Butternut Squash Soup

I know exactly when I became an adult, it was 2 Christmases ago when Owen gave me the Deceptively Delicious cookbook. It has recipes that hides purees of different vegetables in your food. Before this time I never liked squash. period. blech, eww, gross. Well, after I tried a recipe using pureed butternut and actually trying the roasted butternut plain, I decided it wasn't that bad after all. This led to discovering other foods I *thought* I didn't like (beets, zucchini), however, I still can't get into eggplant and tomatoes. Anyway I was pondering something Owen's mom told him when he was little and didn't want to eat squash for dinner, she said, "you'll like it when you're a grown up" (he didn't have to eat the squash, but then he wouldn't get dessert). Well, apparently I'm a grown up, because I like squash :)

So, I had a butternut squash that I wanted to make soup with last week, and I was trolling the Smitten Kitchen, because i knew she would have one. And voila, she did! winter squash soup with gruyere croutons. It sounded delicious, but had a lot of butter and made way more soup than I had intended to make. Also, I used our blendtec blender instead of making it on the stove, so it only took 20 minutes to make this and used hardly any dishes.

Here's my take on it, makes enough for 2-3 people.


Blend together:
1/2 a roasted butternut squash
1/2 onion and 4 garlic cloves sauteed with olive oil, salt & pepper
5 sage leaves
1 vegetable boullion cube
1.5 cups hot water
a couple dashes of cumin
some freshly grated nutmeg
some freshly ground pepper

Taste this and adjust seasonings to your taste.

Croutons:
1/2 of a small baguette
butter (I use Brummel and Brown yogurt butter)
5 sage leaves minced
Cambozola Cheese (a blue brie)

I cut the baguette into 1" rounds and buttered one side. I put them on a small cookie sheet and put them in the toaster oven until they were golden on the edges. Flip them over and spread the cheese on it and sprinkle the sage leaves. Put that back in the toaster oven until the cheese is melty.