Yesterday, we had our marmoleum kitchen floor installed and we love it. It’s completely worth not having a refrigerator in the kitchen for the next 36 hours while it continues doing whatever it’s doing before we seal it Wednesday night. We do have a fridge in the garage though, so that is helpful. I’m just not doing much cooking for the next couple of days. Again, though, completely worth it!

The Details
I seriously thought this would never happen. We started by going to Marion’s Carpets, which stocks marmoleum and in the beginning, seemed that they would be easy to work with. Nope. Now, perhaps carpet through them is fine, but trying to get Marmoleum purchased and installed through Marion’s was like trying to get the kitchen floor covered in gold, with the work only being able to be completed by exotic and highly-skilled, yet surly circus animals. Also, Marion’s was very bad at returning phone calls. In addition, we had to put a deposit down for materials before we could get an estimate (we got this back). Oh and they are overpriced. Blah.

Plus, the contractor they sent out never left us with a bid sheet or an estimate of his costs — we just got the cost for the marmoleum (about $800!!?). While trying to get an answer as to why the estimate was so high, our salesman asked if jwa (the male) was home while the measurements were taken on the kitchen. Because, I kid you not, as a female, apparently, I may not have noticed if the contractor had accidentally measured the dining room and the living room as well. Uh. Okay. Buh-bye, Marion’s. You suck.

We next tried to get a few basic installation estimates from other contractors but without much luck. Why is it so hard to find someone who is bonded, reliable and knows what they are doing?

The marmoleum sits in the dining room…waiting

Finally, we turned to (and should have used from the beginning) Linoleum City. Their Marmoleum prices are about $10 less per square yard than Marion’s. Plus, they work with Dave from DJs Floors for installation, who, in a word, is awesome. Our materials costs came to about $450 through Linoleum City — oh, don’t ask me how the hell the Marion’s contractor measured — I’m just a girl!

About a 1/3 done…Hooray!

Dave and his son came early Monday morning and patched up the old floor where it was coming up and covered the whole floor lightly with a cement-like topping. Let it dry and scuffed it up so the Marmoleum adhesive would have something to hold on to well. Then, they started to put the Indian Summer floor down.

Almost there!

Another good thing is that DJ’s Floors is bonded and insured. Seems like a given but you’d be surprised at how many contractors we met with that were not. This is a good source for finding out that information (in Oregon — I’m sure every state has this type of information online, you should seek it out).

So, we will be eating out the next couple of days (Detour Cafe for Breakfast on Monday and PokPok for dinner that night — basement dining room opening in about a month, by the way. Oh and the new lamb skewer special is really good!)

The kitchen when we first bought the house (almost) 4 years ago and now. The counter tops are the next to go.

Resources

Round-up here!

The theme this month was to use a neglected gadget. I didn’t have to look far for this one — my immersion blender. Ever since I got my food processor, I’ve hardly ever used it. I only grabbed it last week for the white bean soup because both the food processor bowl and the blender were dirty. But for this Tenth Weekend Cookbook Challenge, it was the hand held blender I turned to first.

The dish I chose was a Curried Acorn Squash and Leek Flan from the Williams-Sonoma Autumn cookbook. The original recipe calls for pumpkin but I had an acorn squash, so that is what I used.

The only other thing I changed in this recipe, was that I didn’t make the sauce described in the cookbook. For that they took some of the squash and cream, held it out of the flan, and used it for a sauce, along with some chicken stock. Instead, I reduced some apple cider, spices, chicken stock and used that. More syrupy and less fat than the cream option. I thought it worked well (and I was also using the sauce for a pork tenderloin I made that night too — recipe here!)

Now, the sad news — none of my final pictures of this turned out at all (blurry, cut-off, etc), so unfortunately, not really any finished product pictures this post. Wah.

Curried Acorn Squash & Leek Flan
Note: This is a full recipe, which makes 6 flans — I made a half recipe of this, using 2 whole eggs and 1 egg yolk for the egg part)
1 small pumpkin (about 2 pounds) or an equal amount of acorn or butternut squash
2 tbsp unsalted butter
6 leeks, rinsed and sliced
3 whole eggs and 3 egg yolks
1 cup heavy cream
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp curry powder
salt & pepper
boiling water as needed
1 tbsp flat leaf parsley, chopped

Preheat oven to 375. Lightly oil a baking sheet. Cut squash in half and remove seeds. Place cut side down and roast until done 40-50 minutes. Let cool and scoop out flesh. Use a hand held blender (or food processor) to puree the squash with about 1/2 cup of the cream.

