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Hello, soup season!

I keep seeing photos of friends who are experiencing the first snow of the season.  We aren't there yet - thankfully - but it is definitely crisp outside.  You know, that magical time of year when you don't know what coat to wear, and your skin is furious despite your best attempt at moisturizer, and the static electricity is pure and strong radiating off all your sweaters...

I actually like this fall/winter time, despite my grumblings above (and the annoyances of Daylight Savings Time).  As a family that does a lot of batch cooking, it gets easier at this time of year for one simple, delicious, reason:

It's soup time.

Soup is the ultimate easy, quick meal.  It's endlessly versatile.  Almost any soup can be made in a crock pot or pressure cooker.  And we have dozens and dozens of soup recipes, carefully curated and waiting.

(There's also one recipe for a really terrible soup, lurking in one of my cookbooks.  I made it once and we hated it, but I forgot to mark it accordingly in the cookbook.  It's like a culinary time bomb, just waiting for the week when we flip through the cookbooks for ideas, say "oh that looks good!", and foolishly make it again.)

We did borscht and a faux chicken soup, and clam chowder is on the up-and-coming list.  But the easiest, simplest house favorite is butternut squash soup.

What do we love about this one?  Ease, of course.  It's easy to double or triple.  And it's also easy to mix up the soup from the incredibly simple base in the recipe.  Sometimes we'll toss in white beans, to boost the protein; sometimes we'll get fancy and toss in some cheese tortellini.  And sometimes I'll throw in scraps of other miscellaneous orange veggies (carrots, pumpkin) to change the flavor profile just a little.  It's yummy with some croutons floating on top, as well!

I also whole-heartedly recommend splurging on some fresh bread - either homemade or picked up on the way home from work...
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