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!

While I’m coughing a lot still and can’t quite muster up my regular energy, I’m feeling much better. I went for an afternoon walk with my friend Rachel yesterday and by the end of it I was wiped. What normally would be an easy 2 hour stroll around the boulevards felt like a half marathon. I hate it. Of course I get sick four days into my gym membership! I haven’t been in a week.

Sick Person Food?

More like cold person food. It is 57 and rainy and all I wanted was soup when I clomped my way home from work in my rain boots. I stole a can of PT’s Progresso lentil soup, which was pretty good. I made an amazing grilled cheese to go with it, and have been drinking chamomile tea all afternoon.

Egg Sandwich and Potatoes

For dinner last night mixed four eggs, a couple spoonfuls of chunky salsa, some onion and a splash of milk together and poured it into two big muffin cups. I baked them, sliced them, melted some cheddar on them, and ate them as a sandwich with potatoes. This little improvised egg sandwich was great! So tasty with the salsa and cheddar. And you see how beautiful my bread looks? This was a really good batch.

Toe Up Sock

Tuesday was part one of my Toe Up Sock Class, so I got to start my next pair! Last night after dinner PT and I walked over to Streetside to watch the Tigers Sox game and I worked on this the whole time. I’m about an inch away from where I need to be for Toe Up Sock Class Part Two – The Heel.

Tonight is Sweater Club. I just ordered more yarn for my Summer Sweater, and a couple skeins of sock yarn, so I’ll be working on my sweater pattern tonight. I’ve gotten a few calls for sweater help, so I’m not expecting much knitting time for myself, however. I’ve got to make sure my ladies are on the right track!

It is dangerous to be as erratic as baseball is. One moment you have a 5-0 lead and three outs later your are trailing 6-5. One moment you feel good about the decisions you’ve made in the past few months and one conversation later you are laying in bed on a rainy day questioning everything.

Tuesday at this time I was riding high. The Tigers were coming off a sweep of the Indians, the rest of their May schedule was looking relatively easy; all mediocre teams till the first week of June. I was thinking we could get up a few games on the Royals and hope things fall into place in June. Magglio would be back. Bonderman would be back. Carlos Gullien would be back. Two of three in the Metrodome seemed possible.

Now I’m reading about these games I had to witness over the past three days in bewildered awe.

A) How did I not kill someone?

B) How could I have thought I was watching a good team?

C) Why am I dating a Twins fan?

D) Why do I like this stupid, boring sport?

E) How do you blow a 5-0 lead?

F) How do you give up a walk off grand slam to JOE FUCKING CREDE?

G) How do you not score with two men on and no outs over and over and over again?

Bewildered. Awe.

So of course if I live 7 months of my life on the Detroit Tigers Emotional Roller Coaster how can I expect the rest of my life won’t get pulled along with it? I have no idea what I’m doing with my life. One of these days I’m going to wake up and think, ‘I have no idea what I’m doing with my life,’ and it won’t be immediately followed by me thinking, ‘You are young, it doesn’t matter’. Most of the time I think I know what I’m doing. Today? Not so much. Today I should have a 9-5 with benefits and an actual pay check that is direct deposited into my money market savings account. Today I should not be sitting at home at 2:30 on a Friday afternoon blogging, I should be in an office somewhere in heels doing some bullshit.

Tomorrow, though, I will feel better. The Tigers will win tonight. Jackson is pitching and the As are terrible. They can’t lose 4 in a row, they just aren’t that bad. And I’ve seen bad. It will be sunny tomorrow, which will help. The Modern Wing finally opens and is free through the 22nd so I won’t have to think about how I could have used those $12 towards food/my cell phone bill. That will help, too.

Grilled Cheese, Salad, Lentil Soup

Tomorrow it will be more important to me that I get to eat as well as I do, with all my cooking time. More grilled cheese with fresh bread. More homemade lentil soup. More freshly chopped salads. More homemade pizzas and cookies and crock pot things. More homemade pasta.

But there is a difference between knowing you are going to feel better and actually feeling it. Tomorrow I know I will feel better. Today I’m feeling down in the dumps – stupid for quitting my job, stupid for not valuing money like I should, stupid for not trying harder to make money, stupid for loving things I have no control over. Stupid for being sad. Stupid. In need of cupcake. Stupid. In need of bad romantic comedy on hulu.

I’m chilling out, recovering from 31 cent scoop night at Baskin Robbins (PT and I toured Logan Square, hitting up both within walking distance of my apartment), the tiger’s loss (though I will say they were down 7 runs and didn’t give up, and am as happy as I can be with an 8-6 loss), and finishing The History of Love this afternoon. As far as I’m concerned this book more than made up for our Playing With the Grown-Ups debacle of last month. More than anything I’m excited about what the Knitting Book Club has to say about it. Having read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close for our first month’s book, and Nicole and Jonathan being married and all, there are some obvious correlations that I’m anxious to talk about with other people who have read both books.

