Saturday doin's

Look fast -- all that shine will be gone by morning.  I gave the car one of its usual twice yearly washes this morning. The bugs on the front have been bothering me. Remnants of my 3 weeks in South Georgia and coastal South Carolina, the things made the front of the car look pitted and ugly. Now it's all nice and silver again. You'll have to take my word for that because I was flat out too lazy to walk off the porch and take a photo from the front. That would have required shoes.

Aside from that, I've spent time today making a variation of the winter squash soup with lemongrass and coconut milk that I learned to love last winter at Bhavana. This is probably the 4th time I've made it since I returned from that trip. This time, instead of winter squash I used sweet potatoes, because it just sounds good, and will use almond milk instead of coconut milk. He'd made it with almond milk at Bhavana, and it was unbelievably delicious. However, I think I also made another discovery today for added flavor. The stock for the soup has all kinds of spices and herbs and savory stuff like onions and garlic and ginger and cinnamon, plus trimmings from the squash/potatoes. Usually, I do what the recipe directs: let it simmer for 30 minutes, then use it. Today, I opted to just let it simmer for awhile, maybe an hour or so beyond the time when all the stuff was put in, so all those flavors could seriously cook out into the stock, and having just tasted the broth as the soup is cooking, I can tell it made a big difference. Yummy. With almond milk still waiting in the wings. I'd offer up the recipe, but it's a lot of words and I'm too lazy. And, for the first time I now understand the descriptions I'd heard of the wonderful scent of lemongrass. What I've bought in the past didn't have much of a scent -- probably because it had been harvested long before I ever saw it. This time, I harvested some from my own pots, for the first time, and the smell was indeed wonderful as I cut it up. No doubt, that's also adding to the flavor of that broth in a new way. I'm looking forward to dinner, for a taste.

About done, I'd say. Now the question is, to puree or not to puree. Recipe says puree, but at Bhavana they left the squash pieces whole, and it was super. Milk gets added after it's pureed, if I go that far. Or before serving, if I don't puree. Aside from being delicious, this soup is super healthy, filled with nutrition and highly anti-inflammatory. About 10 cloves of garlic, a big piece of fresh ginger (about 3 inches long), 2 jalapeno peppers, plus the other goodies. And fresh lime juice at the very end.

Postscript: pureeing won! And it tastes wonderful. I think I like this variation.