Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Soup

There are times when one needs to clean up their act, to get back on track, and this is one of those times for me.  I have always struggled with my relationship to food, because, well, I love it, there are just times that I need to not love it quite so much.  Having said that, I’m not a diet person, I've learned through a five year effort to get healthy, that while a diet can be a great catalyst to get you going in the right direction, as a human being, I’m not going to stick with any kind of restrictive eating plan for the rest of my life.  I wish I was one of those people who viewed food solely as a fuel, and didn't care about the taste and joy of it, but I’m just not, so if I’m going to eat it, it needs to taste good.  So contrary to what you might think, when I’m going to clean it up, I get to cooking, and this is one of those recipes that I go to. 

It feels kind of fancy, Roasted Butternut & Sweet Potato Soup, and it turns out that when you roast and caramelize your veggies, you don’t need a lot of butter and cream to make them taste fantastic.  The floor plan for this recipe comes from Tara over at Undressed Skeleton, and I have made it her way many a time.  However one time I had a head of garlic and some sweet potatoes that needed to get used up or they were heading to the compost bin, so I cut them up and threw them in.  I was not disappointed.  I’m pretty sure you could throw carrots, celery, or any other root vegetable that is languishing in your vegetable bin and it would do nothing but make this better.  Look at me being healthy AND not wasting food. . . I’m doing good all-around today. 

This recipe is very easily vegan if you use Vegetable stock.  It is also gluten free!  I’m not a dietitian, so don’t hold my feet to the fire on this, but in case you wanted to know, when I calculate the soup I made on a recipe calculator, this came out to 59 Calories per Cup.  Oh!  My husband won’t touch this with a ten foot pole, my kids might sometimes, but only if I put some parmesan cheese on it and don’t tell them what it is. 

• 1 butternut squash
• 2 Sweet Potatoes
• 1 head garlic, tops cut off, cloves not separated
• 2 red onions
• 4-6 cups of Chicken or Vegetable Broth
• ½ tsp Sage
• ½ tsp Cayenne Pepper (optional)
• Salt & Pepper

1. Pre heat oven to  400 degrees. 
2. Cut the Squash, potatoes, & onions in half and put them on a rimmed baking sheet or baking pan, whatever will fit everything at once (cause I am not washing two baking pans).  Tuck the garlic in wherever you can make it fit.  You can drizzle lightly with olive oil (especially the garlic head) or lightly spray it with olive oil cooking spray and then salt and pepper this to your preference, keeping in mind that you will be adding broth to this later so watch out for the saltiness factor. 
3. I typically start out roasting this for about 40 minutes, depending on the size of your veggies, it might take longer.  Today, I put everything  back in the oven for another 20 minutes, after that I took out the potatoes, the onion and the garlic, because they were very done, but the squash was still not fork tender, so it went back in for another 20 minutes. 
4. Let everything cool down to a temperature that you can handle and scoop the guts out of the squash and sweet potatoes, into a soup pan.  I use a melon baller,  it is a little weird, but I feel like is does the job the best.  Throw in the red onions, squeeze the garlic out of its paper, add your remaining spices, and then add 4 cups of broth.
5. This is the part where you need to not be like me. Yesterday, I turned on the heat, and brought this to a boil and then used the immersion blender to blend it up.  Molten hot squash soup is not what you want splashing out of your pan onto your arm. . .I’m just saying.
6. Blend the soup in a blender, food processor, or with your immersion blender. . . THEN turn on the heat and heat through.  You may want to add more broth to get the soup to your preferred consistency, also check to see if you need more salt, depending on what broth you used, you may want to add more. 
7. I like to garnish this with a little bit of sour cream and Siracha.