Instant Pot Vegetable Beef Soup

We made a large pot of vegetable beef soup mostly following the crockpot recipe at Wellplated.  We used butternut squash, red potatoes and carrots; but we were out of celery. We also didn't put in peas. Otherwise, we mostly followed the ingredient list.

Jeff actually cooked the beef overnight in the Instant Pot on the sous vide setting. We cooked the onions, garlic and carrots on the Saute setting until the onions were soft. Then we added the broth, carrots and red potatoes and set them to Pressure Cook for 5 minutes before adding the rest of the ingredients. 

We added the canned tomatoes and roasted butternut squash and set the Instant Pot to Slow Cook for a couple of hours. It turned out quite tasty. 

When we make this one again, I don't know that we'd change anything.

Bulgur w/ Roasted Butternut Squash

Jeff made the Bulgur with Roasted Butternut Squash from the PureWow website. 

He mostly followed the recipe, but he substituted Herbes de Provence for both the sage and thyme. We didn't have any goat cheese, so he substituted 1 oz of greek yogurt and 1 oz of a 3-cheese blend.

For the dressing, he didn't use balsamic vinegar but instead used fig vinegar.

It tasted pretty good but might not have been worth all the effort. It did, however, achieve the goal of using up the butternut squash and bulgar that had been sitting around in the pantry for too long.

Incredible Edible Sale May 4, 2013

I am looking forward to getting more veggie starts at the Incredible Edibles Sale that the Master Gardeners are putting on May 4, 2013 -- next weekend (is it really almost May?!). I am looking forward to tomatoes, chard, salad greens, and tromboncino squash, all of which did well last year. This year they are going to have strawberries and flowers as well.

Last year I had a pretty good plan for the front yard garden, but not as clear of one for the back. As a result it took me a little longer to get the plants in the ground in the back and they didn't do very well.

Getting ready for the sale last year

Last year's raffel

Sharon helping out at check out

Getting the plants in the ground and tucked in with mulch

Harvesting a tromboncino squash

Tromboncino squash

I still have (well, had) two tromboncino squash fruits from last fall's harvest.

I have been impressed by how well they have kept over the winter. I just had them set on a shelf in the basement. I've had a couple of them develop a little bad spot at the end that then starts to rot. Once I cut that part off the rest is in good shape.

Strange brown glop

Just a reminder, this blog is warts and all. So here is a failure I am sharing...

I had some roasted squash and some leftover mashed potatoes and some leftover caramelized apples and thought "what could happen" and pureed them all together in to this strange brown glop.

Vegetable Shepherd's Pie

Sharon found me a nice recipe for Shepherd's Pie at Cooking For Engineers. Evidently it originates in the Joy of Cooking. I have made this a couple times in the traditional form -- with ground beef. Today I wanted to keep the form of the dish but make it vegetarian. So in place of the beef I thought I would use roast squash, apples, nuts, and maybe some cooked greens. What could happen?!

Winter Squash German Pancake

In the continuing saga of "things to cook with winter squash" I experimented with a roasted butternut squash German pancake.

For the topping I took some chunks of roasted butternut squash from the freezer and sauteed them in butter, brown sugar and a little fine spices. Then otherwise followed the recipe for the Thick German Pancake from The Best Recipe cookbook.

I thought they were tasty and passed my "qualified breakfast food" filter fine. Not as sweet as a pumpkin pie. I think I will do this again, but I'm not sure it will become a regular.

Squash Crab Risotto

I have been swimming in squash, with more showing up each week. So my mission is to find lots of fantastic ways to eat squash. This one is a variation on a favorite of mine.

Gluten Free Pumpkin Pie from Scratch

Well, not really pumpkin. In this case I made a butternut squash pie -- it just doesn't sound right. I wanted to make it gluten free (and I didn't feel like making my usual crust which is a lot more work). I also needed to make a substitution: I had no evaporated milk in the house.

Roasted Squash Soup

I have a lot of tromboncino squash and this got me thinking it would be good to make some soup. I found a nice recipe for squash soup from Alton Brown. I had roasted the squash earlier and frozen it while I was waiting for a batch of chicken broth that I didn't botch. (Note to future self: if you are going to simmer broth overnight, safer to do it in a crock pot than on the stove.)

The other nigh I had roasted another chicken, and so yesterday I made broth, and today I had broth to make the soup -- and that is just what I did. Ha!