash chunks and saute until apple is soft, about 5 minutes.

4. Add stock and bring to a boil. Your soup will look like this!

Chunky Soup

5. If you don’t have an emulsion blender you can use a potato masher to mash the crap out of the soup. Just keep it simmering, mash it down, let it simmer, mash it down, until you have the soup consistency you like.

PT, Armed and Ready

If you DO have an emulsion blender, blend till your heart is content!

6. Mix in seasonings to taste and serve!

Yummy Soup!

Tuna Goodness

When I was little my mom always had to work late on Thursday nights, so my dad was in charge of dinner. He always said we could have anything under the sun. Sometimes we took advantage of his declaration and went to our favorite restaurant Sam’s Joint, a small chain of restaurants in West Michigan that apparently doesn’t have a website. But a lot of the time we just wanted Tuna Helper.

I did a little googling and they have like 12 different verities of Tuna Helper now! Different cheeses and seasoning flavors. I’m pretty sure we had one choice in the early ’90s, and that was Fatty Mc’Fat.

(A 12 pack of Fatty Mc’Fat on Amazon!)

So last March I got a weird craving for Tuna Helper and made some without the box, which has pretty much everything you need to make Tuna Helper but some milk, butter, and a can of tuna. Since then I’ve made it for PT and even dinner guests. And now you, too, can make Tuna Helper without the RIDICULOUS sodium, saturated fat, and cholesterol content. Yay!

Ingredients

Ingredients (for 2)

4 oz Whole Wheat Pasta, any shape

2 oz shredded cheese, cheddar or pepper jack are great

1/4 – 1/2 cup milk

1 tbsp margarine or butter substitute

About 2 cups of broccoli

1 can of tuna, drained

Sprinkle of cheesy popcorn seasoning

Fresh cracked pepper to taste

1. Get your pasta cooking as directed but set timer to go off three minutes before pasta will be done.

2. Chop your broccoli, grate your cheese, open and drain your tuna into the cat’s bowl while the pasta is cooking.

Tuna Helper Makes Happy Cats!

Pudge Rodriguez likes the tuna water and Velma likes the tuna, so while Pudge is chowing down I slip Velma a few tuna flakes.

3. Add the chopped broccoli to the boiling pasta when there is three minutes left of cooking time.

4. When the pasta is cooked turn off the heat, drain the pasta and broccoli, and return to pan. Add 1/4 cup milk, butter substitute or margarine, grated cheese, tuna, and, that is right, a sprinkle of cheesy popcorn seasoning.

Popcorn Seasoning

You still need a tiny fake cheese taste! When I first started making it I stole fake cheese packages out of packaged cheesy potatoes or something, but when I stumbled upon this popcorn shaker I knew it would be perfect! You obviously don’t use a lot, this stuff is a heart attack in a bottle, but a 1/2 tablespoon goes a long way.

Ready to Rock

The heat from the pan, pasta, and broccoli melts the cheese as you stir. Add more milk if you want it a little creamier.

Serve and LOVE!

Dish it out, crack some pepper over it, and you are done!

I can’t help it. I love this stuff. This version is a ton healthier than using real Tuna Helper, with the whole wheat pasta and the broccoli and the (mostly) real cheese. It is quick and simple and you can do the dishes while you are cooking it! Which is something I always look for in a recipe: small amounts of down time that forces me to clean my kitchen.

I always joke about eating like a poor person, but all healthy vegetarians eat like poor people. Unless it’s a special occasion, our meals usually cost between $1-2  a person.

One of my favorite poor person meals is Roasted Potatoes, Veggies, and Beans. It’s also a great pantry meal, when you haven’t gone grocery shopping in a month and there really isn’t anything left. It’s warm and filling and an excellent comfort meal. It’s 10am and I want some right now.

Ingredients

Ingredients (for 2)

Four baking potatoes cut into pieces

Two large carrots

One onion

2/3 cup prepared beans (black, northern, pinto, any!). If canned, drain and rinse. If dried, soak as directed and rinse.

Two cloves of garlic, diced or garlic pressed

Three tbsp oil, divided

Spices of your choice! I use: pepper, sea salt, fennel seeds, red pepper flakes, rosemary, bbq seasoning, cumin

1. Preheat oven to 350. Spray a baking sheet or 9 x 13 cake pan with cooking spray. Cut up your potatoes and toss them in a bowl in 2 tablespoons oil and seasonings.

Ready to Roast!

2. Spread your seasoned and oiled potatoes in your pan and throw them in your hot oven. Bake for 45 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, cut up your onion and carrots and put them in the same bowl you used to season your potatoes. Add beans, garlic, remaining (1 tbsp) oil, and re-season.

Ready for Round Two!

4. After your potatoes have baked for 45 minutes, take the potatoes out for a hot second, add carrot mixture, stir to combine, and bake for another 20 minutes.

Ready to Eat!

5. When it comes out the potatoes will be crisp on the outside and creamy on the inside, the carrots will still be crisp, the beans will be warm and seasoned, and the onions sweet.

Ready to Love

I squirt a little ketchup on mine because I love potatoes and ketchup! PT uses sriracha to spice it up a little. Either way, this dish is the perfect warm meal on a fall day.

And lets break this down:

4 Potatoes: 35 cents

2 Carrots: 15 cents

1 Onion: 10 cents

2/3 Cups Beans, Dried: 25 cents

Oil, Garlic, and Seasonings: Maybe 20 cents?