Meanwhile in a large frying pan over medium heat, saute leeks in oil until soft and golden, about 30 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside until needed.

In a small bowl, whisk together 1/2 of the remaining cream, the eggs and yolks, sugar, curry powder, salt and pepper. Add all of the squash puree and the leeks. Mix well to combine.

Butter six ramekins and place in a large baking pan with high sides. Divide the flan mixture between the ramekins and fill the baking dish up halfway with boiling water. Cover pan loosely with aluminum foil and bake 25-30 minutes. (Remember, custard sets at around 165 degrees — take the temp if you’re not sure).

Remove flans from oven and let cool five minutes. Spoon a little of the cider sauce onto a plate and then run a knife along the inside edge of each ramekin. Turn the flan out onto the sauce, sprinkle with a little chopped parsley and serve.

Thanks as always to Sara at Weekend Cookbook Challenge and Mary from The Sour Dough, this month’s guest co-host!

Round-up for the event is posted: here

My post for Sugar High Friday this month, hosted by Cook Sister, is something that I have wanted to make for quite some time. The recipe is from Butter Sugar Flour Eggs by Gale Gand, Rick Tramonto & Julia Moskin. I originally was thinking of making grapefruit cupcakes for the Je Mange la Ville birthday thing, but instead decided on lemon and chocolate-stout. So, grapefruit cakes got bumped.

Until today, that is. I used the regular cake recipe and used a 2-inch biscuit cutter to make mini cakes for this SHF’s theme — mini bites of delight.

Mini Grapefruit Cakes with Cream Cheese Frosting
3 eggs separated, room temperature
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup fresh grapefruit juice
3 tbsp grapefruit zest
1/2 tsp lemon zest
1 1/2 cups cake flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

For the frosting
1 grapefruit (2 if making a full-size cake)
12 oz cream cheese, room temperature
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp grapefruit juice
1 tsp grapefruit zest
3/4 cup powdered sugar

1/2 cup walnuts, crushed
mint leaves

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 9-inch cake pan (square or round).

Whisk the egg yolks in a mixer with the paddle attachment (it says in the book to use a whisk attachment, but the paddle will work better for mixing in the flour, so I just used that one). With the mixer running, drizzle in the oil. Next add in the grapefruit juice, the grapefruit zest and the lemon zest.

Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add to the egg yolk mixture and mix. It’ll be a little stiff.

In a clean bowl, whisk the egg whites until frothy and a bit stiff. Fold half into the cake batter, being not super gentle — just too loosen it up a bit. Fold in the remaining egg whites a bit more carefully.

Pour the batter into you cake pan. Bake until springy in the center, about 25-30 minutes. Let cool in the pan for about 15 minutes, then run a knife along the edge and turn out onto a wire rack. Cool completely. Use a biscuit cutter to cut out smaller circles. You could also use a knife to cut into small squares. If you do use a round shape, the remnants are great snacks while you are frosting. I’m just saying…

Make the frosting
Use a small knife and section the grapefruit. Let pieces sit in a paper towel. Beat the cream cheese in a mixer until fluffy. Add the sugar, juice and zests. Add 2-3 diced up grapefruit sections and beat a bit more.

The original recipe just used lemon zest and juice in the frosting (aside from the grapefruit segments), I added the grapefruit zest and juice to the cream cheese to make it more grapefruity.

Frost the cakes. For some of them, frost only the sides first, then roll in walnuts. Frost the tops of those last, so that you can hold onto them easily while rolling in the nuts. Decorate the tops with the grapefruit sections and some mint leaves.

For a whole cake (instead of mini-cakes), this recipe make one cake. Cut that in half horizontally after it is cooled to make two layers. Put a layer of frosting and some grapefruit sections between the cakes. Frost the sides and top and garnish with the grapefruit sections and mint leaves.

Thanks again to Cook Sister for supplying a great theme and for hosting this month’s event.

One of the reviews at Epicurious said of the sauce for this pork,”I could drink it with a straw.” It’s not like I can pass up a recommendation like that! And, after making it, I totally concur. Bring on the straws, I say.

