Cream Of Celery Soup - Tasty Tuesday!

It's cold in Chicago now.  Our beautiful days of sunshine and 70s are gone.  It's no longer easy, comfortable, or even possible to go outside without a coat.  In my mind, we've officially entered Soup Season.  Earlier this week, I made my Roasted Butternut Squash Soup, and it was good.  Last night, I did a new one, and it was awesomely yummy and again perfectly healthy.

Interestingly, my Cream of Celery Soup doesn't require any cream or milk.  And since I was in the process of doing a 14 day gluten free challenge, I was happy to make this gluten free, too.  Potato does an amazing job of making a beautiful thick texture and a creamy taste.  I've used this technique before with my potato and corn chowder that has barely any milk in it.  It feels wrong calling it "cream of" when there's no cream or milk, but this is exactly what it tastes like.

And this soup was good.  Even my husband who doesn't like celery ate it, and Little Miss kept taking spoonfuls from my bowl after she finished hers.  That's a good sign, right?

Cream of Celery Soup

Ingredients:
6 good size celery stalks (about a pound, but my digital scale broke, so I'm guesstimating)
1 medium baking potato
2 T oil or butter
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
3/4 c dry wine
4 c chicken stock (or vegetable stock to make vegan)
1/2 t nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Chop your celery into small pieces.  I cut my stalks in half lengthwise (after washing them well) and then chopped them into 1/2 inch pieces or so.  In a heavy soup pan, heat the oil (or butter).  Add the celery and cook over medium low heat.  Stir, then chop the onion after peeling it. The onion should be about the same size as the celery.  Add the onion to the pot and continue to cook.

Cut the potato into similar small chunks.  Personally, I like keeping the potato skin on, so I don't peel it.  If you feel differently, go ahead and peel it.  You want these smaller than you normally would so that they cook more quickly in the soup.

Smash the garlic and remove the skins.  Add the smashed garlic to the onions and celery and cook for a few more minutes, stirring periodically.  You want to cook it until the onion is fairly translucent but before it truly caramelizes.  At this point, add the wine, and cook it down until the wine has reduced by about half.

Add the potato after the wine has reduced, which will only take a few minutes.  Then add the chicken stock - adding the potato first means you don't get splashes of stock.  I'm always thinking, and no, I didn't learn that one the hard way, why?  Add the nutmeg, and stir once.

Bring this to a boil (cover it to bring it to a boil more quickly, then remove the cover once it boils), then turn it down to a simmer.  Cook for 15-20 minutes when the potatoes are soft but not mushy.

Use your immersion blender - still my favorite kitchen gadget - to puree the soup.  If you don't have an immersion blender, you can use your regular blender.  You'll puree it in batches.  Don't fill your blender more than one-third full of a hot liquid, and be sure to use a kitchen towel to hold the lid on.  You don't want the pressure from blending hot liquid to case the top to fly off and spray scalding liquid, so be careful (see, this is why I love my immersion blender - it reduces danger, and it's useful).

Add salt and pepper to taste, and serve immediately.  This is fantastic, even for me who doesn't like celery.  It's a light, fresh and slightly sweet flavor that is a perfect fall dinner.  Because this is such a light soup, it may work better as part of a meal rather than the entire entree.

Enjoy this and more with Blessed With Grace and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday.  Rachel from A Southern Fairytale has an awesome Mouthwatering Monday linkup that I participate in, too.

Chocolate Stuffed Bread

It's fall.  It's officially fall by the calendar and by the weather outside in beautiful Chicago.  For me, that means that I'm back to cooking inside with the oven and that I'm starting to make more hearty dishes.

I made a bunch of bread dough this weekend, and I had some left in the fridge yesterday.  As I tried to decide what I wanted to do with it - breadsticks?  A boule?  More pizza? - I hit upon an idea.  I was in the mood for something desserty but not overly sweet.  I adore chocolate babka, but oh my word is that an involved process compared to the time I had at 7:30 last night.  Plus I already had dough made.

