Butternut Squash Soup

So I haven't been cooking this week, been a little over whelmed by work, the Aww of it has begun to fade and just begun to get old so fast.

I made this before and I thought I would share it, in preparation of making it Tomorrow.

2 tablespoons butter
1 small onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 medium carrot, chopped
2 medium potatoes, cubed
1 medium butternut squash - peeled, seeded, and cubed
1 (32 fluid ounce) container veggie stock
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Directions
Melt the butter in a large pot, and cook the onion, celery, carrot,
potatoes, and squash 5 minutes, or until lightly browned. Pour in
enough of the chicken stock to cover vegetables. Bring to a boil.
Reduce heat to low, cover pot, and simmer 40 minutes, or until all
vegetables are tender.
Transfer the soup to a blender, and blend until smooth. Return to pot,
and mix in any remaining stock to attain desired consistency. Season
with salt and pepper.

Apple and Walnut Stuffing (Vegitarian)

I wanted to try something different in stuffing this year, instead of resorting to the normal stove top stuffing, plus making something from almost scratch just tastes better and for the most part isn't loaded full of not so healthy stuff for you, like sodium and preservatives.

This recipe is strictly vegetarian, not vegan, just vegetarian!

So when you are shopping for your ingredients here is what you should get in your shopping cart, or gather in your house. That is if you have everything in your house for this awesome recipe.

Ingredients: carrots ( 1 cup, grated), celery (1 cup, diced), regular onion (1 cup, diced), margarine (1/4 cup), Italian bread (to make 8 cups), walnuts (1/2 chopped), 2 apples ( chopped), vegetable broth (1 cup), 8-12 ounces of water, salt (1 tsp), black pepper (1 tsp), poultry seasoning (1 1/4 tsp).

with this recipe you will have to start a little early and let your bread sit out for a bit, to become sort of stale. Once it has become good and stale, rip it up into small pieces, you will need to have about 8-10 cups of bread shredded or riped into small pieces.

So once this step has been completed.

Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees, while it is warming up, you can get everything else ready. Get out your cutting boards and knifes. Cut 2 apples (which ever type of apple is up to you), once they have been cut into small pieces, put them in a skillet with a little bit of margarine, for 5-7 minutes.

Next grate the carrots.

Chop the celery, onion, and walnuts. Once the apples are done stick them into a separate bowl. Place the onion, celery, and carrots with 1/4 cup of margarine until everything is tender, this should take about 10 minutes. Then stir seasoning, pepper and salt.

In a very large or just large bowl, put the shredded bread, then the celery, carrots, and onion mixture, vegetable broth and water, along with the apples and walnuts.

Mix everything together with a spoon, until it starts to stick together.

Now you can either put this in your turkey or into a casserole dish. If you choose to put it into a casserole dish, then make it even and bake for 25-30 minutes at 375 degrees.

If it goes in your turkey, then however long the turkey takes to cook. The only difference is that the turkey stuffing is a bit crispier.

In a large bowl, combine the bread cubes, apples and walnuts, then add the carrot mixture. Add enough water or vegetable broth to moisten, tossing gently.

Transfer to a casserole dish, cover, and bake for 20 to 30 minutes.

Mango Salsa

I never would have thought to create salsa out of Mango's and apples, and of course other things. So in my search of some new awesome alternatives for food cosumption, Mango Salsa sounded like my next brick in my new road of discovery of food.

In the event you are interested in trying something new, and let me say wonderful, here is the fuel and machinery you will need.

Machinery: A food processor, a couple sharp knives, a few bowls (or a large one), cutting board, and a jar for storage or tupperware.

Ingrediants:2 ripe mangos, 2 apples, 1 small onion, 3 cloves of garlic or minced garlic, 1 jalapeno pepper,lemon juice, cilantro, and salt.

1. Chop and peal the mangos, apples, onion, garlic, jalapeno pepper.
2. Place everything you have cut up into a bowl, add lemon juice, salt, and cilantro
3. using your hands mix it up till you feel it has been nicely mixed.
4. Place into food processor, I had to do three rounds since my food processor is small.
5. Place into a jar, bowl, or tuppeware, cover and place into the fridge for 3 to 4 hours before serving for more spice.
6. Serve with yer fav pita chips or torritla chips and enjoy.


Preparation time: 20 minutes

Eggplant

Eggplant is actually a pretty amazing little (well big vegitable), the local farmer's market sells them for about 1.50 each, and man one of those will feed me for 4 or 5 meals. The other day, I wondered what i could make with this vegitable since I had 2 of them at home, and didn't want them to go bad. So searching on vegweb.com I came across several recipes i thought would be outstanding, but this one I am including was one the easiest, and two I didn't have to go out and get stuff to make it, I had most of the ingrediants at home, and what I didn't I improvised.

So here is the stuff you will need

1 large eggplant
1 orange pepper and 1 green pepper
1 red onion or regular white one
zucchini, med
2 tomatoes, med
bread crumbs or corn flakes
vinegar (homemade flavor or balsimic)
garlic cloves or minced garlic
1 can fat-free spaghetti sauce
salt, oregano, other italian spices to taste
cheese

Directions:

I cut the eggplant into round slices and placed them in a bowl, then add the balsomic vinegar to the bowl. Then i put the bowl into the microwave for 5-7 minutes in order to soften the eggplant.

The eggplant is placed in the cassorole dish, then a thin layer of bread crums or corn flakes is placed on top to cover the eggplant layer.

Then I spread 2 table spoons of minced garlic over this layer, and some orgeno.

Next I cover the first layer with chopped peppers, sliced zucchini, sliced tomatoes, onions and minced garlic. Followed by a small jar of spaggetti sauce and cheese.

Then i place the cassrole dish into the oven for 1 hour at 350 degrees.

This is a really great tasting dish, I was very happy with it.