Butternut Squash Soup

It wasn't pumpkin, but it was good!

Unfortunately, I had a crop failure on the butternuts this summer, so it was a store bought squash.  I cubed it and cooked it in chicken broth with a chopped onion (also store bought, as I have not yet been able to grow an onion this year - I have no idea why).  I added some paprika and cayenne at the end and mashed it up with a masher - I was too lazy to pull out the blender. 

It was quite good, and I had some of it for lunch today - it was even better today than it was last night. 

I am still craving pumpkin everything, so I was happy to see that all the kabocha seeds I planted almost two weeks ago popped right up and looked strong - the plants in the greenhouse just aren't making it, so hopefully these outside versions will do well, even this late into Fall. 

The turnips, radish, mustard cabbage, and sweet potatoes are going gangbusters, and I can see quite a few carrots popping up - still no green nor red onions, which is just confusing.  Green onions, at least, usually do well up at my house, so I just don't know.

Always something to learn. 

I bought a 5 cu ft chest freezer on craigslist last week, so I am looking forward to finding someone butchering a cow.  I figure I can fit a 1/8 cow in there and still have room for the turkeys that go on sale at the grocery store this time of year.  I am a bit leery about the chest construction, but I was thinking I would just divide everything up into week size portions and then pull it out one by one and put it in the inside fridge - so one week I might end up with a steak, a pound of hamburger, and a chicken and I would have to figure out what to do with them on whichever day.  It shouldn't be too hard - to make things easier, I have a weekly rotation of basic ingredients: Monday is chicken, Tuesday is beans, Wednesday pasta, etc.  If something gets out of whack, I just switch it around.  We had chicken last night, so it's something different today.  If I can buy meat in bulk, we can eat a little more of it - right now, we eat beef about once a week, chicken once a week, and the rest is beans, pasta, or eggs. 

I helped proctor the PSAT on Saturday morning, but in the afternoon, we drove out to Ahualoa to look at a "tractor".  That's what the ad said on craigslist - "tractor".  It looked fairly big and it was very cheap because it wasn't running.  Well, when we got there it was more than fairly big - it was enormous!  It wasn't really a tractor, like a farm tractor, either - it was a one of three machines brought in to build the H-1 freeway on Oahu.  It was a monster. 

Sometimes you get that craigslist fever, like here is this deal and you want to get it because you drove hours to see it.  Somehow sanity prevailed and we said we needed to think about it.  After a few hours of thinking, it became just funny - it was so big my husband would be crashing into things, and I would probably come home and find five new ponds (it had the hugest backhoe) and no trees on the property!  It gave us the giggles thinking about it! 

Beyond that, I didn't accomplish much this weekend - desultorily pulled a few weeds and took the longest nap in the afternoon on Sunday.  I must have needed it, because I feel a lot better today than I did last week, but now I am regretting all those seeds that didn't get planted and the bread that didn't get baked....