So I made my own version of most definitely not chocolate babka but something vaguely reminiscent of it.  And that loaf?  Twelve hours later, it's gone.  I think that's a ringing endorsement, don't you?

Chocolate Stuffed Bread

Ingredients:
1 recipe of your favorite bread dough - you could use my lazy version or even a baguette dough
1/2 c brown sugar (oops, I didn't measure)
1/2 c dark chocolate chips (nope, didn't measure that either)
1 t cinnamon

Directions:
Make the bread dough according to the regular instructions.  Let it go through its first rise.  At that point, you'll want to start deviating.  Flour your surface well.  Go ahead and get it nice and flat, maybe 1/4 inch thick or a little less and long. You want it maybe 4 inches tall and the rest goes to length.

Note that I am not being in the least exact in what I'm doing.  It's bread.  It isn't supposed to be perfect.  This is how people know you made it yourself.  Now for the easy part.  Sprinkle the brown sugar along the length of the dough.  You want just a hint of it, not covered like you would with a cinnamon roll.  The idea is to make the dough a little sweeter so that it isn't bread.  And chocolate.  It's a little more nuanced.

Then sprinkle the cinnamon over the brown sugar because cinnamon and chocolate are awesome together.  The chips go atop the sugar and cinnamon.  Gently press the chocolate chips in just a little so they'll hold but not so much that they poke through the other side of the dough.

Starting at one of the small ends, start rolling it up like a giant cinnamon roll.  Once you have it completely rolled, curl it around itself and press the two open ends together so that it makes a circle.  Again, this isn't exact.  You just want a shape for your bread, so have fun with it.

Place your bread onto a peel sprinkled with cornmeal to rise.  You don't want to have to touch it again and destroy the rising it will do.  If you are going to bake this in a pan because you don't have a peel and stone to bake it on, that's fine.  Simply make sure your pan is greased so it won't stick when you take it out after it's baked.  Let your dough rest for an hour to rise, lightly covered with a barely damp towel.

About twenty minutes into the rise, preheat your oven to 450 degrees.  Make sure you have a small, empty pan in the oven on the bottom shelf.  When the dough has finished its rise, go ahead and put it in the oven.  Immediately fill a cup with water and put the water into the empty pan to create steam.  This is how you have a nice crunchy crust on the outside.  Once you've added the water, close the door and don't open it again until the bread is done.

Depending on the size of your loaf, the cook time will vary.  With a normal size serving of bread dough, bake it for 35 minutes, but adjust based on your oven and amount of dough you're using.  I baked my smaller dough for 28 minutes, and it was perfect.

Try to let your bread cook before cutting into it, but if you can't... you weren't alone!  Enjoy this and more with Blessed With Grace and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday.  Rachel from A Southern Fairytale has an awesome Mouthwatering Monday linkup that I participate in, too.

Baked Kale Chips - Tasty Tuesday!

It's summer, so there is a ton of fresh produce.  Fortunately, I've finished up all the ginormous zucchini that my friend kept foisting on me.  There are other veggies still in my house, however.  Last week, I attended the Chicago Food Swap, and I came home with a ton of great goodies.  Although the honey hot fudge and butterscotch and salted caramel sauces weren't the most healthy, nor was the jam I picked up or the organic butter, I did come home with some awesome healthy treats, too, including dill pickles (two kinds!) and two gorgeous bunches of kale.

Yum.

I love kale.  I know I'm somewhat in the minority on this one, though, so I get creative with how I use it so others in my family will eat it, too.  Yesterday, I attended a barbecue at a friend's house and used up the last of the kale making baked kale chips.  My beautiful bowl of crunchy goodness disappeared faster than I'd hoped it would.  Even the kids liked it.

Yes.  Kids.  Liked.  Green.  Vegetables.  Go figure.

Baked Kale Chips

Ingredients:
1 bunch kale (any variety works)
1 T olive oil
1 t salt

Directions:
Remove the stems from your kale.  They are tough and don't cook at the same rate as the leaves.  I sometimes keep them and grill them (another recipe), but in this case, I just tossed them.  The easiest way to do this is to run a sharp knife along the edge of the stem on either side of where it branches off into leaf to remove it.