The original recipe called for 5 tablespoons of butter (practically a whole stick) — imho, not at all needed. I used 1 tablespoon of butter and the sauce was very rich, flavorful and straw-able just like that — and a bit healthier.

For the pork, I used my old-standby way of preparation — slather with olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic and fresh chopped rosemary. Sear in an oven-proof pan, roast to finish cooking. I always pull it out around 145 and it’s always perfectly moist, tender and juicy.

We had this with the curried acorn squash and leek flans — my WCC10 post (coming early next week) and some braised brussels sprouts. Quite a nice Fall dinner!

Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Apple Cider Jus
2 cups apple cider
1 cup low-salt chicken broth
3/4 cup chopped onion
6 whole allspice
3 large fresh thyme sprigs (or a big rosemary sprig, which is what I used)
2 cinnamon sticks
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
1 bay leaf
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1 12-ounce pork tenderloins, well trimmed
Olive oil
2 Rosemary sprigs
2 cloves garlic, minced
salt & pepper

Mix first eight ingredients in medium saucepan. Boil until mixture is reduced to 1 1/2 cups, about 30-40 minutes. Strain, pressing on solids to extract liquid. Discard solids. Return liquid to saucepan and boil until reduced to 1/2 cup, about 10 minutes. Whisk in the butter and season with salt and pepper, if needed.

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375 degrees. Slather pork with olive oil, salt and pepper generously and coat with the minced garlic and rosemary.

Brown on all sides in a oven-proof pan. Finish roasting in the preheated oven, 20-22 minutes or until the pork reaches 145 degrees.

Cover with foil and let rest for 5-10 minutes. Pour any pork drippings from the rested meat into the cider sauce.

Then slice and serve with the sauce drizzled over the top. Deee-licious.

Yes, we’re taking a break in the Fall Foods Fest (Pumpkin!) for a post about vodka sauce. Typically, penne is served in this dish but I had some fresh pasta from Pastaworks so there you go.

This recipe was in the most recent issue of Cook’s Illustrated magazine — a subscription that I make far too little use of. One of the tips they list is to use good quality vodka. Rot-gut booze will produce sub-standard, rot-gut sauce. Okay, I can get behind that sentiment and luckily I had some Crater Lake vodka from Bendistillery in the freezer. (Hmmmm, did luck really have anything to do with that?)

I also bought heavy cream (something I try to not use very much of) specifically for this recipe and another recipe that I will be posting about later in the week for WCC10.

Was the cream purchase it worth it, you ask? Hell, yeah.

Penne alla Vodka
Mostly from the Nov/Dec 2006 Cook’s Illustrated.
1 28-oz can whole tomatoes, drained, liquid reserved
2 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, minced
1 tbsp tomato paste
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 - 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 salt
1/3 cup vodka
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 lb penne or rigatoni pasta
2 tbsp finely chopped basil leaves
freshly grated Parmesan for serving

Puree half of the tomatoes in a food processor until smooth. Subsequently, you could also crush them with your fingers. Dice the remaining half of the tomatoes. Combine both in a measuring cup and add reserved liquid until you have two cups of tomato.

Measure your vodka out so that it is ready for you.

The vodka cow goes, “vooooo.”

Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat and add the onion and tomato paste when hot. Stir occasionally, until the onions are light golden around the edges, about 3-4 minutes. Add the garlic and pepper flakes. Cook about 30 more seconds.

Stir in the tomatoes and about a 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Remove the pan from the heat and add the vodka. Return to medium heat and simmer briskly for about 8-10 minutes. Start your pasta water around now. When ready, add the pasta and some salt and cook until almost al dente. Drain but reserve some pasta water.

Stir in the cream to the tomato sauce and cook about a minute.

Add the drained pasta to the sauce and cook 1-2 minutes. Add reserved pasta water if sauce is too thick. Taste and adjust salt if needed.

Rigatoni alla vodka with vegetarian Italian sausage,

Garnish with basil and Parmesan cheese. This should serve about four — three if someone is super-hungry.

At Thanksgiving this year, we are having two non-meat-eating guests, which is not a super big thing as I myself was one of those types for many years. Because of this, I understand the holiday meal made of mashed potatoes, green beans and rolls. So, I have been trying to come up with some sort of main dish for them, along with the non-meat sides, of course.