Extremely Loud aside, I loved The History of Love. I love how it unfolded, how the mystery was laid out before I even realized I was looking for a mystery. I loved Leo. I loved everything about him, everything he did, everything he said. I cared, which wouldn’t be a big point to make had I not just been coming off a book where I would rather have killed everyone than read another page about any character in it. I cared so much that I cried through the last 20 pages, and for 10 minutes after finishing it. And I’m sorry its over, and I’m sorry it is back at the library.

But enough! I’ve got to save some of this material for Monday.

The History of Love, and Lentil Soup

I cooked up some lentil soup when I got home from work this afternoon and ate it with a piece of homemade bread, while reading. Then I cleaned my bathroom and read more. Cleaned the kitchen and read more. Sipped tea and read more.

I did not work on my sock though! And I still haven’t finished my quilt.

Fresh Mango Oat Bowl

PT and I found mangoes 3 for $1 at this Hispanic grocery store over the weekend, so we chopped one up and threw it in our oats this morning. Delicious! Fresh mango is so versatile! Throw it in fish tacos=winner. Throw it in oats=winner. Throw it in a burrito=winner. Throw it on ice cream=winner! You just can’t lose.

Sauteed Veggie Sandwich with Rosemary Potatoes

Last night for dinner PT and I made seriously amazing rosemary potatoes. We sauteed up some onions, peppers, and carrots and threw it on some homemade bread with pepper jack cheese and, in my case, fake bacon.

But seriously I can’t look at this food right now. Despite the walking we had to do between Baskin Robins, I’m feeling a little rough right now. Apple Pie Ala Mode was the champion ice cream flavor, though, if you were wondering.

Side Note: I’m kind of obsessed with my blog stats so I check them all the time. It is fun for me to see what weirdos search in order for my blog to come up. Examples: ‘Sandra Bullock with Dildo’, ‘Using Light Sabor as Dildo’, and ‘Dildo Quilt’. I blame Brijeet.

The other day a blog reader said that it was a nice change of pace reading my blog because I write about things I love and don’t really complain all that much. I do like a good complain every once in a while. I complain to my BF Rachel. My complains are just unblogworthy, like boy bullshit and the amount of puke Velma produces. Or they are just big downers, like my baby brother being in jail.

Drooool

I’d much rather talk about shrimp pizza. I’ve talked about this shrimp pizza before, but seriously seriously seriously seriously this pizza is so out of control amazing it should be talked about every day.

Pizza Crust:

1 1/4 c flour

1 c whole wheat flour

Combine 3/4 c warm water, 1 1/2 t yeast, 1 1/2 T olive oil and a pinch of salt, add to flour until a dough forms, let rise for 1 hour.

Meanwhile saute 1/2 a red onion and 1/2 a white onion and 3-4 cloves of garlic up in oil. Add shrimp until cooked. Add 1/2 a can of pineapple and 2 T teriyaki sauce, stir to coat.

Preheat oven to 425. Roll out pizza crust, sprinkle with mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. Add a hand full of spinach to the shrimp mixture and mix till the leaves are wilted, dump mixture over crust. Sprinkle more mozzarella and Parmesan and drop goat cheese sporadically over it. Bake for 20 minutes.

Best. Pizza. Ever. I wouldn’t lie to you. Just LOOK at it!

Oaty Goodness

I love breakfast, this is not news. But I don’t eat pancakes everyday, surprisingly. I eat oats. I love them. I have a bowl of some oaty concoction most every morning, and sometimes for lunch or dinner. I found a cute food blog Carrots N Cake, and she loves oats, too. My oats usually consists of milk, oats, some fruit and nuts or cereal. This mix is 1/2 of oats, 1/3 cup of milk, an apple chopped up, a heaping spoonful of pumpkin (idea from Carrots N Cake), a sprinkle of dried blueberries and another sprinkle of GoLEAN Crunch cereal. It is amazing with the pumpkin! I’ll be keeping that idea for sure.

HamBone-Less Soup

PT and I made bean soup Sunday afternoon in the crock-pot by just throwing in whatever was laying around. I bought a bag of mixed beans, HamBone mixed beans, to be exact. They were nice enough to include a packet of ham flavoring in the bag, like ramen noodles. We laughed and puked a little in our mouths and threw it away. Instead we dumped in water, carrots, onion, a can of diced tomatoes and some spices and got this amazing soup! I’ve been enjoying it with some homemade bread.

I have also been using the book club book for April as a napkin, as you can see. I got to the point yesterday where I would have stopped reading it if it wasn’t for the club. And I hardly ever stop reading books.

Potato Stir Fry

Tis the season for the huge potato and veggie stir fry! I chopped potatoes and cooked those up in the wok while chopping asparagus, (it is asparagus season! you can get it semi-local now) carrots, and red pepper. Sprinkled with a tiny bit of salt and pepper and a few squirts of ketchup and you are in healthy dinner heaven. All for like $1.

… can you tell I’m bored with the sweater dress? It looks amazing but I’m at about 4 inches still. I feel like it is easier to manage when I’m working on it in the dark so I can’t measure it every 20 minutes. I’ll have to go see more movies.