Fall Closing Ceremony: Butternut Squash Soup

Last night we finished Christmas shopping, and I immediately felt the need to celebrate by welcoming in the holiday season. We stopped at Superstore at 9:30 last night and picked up some Christmas ice cream to celebrate our success. Today I debated putting up my decor, but didn't want to rush into it. Instead, I decided to finish fall with a celebration of its own. I spent the afternoon making my last batch of butternut squash soup (I've made 4 batches this fall!) and enjoying the fall feeling before making the switch.

My mom taught me this butternut squash soup recipe earlier this fall when we had a meal prep day together, and I've been making it every couple of weeks since. I have some in my freezer still, but had a butternut squash in the fridge so decided to add even more to the freezer. 

To make this Butternut Squash Soup, you'll need the following:

Equipment

Large Pot or Dutch Oven

Immersion Blender (or another blender will do)

Knife for Chopping

Vegetable Peeler

Cutting Board

Ingredients

1 x Butternut Squash

3 x Large Carrots

1 x Head of Celery

Chicken Stock

Lemon Pepper

Thyme (fresh lemon thyme if you have!)

Olive Oil (or other oil you desire)

Steps

1. Peel & Chop Carrots

I had extra carrots in my fridge and they've been there a while so I put extra carrots in this batch just to use them up - I'm not a soup expert by any means but in my experience it's not a science and you can put in whatever you like. 

2. Chop Head of Celery

I use the whole head, but again, it's not a science and if you want to eat some ants on a log while cooking and are therefore missing a few stalks, that is totally ok. 

3. Optional: Chop 1 Onion

I hate onions and like the taste fine without so you won't see an onion in my soup, but my mom does add one to hers. My mom told me that every soup she makes starts with onion, celery, & carrots - the flavour maker. 

4. Optional: A friend commented on my instastories that she adds an apple to her butternut squash soup! How delicious! Since I was just sharing my original recipe to the blog I kept it the way that I knew tasted great, but next time I will try this!

4. Saute carrots & Celery with Olive Oil

 If you had onions you would just do this until they are translucent. I just cook them a little bit while I'm chopping the rest of the ingredients and don't worry too much about the time.

5. Season

I season my soup with Thyme & Lemon Pepper to taste. I have a Lemon Pepper grinder so I didn't measure, but did a number of grinds, and then tasted it after blending and added more as needed. 

6. Peel, Chop, & Add Butternut Squash

Peel your squash with your vegetable peeler. It has a tough skin, definitely not as easy as a carrot - I'd compare it to peeling a sweet potato. Cut the squash in half and scoop out the seeds. Chop and add to pot with other vegetables. 

7. Add Chicken Stock

Pour chicken stock into pot enough to cover the vegetables. I did mine with water, covering the ingredients, and then added a heaping spoonful of Better than Boullion. 

8. Allow to Cook

Turn down the heat, put on the lid, and allow to soften. Last time I let it go about an hour and then it was plenty soft. This time I set a timer for 30 mins so that I could have a better idea of how long things took to let you know. After 30 mins everything was plenty soft, so I went ahead to the next step. 

9. Blend

An immersion blender is an awesome tool if you make soup regularly. Just place it in the pot, press the button, and watch the soup blend before your eyes. 

10. Eat, or Allow to Cool & Freeze

I love having this soup in my freezer. I pour it into medium ziploc bags and it is enough for Philip & I for dinner, or he can grab a bag to take for his lunch if we don't have other leftovers ready to go. I'm allowing mine to cool a little bit and then I will pour into bags and freeze. 

What are your favourite fall recipes? In addition to this soup, I'd probably say Pumpkin Muffins! 