I kept envisioning a vegetarian shepherd’s pie, which after throwing all of my ingredients together, is pretty much the kind of dish that I came up with here. And the best part? It can be made and assembled the day before, stored in the refrigerator and baked in about 30 minutes — while the turkey rests, I’m thinking. Perfect!

Aside from it fitting in the schedule nicely, it was also very good. jwa and I had a practice meal last week — I even made it the day before and baked it from the fridge, so I do know that part works. In addition to being very hearty and satisfying, it’s very Fall-ish and incorporates a lot of the Thanksgiving flavors into one non-meat dish.

And now I don’t feel as guilty about deciding to use pancetta in the braised Brussels sprouts! Ha!

For the Vegetable Stew:
2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium leek, cleaned well and sliced
1 medium onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
15-20 button mushrooms, sliced
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 small delicata squash, peeled and cubed
1 apple, grated
1 cup frozen spinach
1 ear of corn or 1/2 cup frozen corn
3 cups vegetable broth (+ 2 tbsp more)
3 vegetarian sausage patties
2 fresh sage leaves, chopped
1/2 tsp poultry seasoning
1 tsp corn starch
sprig of fresh rosemary and 3-4 sprigs of thyme, bundled together by a little string if you are feeling very organized or — just loose if feeling lazy
salt & pepper

For the mashed Sweet Potatoes:
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 tbsp butter
2% or fat-Free milk
Fresh sage leaves
Fresh thyme leaves
salt & pepper
2 tbsp seasoned bread crumbs
cooking spray

This starts like many stews start, by adding the olive oil to a large soup pot, over medium heat. Toss in the onions, garlic and mushrooms. Let it all cook for about 5-6 minutes, then add the stock. Stir.

Next comes most of the vegetables. Add the carrots, squash and grated apple. Also add the poultry seasoning now along with the fresh herb sprigs. Let the stew simmer for about 10-15 minutes, until the vegetables are getting pretty tender.

Meanwhile, in a separate pan, brown the veggie sausage. When it’s done, crumble it and set aside.

Add the spinach and corn kernels next. Also, mix in the veggie sausage. Combine the cornstarch with the extra broth and stir that in as well. It should thicken a bit. Add salt and pepper to taste and also the chopped sage leaves now.

Adjust the other seasonings and fish out your herb sprigs. Next, ladle the stew into small oven proof bowls (this will make at least four servings with some likely leftovers) and set aside.

You can also do this while the stew simmers…
Add the sweet potatoes to a pot of water and let simmer/low boil until the potatoes are done — about 12 or so minutes. Test with a fork to be sure. Drain and either use a potato ricer to mash or a potato masher.

Myself, I couldn’t love my potato ricer more. It is my best friend at Thanksgiving. Well, the ricer and my oven, actually. They are my best friends. Oh, and the wine. The wine is a very good friend at Thanksgiving.

Anyway, add the butter, milk, salt and pepper to the potatoes. You want the potatoes creamy but not soupy. Add enough milk to do that. Add fresh thyme and sage. Fresh chopped chives would also be nice if you have some.

Let the potatoes cool a little and then spread some on top of each stew bowl. Try and get it even, this is best achieved by dropping little spoonfuls of potatoes over the whole top and then spreading it out. Cover each with a little bread crumbs. You can either bake it now at 375 for about 20-25 minutes or you can let it cool completely, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

Before you do bake the stews, hit the to of each with a a little cooking spray. This will encourage browning. From the fridge give them about 35 minutes in the oven.

When done, top each with a sage leaf and serve.

This is one of the best kinds of recipes — one of the recipes where you just throw everything together that you think will be pretty good and it is. The kind that works pretty much like you hoped it would. One of the things that I love about Fall soups is that you can just simmer vegetables with broth, blend them up and the result pretty much always works out.

This soup also has many of my favorite Fall ingredients — squash, sage, hazelnuts and pears. In fact, that’s pretty much how I came up with it — everything I like about the season in a blender. In this version I used vegetable stock and water, as I was testing it out as a soup for vegetarians, but feel free to use chicken broth. Or even a combination of chicken broth with a little apple juice. Really, you could probably experiment with the liquid component a bit and still end up with something pretty satisfying and good.