Meal Total: $1.05 and I’m being generous. I know I got that 10 pound bag of potatoes in my pantry on sale for $1.25, and I got the 5 pound bag of black beans for about $4 on sale. 1 pound of dried beans makes 5 cups. I’m not a mathematician, but that would be like, what? 13 cents for 2/3  cups of beans?

I’m making allowances for non sale items and we are still looking at a meal for two for $1.05! I love that.

I had every intention of making Hungry Girl’s Sassy Salsa Pumpkin Soup last night. My mom has made and loves this soup, my friend Liz sent me the recipe last week talking about how amazing it is. PT had a long and ridiculous week at work, so I was going to be a good girlfriend and make him some focaccia, which is quickly becoming our favorite bread.

Not a Lot of Trunk Space

But there is a shortage of canned pumpkin. I guess the crop last year was much smaller than usual, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. Pumpkin pie mix? Yes. Pumpkin? No. I went to Target, CVS, Strack and Van Til, and Walgreens and there was no canned pumpkin.

So I got a pumpkin! It’s pumpkin season, they are everywhere, this one cost $1.35, which is probably less than a can of pumpkin would cost me. The problem, of course, is I also needed milk, and my bike doesn’t have a lot of trunk space, so it was a slow trip home.

(See the tape recorder in there, too? I’ve got to transcribe an interview this weekend for Grocer Gram. And my Glorified Necklace! Which I take everywhere.)

I love pumpkin soup made with a pumpkin, so I wasn’t sorry to see that my easy pumpkin soup was going to have to be traded in for a much more complicated one. Because this recipe is worth it.

The Ultimate Vegetarian Cookbook

I made this soup a million times last fall and have perfected the recipe. It is based on the Pumpkin recipe in The Ultimate Vegetarian Cookbook by Roz Denny I found at a thrift store last summer and love love love. The Pumpkin recipe, though, is a PAIN IN THE ASS. I did it exactly like how it tells me to in the cookbook only once, because getting the pumpkin flesh out without chopping up the pumpkin is only something I would do for a very special occasion. A Friday night is not that occasion.

Post Baking

Dead Pumpkin

Baking, slicing, skinning, and chopping up a pumpkin is a messy business. But I would do it again. And again. And am going to do it again and again. Because there is nothing like freshly baked pumpkin soup.

Without further ado, my pumpkin soup recipe:

Pumpkin Soup, With A Pumpkin

Serves 4 Really Hungry People

Ingredients:

1/2 a pie pumpkin

1 onion, sliced

Oil; veggie, canola, olive, whatever you’ve got

1 14 oz can of tomatoes; diced or stewed, doesn’t matter

1 cup whole wheat pasta, any shape

2 cups veggie stock

2 cloves of garlic. diced

Vegetables; again, whatever you’ve got! Zucchini, yellow squash, mushrooms, carrots, celery, broccoli, corn, and any combination, totaling about 4 cups

Beans (optional) – half a can, or about a cup, add a lot to the soup

Salt, pepper, ginger to taste

Directions:

1. Move your oven rack to the lowest level and preheat oven to 350. Cut off the top of your pumpkin just like you would if you were making a jack-o-lantern, and scoop out the seeds and the loose gunk. No need to clean it too much; you are slicing this baby open soon, so that will make it a lot easier.

2. Bake pumpkin with the lid on for 45 minutes. Take the top off and let it cool until you can handle it. Skin it and chop it up! I think it’s easiest to cut the pumpkin into 4ths, skin it, and then cut it into chunks. Save half of it – it will stay good in your fridge for like 2 weeks.

3. In a big soup pot, saute onion and pumpkin on medium heat in oil till onion is cooked, about 10 minutes.

4. Add veggies and cook for about 5 minutes, or longer, depending on your veggies. Stir in tomatoes, stock, pasta, beans if you so choose, and seasonings. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and let simmer 10 minutes.

5. Serve! Add more seasonings if necessary – this soup is great with lots of fresh ground pepper.

Goddamn!

Last night I made it with two carrots, half a yellow squash, and the left over beans from burritos the other night. It made me wish I had pinto beans on hand because pinto beans are so good in this soup! But mine were all dried. Next time!

Focaccia!

The focaccia turned out really well, though a little dense because of the humidity yesterday. It just made it crispier, which is always welcomed.

Terror Kitties

They kitties were waiting at the table, wondering what was taking so long for their dinners! PT hardly had the patience to let me take this picture, though, our dinner smelled so good!

The stupid Tigers have been in first place since May 10th, but that really doesn’t mean they are a good team. That just means they are slightly less sucky than the rest of the teams in their division.

They have been playing AWFUL for the past week and a half, after sweeping the Rays IN FLORIDA two weekends ago, tricking me into thinking they might be a good team. No. Oh no. They are just trickers. Because they have dropped SEVEN OF THE LAST TEN games. And just because they are doing slightly better than the Twins and White Sox still, despite all that losing, doesn’t mean they are a good team.

So after the Tigers gave up 5 runs in 3 innings and having this conversation with PT:

Ingredients!

Ingrediants

COOOOOkies

The Tigers lost 9-2, but I ate 4 cookies so I don’t feel as bad. We are playing the Twins this weekend, but at least I’ve already given up on life so I don’t have to get mad at PT about it.