Clean your kale.  I like to wash it a little then tear the leaves into slightly larger than chip size pieces.  This is not at all an exact science.  My salad spinner comes in handy at this point where I can spin them pretty dry, as you don't want to bake them when wet.

Once your kale is dry, place it into a bowl and drizzle the olive oil over it.  Use your fingers to "toss" the kale to ensure that all the leaves are equally coated with the olive oil.  This is what helps to get them really crispy.  Place them on a cookie sheet - I put my sil pat on it - in a single layer.  My one bunch of kale usually requires two cookie sheets.  Sprinkle the kale with salt, being sure you don't use too much.  The kale will shrink when baking, so it becomes more intense.

Bake in a preheated 275 degree oven for twenty to twenty-five minutes.  You can flip them halfway through to help them get crispy on all sides.  If you use the curly kale like I did, you often don't have to do this because they curl up on their own and expose all sides to the heat.  When they are just starting to brown, they are done.  Remove them from the oven and serve the same day.

Crunch crunch yum!

Enjoy this and more with Blessed With Grace and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday.  Rachel from A Southern Fairytale has an awesome Mouthwatering Monday linkup that I participate in, too.

Watermelon Granita - Tasty Tuesday!

There are some things I love about summer.  The fresh produce, spending time outside, grilling almost all our meals - those are the things that I love.  Of course sometimes I get a little carried away.  I'll buy a dozen mangoes and realize we can't eat quite that many.  Or I'll buy out the avocado section because they're really good and cheap, but then I need to do something with all of them.  Or I'll buy a huge watermelon that we can't eat fast enough.

Fortunately, there's always a solution.  I'll make my mango custard.  Or I'll freeze the sliced avocado (yes, it works - or I'll make guac and freeze that, which actually works better).  And for watermelon?  That's easy.  I make watermelon granita.

What?  You've never had it?  It's super easy, it's just about completely allergen free, and it tastes amazing on a hot day.  It's sweet and crunchy and frozen.  I've posted before about my mojito granita, but watermelon is pretty awesome, too.

Watermelon Granita

Ingredients:
10 pound watermelon (or so), flesh only and cubed-ish
2 limes
1/2 t salt
1/2 c water*
1/2 c sugar*

*Taste your watermelon before you start.  If it's bland, you may need more of the simple syrup you'll make.  My watermelon this time was blah, so I ended up doubling the sugar content.  Usually this is plenty.

Directions:
Make a simple syrup.  Place the water and sugar in a small pot, and bring to a boil.  Let it boil for two to three minutes, then remove it from the heat.  The sugar will be completely dissolved in the water, so nothing will be crunchy when you eat it.  Super simple, right?

While you're making the simple syrup, cut up your watermelon so you have chunks of the pink flesh.  Place them in a blender and liquefy them.  If there are any seeds, make sure you remove them first.  Pour the watermelon - made in batches, depending on the size of your blender - into a metal 13x9 pan (because it conducts the cold better, trust me).

Pour your simple syrup (which is fine cooled and actually better that way) into the pan with the watermelon, along with the salt.  Zest the limes into the watermelon mixture, and then juice them into it.  Try one lime juiced first and do a taste test after you've gently stirred the mixture.  If it needs more sugar at this point, make some more simple syrup.  If it needs the second lime (mine usually does), add it.

The next part is the hardest of the whole thing.  Get the pan into your freezer without spilling anything.  And yes, I have succeeded at this before.  Let it freeze for a half hour or so.  Pull it from the freezer, and you'll see where it's started to freeze at the top and around the edges.  Use a fork to scrape across the frozen parts to separate the ice crystals.  Place it in the freezer, and continue doing this until the granita is completely frozen and it is made up of little bits of icy chunks.  If you're anything like me, set a timer so you remember to scrape it each time.  If you forget, you can melt it and start over - not that I've ever had to do this before - and it's just fine.

Once it's ready, place all of it in a sealed container and serve frozen.  It will stay good for a couple weeks, but it's so good and so healthy, it will never last that long, right?

