Monday, August 19 Butternut Squash & Lentil Soup, Curried Potatoes and Naan Rating: 4.5

More soup! We have a LOT of winter squash right now from the CSA, thankfully it will keep for a long time, but we were getting nervous seeing so much of it all at once. We decided to make some soup. This was actually my second batch of curried squash soup in a few days. A friend of ours had sinus surgery, so I made a batch (different recipe) and brought it over to her. Thankfully, it was both spicy and sweet, which were the two flavors she could taste just then. Anyway, instead of making the same thing again, and knowing that Seth is not the biggest fan of butternut, I decided to make a bulkier soup for him. I found a whole bunch of curried squash soup recipes and a whole bunch of squash and lentil soup recipes, but for none were what I was looking for. I finally settled on this one from Mind Body Green, and doctored it up a little. I used less ginger, since what I wanted was curried, not ginger soup and of course, I added curry powder – about two tablespoons. I used fresh, diced tomatoes instead of canned, and threw in some spinach at the very end to give us some green. I opted to puree pretty much all of it (with an immersion blender), as opposed to just half. I also doubled the recipe so that we would have leftovers. And use up some of that squash. It turned out really well. I was glad Seth liked it as much as he did, given his feelings about sweet squashes. The other thing we have a ton of is potatoes, so I made a batch of curried potatoes using the recipe in The Indian Vegan Kitchen. It’s a simple recipe, and tastes amazing. It’s not too heavily seasoned, so it’s not overwhelming and if you can make it as spicy or mild as you want by adjusting the amount of cayenne in it. I also use less oil, but that’s just me. I don’t peel the potatoes and I usually cut them into chunks before boiling in order to save time. We had some naan in the freezer (from Vegan Eats World) and I thought it would be good for dipping into the soup, which it was. I just warmed it for a little bit in the toaster oven and it was perfect.