P.S. If you watched me cook this soup in Instastories, I also mentioned listening to "I am Malala" by Malala Yousafzai. Such a good book so far! I'm halfway through and am so glad I decided to listen to such an important story. It's important to ensure you're paying attention to voices that have different life experiences than you, and this is a great listen for any North American who is trying to understand the perspectives of others. I'm using the Libby app which allows you to borrow audiobooks from your local library, give it a try! (this isn't sponsored, I just love books)

Lazy Geniusing Laundry

First of all, if you don't listen to The Lazy Genius podcast, and have any responsibility for household tasks, small children, or using a stove, go subscribe now. It's one of my favourites and I regularly feel proud of my own "lazy genius"-esque household hacks. I will never be a culinary artist, professional cleaner, or heavenly hostess by any standard. What The Lazy Genius, Kendra Adachi, teaches us is that we can do better without stressing all the time. She is also a great weekly inspiration on Instagram for things like meal planning, finding routines in the various seasons of life, and generally feeling okay about yourself. 

Now, to my own laundry hack that makes me feel like I've mastered one aspect of life. 4 laundry baskets. You heard it here first, all you need are a lot of laundry baskets. 

As a bridal shower gift, we received one of those wheelie laundry sorters that you can use as a hamper. I have never wanted to be a throw all the laundry on the laundry room floor person (although if that's you, no judgement as long as you're happy!), so I appreciated having the laundry sorted right in our own bedroom closet. However, by the time those baskets were full, it was extremely heavy and the bags would eventually start to rip. Smaller loads could have been considered, yes, but it just didn't fit with our life. Also, if we carried the laundry down in the special bag, and then life got in the way of putting things away right away, we'd be left with no place to put our cold colours. 

With the demise of our second wheelie sorter...enter 4 laundry baskets. We bought 4 matching baskets at Ikea, but any baskets will do. We have them on the floor of our closet in a line, and it is the perfect system for us. We typically have 3 loads of laundry that we separate and the 4th bin is there to keep the system going even while we have a basket downstairs with laundry spinning. The baskets are Cold Colours, Cold Whites, & Warm Whites. I don't know if we need to do this much sorting, but it makes for about the right sized loads each week and works for us. Do you sort your laundry? I recently learned that my mom doesn't really sort laundry and at some point I may graduate to that level of lazy genius as well. 

Below is the laundry basket that we selected (click for link to Ikea website for this beauty of a $9 laundry basket). Apparently we break a lot of laundry equipment, because our two previous laundry baskets both had broken handles. We chose this laundry basket because it is 1 piece, so the handle is less likely to separate from the basket portion. Also, it's a happy colour and doesn't have holes so nothing's falling out. I'm really questioning my load sizes right now based on the fact that our wheelie sorters and laundry baskets have broken multiple times. Add that to my laundry method, huge loads so you hardly ever have to do laundry. 

One question that I have for those of you at a different stage of life than we are, is how can we keep this going with kids? I can see how this is a perfect system for us because we keep all of our laundry in one room. What I'm imagining is that they'll have a hamper and every time I throw in one of our loads I would grab their hamper and sort it into our baskets. Would that work?

When it comes to laundry, I keep things very simple. I throw in the load of laundry with a Tide pod and a scoop of OxiClean and walk away. Our cold colours & cold whites go in the dryer on delicate, I hang zero items. Warm whites go on a regular dryer cycle as we don't worry about shrinking. Warm whites used to be hot whites but I recently read an article that warm is good enough and saves energy so I made the change. Laundry is one of my favourite chores because there is a machine that does it for you. I also don't iron. I sound a bit like a slob. I do have a steam drier if an item is in desperate need, but for the most part we get by with the occasional wrinkle. 

I'm not even precious when it comes to folding. The ever elusive fitted sheet? I roughly fold or roll it in my arms and shove it in the matching pillow case with the flat sheet and other pillow case. It is only right now that I'm realizing how lazy I am about laundry. Maybe someday I'll be a bit more particular, but I actually do like my system. I'm not the greatest at cleaning, but this is easy for me to maintain and we always have clean underwear. Share your best laundry tips with me. What can I do to be even lazier? One thing I'm definitely going to introduce asap is a container for the OxiClean so that this picture could have been more palatable. Happy Tuesday! Go do a load of laundry!