Enjoy this and more with Blessed With Grace and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday.

Baking Bread On The Grill - Tasty Tuesday!

It's been ridiculously hot in Chicago the past week or so.  Like... so hot that it's actually too hot to even go to the pool kind of hot.  And I know we haven't been alone in this heat wave.  I don't know how you handle it, but I refuse to turn on my oven when it's this hot.  To be honest, I don't use my oven much in the summer at all because I hate heating up the house.

What do I do instead?  I use my grill.  While I haven't quite solved baking a cake on my grill (trust me, it's coming - I have four birthdays in July and August in my house), I do make pretty much everything else there.  And I had a hankering for fresh bread, but I was not about to have the house heated by a 450 degree oven that was preheated before baking for 35 minutes.  But hey, that grill is awfully useful....

Bread Baked On The Grill


Ingredients:
Use your standard bread dough for this one... I did something that will handle being shaped into a boule, but a loaf would probably also work.  You may have to watch the timing a little carefully because they'll bake slightly differently, but the concept is the same, so go for it.  Below is the dough I use most often:

1 c water
1 t yeast
1 t salt
2 c 1 1/2 t flour
Pizza stone (you sort of really need this to diffuse the heat even if you're cooking in a loaf pan)
Small heat safe dish
Water
Extra flour

Directions:
Mix all ingredients together with a spatula in a container.  Yes, you heard that right.  This won't feel quite like your traditional dough, but trust me.  Once it's mixed together, cover it loosely - enough so that air can still get in - and let it sit on the counter for a couple hours until it's doubled in size.

Once it's risen on the counter, you can either use it immediately or - my favorite - put it in the fridge for up to a week and pull it out whenever you're ready to use it.  This makes it the perfect make ahead dough.  It's easier to work with once it's been refrigerated, but you can absolutely use it immediately after rising.

Cover a pizza peel fairly heavily in cornmeal so that it won't stick.  (If you're doing yours in a loaf pan, prepare the loaf pan as you normally would.)  Coat the dough in your container with flour by just sprinkling it over the dough.  Carefully lift it out and gently form it into a ball using as little movement as possible so that you don't disturb all the work the yeast just did rising.  Place it on the cornmeal covered pizza peel (or in your loaf pan) to rise for forty minutes.

After the dough has risen for twenty of the forty minutes, place your pizza stone and the heat safe dish onto your grill.  Turn on your grill to whatever you need to do to get it to 450 degrees, leaving the center burners off or on lower heat if at all possible.  Once the forty minutes has passed, use a sharp knife dipped in flour to cut a tic tac toe or shell pattern in your bread (personally, I usually do the tic tac toe... just because).

Once your dough is prepared like this, head outside, and place it on the pizza stone.  Bring along a couple cups of water with you, and add this to your heat safe dish.  This creates steam inside your grill, which will make the crust of your bread crunchy rather than soft.  It's a neat trick, no?

Let the bread bake on the grill.  Mine takes less time than in the oven.  This one was ready in about 28 minutes.  Depending on the shape of your dough (loaf in a pan v boule), the size of your dough (bigger = longer cook time), and consistency of the dough (a drier dough cooks faster), and your grill's temperature, it will take slightly different times to cook.  You can peek at it after twenty or so minutes to see how it's doing and judge from there.

Once it's baked, remove it from the grill and let it sit for at least ten minutes so that it can stop steaming inside.  If you cut it while it's still steaming hot, it dries out the bread that you don't eat immediately (the steam escapes instead of staying in the bread).

Enjoy your bread in a sandwich or with soup or ... my personal favorite when it's fresh bread and still warm: slathered in butter and a little honey.  Yum!

Enjoy this and more with Blessed With Grace and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday.

Tasty Tuesday - How To Cut An Avocado

Avocados are one of my favorite foods. They make such awesome ingredients in dishes from the best guacamole ever to the avocado tomato salad I shared last week, and more. Plus, they're pretty good on my own, as Little Miss can attest. They're one of her favorite vegetables.

