Haven't forgotten about you...

It has been a while, but life has been bizzzy. Today I took a mental-health afternoon and tried to catch up on many little things that kept piling up. Feels good to have those to-do items checked off.

Our garden is growing like crazy! We have so much lettuce we could eat salad for days. Our 4 stalks of okra are starting to sprout little plants! The carrots are growing, but I'm not sure how you really know when they are done. There is also a huge, sprawling vine where the watermelon seeds were planted - and I'm still hopeful a little melon ball will appear before winter. I'm excited to think about what we'll plant next spring.

Dinner was good tonight - cooked for the first time in a while. Sliced and roasted some butternut squash, baked up a pork tenderloin and made some salad. Felt good to have a home-cooked meal after a long string of quick meals. We've all been sick - me, Mike, and Gams. But think we're on the mend. Feels good to have the carpet vacuumed, laundry clean, and ready to face the week ahead.

Hope all is well!

October First Soup

Since this is a hodge-podge of a few recipes, I'll claim its new name as "October First" soup!

Really - it is Curried Sweet Potato, Carrot and Apple Soup. Adapted from "Wonderful Curried Sweet Potato Soup" - http://www.food.com/recipe/wonderful-curried-sweet-potato-soup-161324

1 T butter

1 T olive oil

1.5 T Curry Powder

1 t cinnamon

2 garlic cloves, minced

3 large sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into cubes

3 medium apples, peeled and chopped

4 medium carrots, peeled and chopped

32 oz. box chicken stock (or veggie stock)

1 t sea salt

2 t pepper

one shake of nutmeg

1/4 coconut milk (I used the So Delicious Coconut Milk rather than canned/sweetened milk - although you can probably use both).

In a large pan, melt butter in olive oil over low-medium heat. Add curry powder to form paste; add garlic. Add sweet potatoes, carrots, apples, cover and let simmer for about 15 minutes.

Put half of mixture into blender with half of chicken stock; puree and pour into soup pot. Repeat, and stir well. Add coconut milk, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and more of other spices to taste. Bring to boil; cover and let sit for about five minutes.

Soup should be a rich orange-yellow color and relatively thick consistency.

To freeze, let cool and pour into a freezer bag to allow for flat storage.

Dinner(s)

Today is the first day of October! And it's been quite a day - especially cooking-wise. After a crazy busy week, I was unable to prepare dinner hardly at all. It is hard to have a sense of groundedness when you eat out all week (lunch and dinner, sadly).

Anyways - I went with some fall dishes!

First, I made turkey chili. It is a standard recipe I've used, which I inherited from my mom, and this time I let it simmer in the crock-pot. I still had to cook the chicken, onions and garlic on the stove top, but it seemed to thicken up well in the CP. As I'm writing this, I realized I didn't include chili powder - but I did season the meat while it was cooking. Oops! :)

Second, I made soup! I'm trying to use up some ingredients as we're going out of town next week, and I had three big sweet potatoes left in our pantry. We had a lot of sweet potato fries lately, so I was trying to think outside the box. Seeing my curry powder earlier, I was trying to find a way to combine them. I found this recipe simply googling "sweet potato curry soup." In looking at a couple other recipes, I decided to cook up sweet potatoes, carrots, and apples. They all softened together, and then I blended em up with chicken stock in our blender. At the end I added some more spices and let it thicken some more as well. (I'll put my recipe in the next blog!)

Lastly, I wanted to have something on hand to pull out of the freezer and warm up some night. I poached some chicken and pulled it apart. I also cooked up some pasta, dumped some left over tomato sauce and mixed it all together. Slicing up some sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and excellent cheese purchased by my parents, I made a haphazard spaghetti casserole-thing. Sometimes they work out, sometimes not. Still fun to try!

Trying to stay away from baked goods this week - Mike and I are holding off from desserts. But I will definitely be making some pumpkin bread soon!!