I love autumn. It’s my favorite season of the year. Cooler temperatures, bright gorgeous autumn leaves, crisp bright orange mums in my garden, and … the food. Oh the varieties of wonderful, warm, yummy comfort food that you can make in the fall now that it’s not too hot to cook.

Soups, stews, and chili are some of my favorite fall meals – they’re always quick, easy, filling, and you can make oodles and store it for later.

Roasted Butternut Squash soup is a particular favorite around my house. As a standalone soup, it’s incredibly good and filling, but it’s also a great starting point for all kinds of other yumminess – both cold and hot.

It’s also been a huge part of my weightloss journey. I often take this soup with me for lunch since it’s so filling and yet has very few calories. Not to mention that one serving of soup is at least 2 servings of veggies for the day.

Start with a medium butternut squash. Peel it with a vegetable peeler (I should have gotten more photos of the image prep part of the process – forgive a first time recipe blogger. I’ll know better next time.) and cut it into even cubes.

Put all your cubes of squash into a zipper bag and add about 2 T of olive oil. This is a much easier and faster way to distribute the oil than just drizzling. I keep my gallon sized bag in the fridge and pull it out whenever I have a recipe that calls for coating anything in olive oil.

Spread the pieces out on a baking sheet, salt and pepper well, and then bake in a 400 deg oven for about 45 mins to an hour. This is how you get the lovely, deep roasted taste to the soup.

In the meanwhile prepare a pot with 1/2 chicken stock, 1/2 water. I used about 2 cups of each for this recipe, but how much you use will depend on how big a squash (or how many of them) you’re cooking. Bring the liquid to a simmer and add the roasted squash. The liquid should just cover the squash.

After about 30 mins of simmering, use a potato masher to mash the squash and blend with the liquid. Taste here and see if you need more salt or pepper. I use homemade stock and so it’s not as salty as a store bought variety, but the salt from the roasting process was sufficient. You can always add more at serving.

At this point your soup is ready. You can eat it just like this, or you can use the rich goodness of it as a base to add cream, yogurt, and other spices and flavorings. This soup is lovely when sweetened with a bit of honey and cinnamon and served chilled. Or thickened with a cup of cream and spiced up with a bit of smoked paprika. Or, as I said, you can eat it just as it is – maybe with a dollop of sour cream in the middle for additional yumminess.

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

1 medium butternut squash
olive oil
salt
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups water

Peel, seed, and dice your squash in even pieces. Drizzle with olive oil and be generous with the salt. Roast these pieces in a 400 oven for 45 mins to 1 hour. You want the pieces tender and just beginning to brown.

Bring chicken stock and water to a simmer in a medium sauce pan and add roasted squash. Cook at a simmer for 30 mins. Mash squash and blend with a potato masher.

This recipe will make 8-ish regular sized bowls of soup, or 4, if you live in my house

So this is my first foray into cooking and blogging at the same time. I hope you enjoyed it and get to enjoy the recipe. As with everything, it’s a learning experience, I guess. I’m not thrilled with the quality of the images (although the soup came out great!), and I realized as I was writing that I should have taken more photos of the various prep steps, as well as set out and photographed my mise en place.

I also discovered it’s incredibly hard to concentrate on being a good photographer and a good cook – it’s easy to either forget to photograph something or to get so caught up in making the photo look good that you forget to turn, stir, or move something.

I’m not quitting though. I’m finding I like this process and I’m pushing myself to learn more about my cooking (which I often do by touch and taste) and about my photography. So onward to the next recipe. Whatever it might be!