A few weeks ago, I asked my husband to help with prep in the kitchen and watched in amazement as he cut up the avocado. It was somewhat entertaining to watch him start to peel it then change his mind and cut it across the short half of the avocado and try to dig out all the flesh. And then it dawned of me that perhaps a tutorial might be in order. Do you know how to quickly and effectively cut an avocado? You do now!

A couple of notes before we begin. First, you want a ripe avocado. How do you find a ripe avocado? You want to buy one in the store that isn't rock hard, but you don't want one with any soft spots in it. The soft spots will be brown inside and will taste icky. You want to find one that will just barely start to give as you gently squeeze it. And the real test of an avocado? You want to wiggle the stem on the top of the avocado - that little bit that's barely left there. If it's stuck firmly on there and won't move, the avocado isn't ripe. If it pops off and isn't bright green underneath, it's overripe. You don't want to try to remove it yourself, as it protects the freshness of your avocado and keeps it from overripening, but if you wiggle it and can feel that it's pretty loose and wants to come off? You're doing well.

How To Cut Up An Avocado

Step One: Cut the avocado in half lengthwise. This will give you the most room to maneuver. Once you've cut all the way around, twist the two halves in your hands and pull it apart. One half will be ready to go, and the other half will contain the pit.

Step 2: To remove the pit, use the knife that you just used to cut the skin around the avocado. Notice that it doesn't need to be super sharp. I wouldn't use a butter knife, but this is a table knife I have. Don't hold the avocado in your hand while you do this. Or at least be very careful of where all your fingers are - I have a scar and an emergency room bill for stitches that I can show you for proof of what happens when you don't. Slam your knife firmly into the pit. You want it to embed itself slightly into the avocado pit. Then you simply apply a little force and twist the knife sideways. The pit will pop right out. That said, if you're only using half your avocado, leave the pit in. The pit helps the avocado from turning brown as much as is possible. Another secret: if you're making guacamole and it will be out for awhile, leave the pit(s) in the guacamole, and it will help keep it fresher.

Step 3: Removing the flesh from the avocado is fairly easy at this point. You will change your tool now to a spoon. Simply slide the spoon between the flesh and the skin and gently work it all the way around the avocado. This is where a ripe avocado is important - an unripe one won't separate easily (ok, plus, it doesn't taste as good). Once you've gone all the way around, use the spoon to pop the flesh out and onto a cutting board.

Step 4: When you're ready to cut your avocado, simply use your same knife again to run the knife lightly through the sections first one way and then another. The key here is to not cut them too small. Avocado is fairly delicate and will start to fall apart as you mix it, so you want to start with pieces larger than those you want to end with. For this reason, I never cut them to make them shorter and instead leave them the full height of the avocado - just 2 cuts, not three.

From here, the avocado is clean and ready to use in nice even chunks. Now... go make some guacamole. I'm hungry!

Enjoy this and more with Blessed With Grace and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday. Also posting now with A Southern Fairytale and her Mouthwatering Monday.

Tasty Tuesday - Avocado Tomato Salad

On New Years Day, we were invited to a friend's house to celebrate her husband's birthday. She asked if I could bring a green salad, which ummm is something that I rarely make. And yes, I know I need to more often (see yesterday's post on my New Year's Resolutions). Unfortunately, the migraine got me. I had purchased the ingredients for what I thought was an ingenious salad, but I ended up spending the entire day in bed in a dark room avoiding all noise, light and thought of food.

So much for my salad at the party. Fortunately, yesterday I was feeling better, and I didn't want my ingredients to go to waste, so I decided to make the salad for myself. The only issue was the missing heads of Romaine that I had purchased. Apparently my husband had gotten ambitious and made a Caesar Salad (which hmmm I just realized I've never posted here - definitely something to rectify). This would explain why I thought I smelled garlic at some point on Sunday. I readjusted what I was making but still created a pretty tasty salad for myself. It would have been great with the Romaine, so I'm going to pretend like I was able to make it the way I'd intended. You'll play along, right?