Delicata Squash & Sweet Potato Soup with Hazelnuts & Sage
This will make about 4 servings — double it for more.
1 medium Delicata squash, peeled and diced* (a butternut or acorn squash will work too)
1 medium sweet potato, peeled and diced
1 small onion, diced
3 cloves garlic
1 pear, peeled and diced
1/4 cup hazelnuts, toasted and as much skin as you can get off, removed
4 - 5 leaves fresh sage, rubbed between your fingers a bit
1 tbsp Calvados (or other brandy — or no brandy)
2 tbsp + 1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1 cup vegetable broth + 2 cups water, which is what I used (or you could use 2 cups chicken stock + 1 cup water or even maybe some apple juice would be good — this can probably be played with a bit)
Juice of 1 orange
Optional: 1 tbsp butter and 4 more sage leaves and a handful more hazelnuts

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Add 2 tablespoons olive oil to a soup pot and the garlic (you don’t need to mince the cloves, I just smashed with a knife and threw them in like that), the pear and the onion. Cook over medium heat until soft and a bit golden, about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile toss the squash and sweet potato pieces with the remaining olive oil and roast until they color — about 25 minutes. They don’t need to be cooked all the way through, as your going to add them to the soup and finish cooking them in the liquid. After you remove the veggies, turn down the heat to 350 and give it a few minutes to adjust. Then, toast the hazelnuts at that temperature for about 5-7 minutes. Rub in a towel to remove most of the skins and set aside.

Add the brandy to the soup pot and stir a bit until it’s evaporated. Add the broth, dried thyme and water. Add the roasted potato and squash chunks and simmer about 15-20 minutes.

Next, blend the soup in batches, adding the toasted hazelnuts and the sage in one of the batches. Return to the pot and squeeze the juice of one orange into the soup. Stir to combine it all.

Add about a teaspoon of salt and a half teaspoon of pepper and taste. Adjust that as needed — you might want a bit more, but start there.

Optional portion: Toast a few extra hazelnuts and then crush them and use a few on top of the soup as a garnish. Also, melt the butter in a small pan and fry the sage leaves for about a minute per side until a little crispy. Let drain on a paper towel and serve on top of the soup.

If you are in a crazy-decadent mood, you may look at the browned sage butter and then at your pot of soup. Back to the butter, then to the soup. “Hmmmmm,” you will think. You will shrug and pour the sage butter into the soup (holding back any solids) and stir it all together. Or, you could just fry your sage leaves first in the soup pot, remove those, add a little olive oil with the sage butter and start your soup from there.

I liked this quite a bit. jwa proclaimed this batch a little too “peppery” but I think we will have something like it on Thanksgiving! Perhaps with a little less pepper.

You could also stir a little half and half or heavy cream into the soup before serving. But you didn’t hear that from me.

* I think delicata are not too hard to peel and dice, but if you use a butternut or an acorn, I would just cut it in half, roast it with the olive oil cut side down and scoop out the flesh. Give it about 40 minutes and take the cubed potatoes out after about 20. Let those simmer in the soup while you finish cooking the squash. The add the squash and continue on.

This is the meal we had during a break from the armoir assembly. It may sound like a lot of steps but it comes together very quickly. And it was really good — I loved the soy dressing. The original didn’t call for wasabi but I had some wasabi oil from Trader Joe’s and decided to add some of that — so good. If you don’t have a TJ’s by you (or you don’t want to get any wasabi oil) just add a little wasabi to the blender with the other ingredients — but just a little.

The mango adds both a nice texture and a sweet compliment to the spicy and the salty. And what can I say about the udon noodles besides — I love noodles! Soba noodles will work too, though.

Oh and I have a question for all you expert salmon poachers out there. Sometimes I get those white clumps coming from my salmon as I poach it — is there a good way to avoid that happening? I poach salmon very rarely but this seems to happen to me maybe half the times that I do poach salmon. Any tricks to avoid this? Thanks! There’s a great explanation/tip from Jacque in the comments.

If you are more a fan of grilling than you are of poaching (as I usually am) you could also try grilling the salmon with salt, pepper, oil and a bit of sake brushed onto the fish while cooking. I bet that would be pretty good too!

Sake-Poached Salmon with Mango & Soy Dressing Over Udon Noodles
Based on a recipe by Ming Tsai
For the salmon:
1 cup sake
1 celery, sliced
1 peeled carrot, sliced
1 small onion, sliced
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp chopped parsley
2 bay leaves
8 black peppercorns
2 tbsp soy sauce
Water
1 lb salmon fillets, skin removed
Salt and pepper
For the dressing:
1/2 cup ponzu
1 large shallot, quartered
1 clove garlic
2 tbsp Japanese soy sauce
1/2 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup wasabi olive oil + 1/2 cup olive oil or 3/4 cup olive oil and 1/4 tsp wasabi paste
The rest:
2 bunches udon noodles
1 mango, peeled and sliced
2 sliced scallions
sesame seeds for garnish

In a large sauce pot, mix the sake, celery, carrot, onion, sugar, bay leaves, parsley, peppercorns and soy sauce. Add the seasoned salmon and add water to cover. Slowly bring the liquid to a simmer. Simmer for 3 minutes then turn off the heat. Let stand for 5 to 10 minutes depending on doneness desired.

In a blender, add ponzu, shallot, soy, and sugar. If using wasabi paste add that too. Blend on high speed and drizzle in the oil. Season with salt and pepper.

In a large bowl, mix together the cooked udon noodles and enough enough vinaigrette to coat. There will be some left over for plating. Check for seasoning.

Plating: On a large plate, place a mound of the noodles and top with hot salmon and top with a few mango slices. Garnish with the diced scallions and sesame seeds. Drizzle on a little of the vinaigrette over the top and serve.

We recently decided to get a TV armoir to hide the television when not in use and to make the living room look a little nicer. Not wanting to spend thousands of dollars, we opted to buy something we would assemble ourselves. We did and it was pretty much hitchless. Sure, the first item assembled — a drawer — got taken apart twice (!) to fix misreading the directions (twice), but after that, it came together nicely.

And so it begins. Everthing is unpacked and laid out on the floor. Huh. That’s a lot of pieces.

jwa devises an evil plan for world domination with a Target armoir. It involves a screwdriver, wood glue and some salty language.

It’s starting to take form around 10:15 pm. We began the project around 7:00 but had an hour break for dinner around 8:00. We had a really tasty sake poached salmon dish with udon noodles and a soy, wasabi and citrus dressing. This was topped with mango slices, green onions and sesame seeds. Don’t worry, recipe coming this week!

jwa devises part two of his evil genius plan with the help of the instructions.

Chelsea is rather unimpressed. Her plan for world domination is really so much further along.

It’s upright around 10:45 PM.

Now it’s even in the right position. And with the tv in the designated tv position!

Next morning, it’s all still standing. Hooray! Project screaming cabinet doors of freedom commences. It’s successful.

Now we just need to try and fit the stereo equipment in there too. It might involve building a new shelf. Perhaps next weekend?

I have been on a soup kick, which is pretty easy for me because I love soup. Mostly creamy soups but I don’t feel that guilty about it, because I almost never use actual cream. I use a potato for creaminess. Oh, and a big blender.

This soup came about because I had four zucchinis that I needed to use. I grabbed a sweet potato to add to the fun and some mint from out front, for I love the combination of zucchini and mint. Going with the green theme, I tossed in a handful of pistachios and ended up with a great, filling and healthy soup.

And it’s even better the next day!

Zucchini & Sweet Potato Soup with Mint & Pistachios
3 cups chicken broth or water
4 small/medium zucchinis (about 5-6 inches long), halved and diced
1 medium white onion, diced
3 large cloves of garlic, minced
2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1 small sweet potato, peeled and diced into about 1-inch cubes
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 tbsp lemon juice
1-2 tbsp mint leaves
1/8 cup dry roasted pistachios, shelled (about 20-22 pistachios)

Add the olive oil to a soup pot over medium heat and toss in the onion, garlic and zucchini. Let cook about 10 minutes until soft and a little brown. Add the thyme and the broth and bring to a boil. Add the sweet potato and simmer about 15 more minutes or until the sweet potato is tender.

Blend in batches adding the mint and pistachios to one of the blending sessions. Add the mint to your taste. I probably added about one and a half atblespoons worth of leaves. The pistachios and mint both make for very pretty specks in the soup.

Return to the pot and stir in the lemon juice. Add salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with mint leaves and enjoy. I dare say this soup would even work chilled, in the Summer.

Next week: Another soup! Delicata squash, sweet potato and sage to be exact. Yep, it’s the start of the Thanksgiving trial and error, test recipe cook off. Yipee!