Tomato Avocado Salad

Ingredients:
2 heads Romaine lettuce
4 medium avocados
1 pint grape tomatoes
1 bunch cilantro
1 1/2 c corn, fresh or frozen
1 c black beans (dried and prepped, if possible)
1/3 c red wine vinegar
1/4 c lime juice
juice of 1/2 orange
1/2 c olive oil
1 t salt (or more, to taste)
3/4 t chili powder
1/2 t cumin
(I did forget to buy some green onion, and that would be a great addition to this, thinly sliced and mixed with the veggies)

Directions:
Prepare your black beans, soaking them overnight then simmering them for an hour and a half until they are just tender. Personally, I am not a fan of canned black beans, as I find them too mushy and they would be especially in this recipe, I think.

Wash your Romaine, and cut it into chunks. Make sure it is dry before you put it into the salad. You can do this ahead of time, and cover it in the fridge with paper towels to keep the Romaine nice.

If you are using fresh corn, roast it so that it is just blackening, then cut it from the cob. If you are using frozen corn - which of course I did in January - heat it in a nonstick pan until it starts to brown a little bit. It adds a great roasted flavor when you do this, and it's super easy. Make sure to let the corn cool fully before you add it, as you don't want to cook the rest of the ingredients.

To make the dressing, place the red wine vinegar in a blender (I used my immersion blender with the deep container is comes with, which is a super easy way for me to do dressings), along with the lime juice, half of one of the avocados (remove the skin and pit!), the cumin, chili pepper, a half cup of cilantro, the salt, and the juice of the orange. Blend it until it's completely emulsified and a nice thick consistency. Feel free to taste it and adjust it to your liking. It will have a little bit of a kick, but this is what we're going for. Refrigerate this until you're ready to serve it. Making this ahead and letting the flavors meld is a benefit. You can always whip it up again just before dressing the salad if needed.

Slice your grape tomatoes in half, and chop your remaining 3 1/2 avocados into largish chunks. Remember that avocados tend to crumble as you stir, so you want to leave them relatively large. Chop your remaining cilantro.

Place the Romaine into a bowl, and dress it. You will most likely not use all the dressing, and that's fine. Start by putting about half on the Romaine and toss it, then slowly add some more until you get to what looks good to you. Add your veggies and beans atop the dressed lettuce and pour just a bit more of the dressing atop these. Gently toss one more time

Add all the veggies and the beans to a bowl, and stir gently. Serve immediately, and feel really healthy about what you're eating. And yes, I'm eating some of my leftover salad right now. It's still awesome. Without the Romaine, this would be a great dip with tortilla chips or - like I'm eating it - just by itself.

Enjoy this and more with Blessed With Grace and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday. Also posting now with A Southern Fairytale and her Mouthwatering Monday.

Tasty Tuesday - No Knead Bread

I had fresh bread for dinner last night. And the night before. And the night before. And possibly the night before. Now that fall is here and the weather has turned cooler, I'm using my oven again which means that I'm back to baking bread on a regular basis. While I sometimes make a traditional French baguette or a quick flatbread.

There are times, however, where I want a traditional bread with its crackly, crusty exterior and nice soft inside steaming from the oven. But I don't have the ten minutes to get everything together, twenty to knead, hour and a half for rise one, five to shape, another hour for the second rise and a half hour to bake. Fortunately, I found a great solution.

And that's why I'm having fresh bread almost every night of the week. No, my solution wasn't a time machine, handy as that might be.

No Knead Bread

Ingredients:
3 c warm water
1 T salt
1 1/2 T yeast
6 1/2 c flour

Directions:
This is an adaptation of a recipe I found in a book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. They have an awesome methodology that I absolutely adore and use all the time. I love that they've turned a fun but somewhat lengthy task into something I can whip together almost every day.

I use a large sealable container, though you never seal the dough when making it. I do use the top to keep the dough from drying out in the fridge, however, by placing it loosely atop the container.

So, step one is to get those three cups of water from the tap and place them in the container. You want the water to be warm but not hot. If it isn't warm, that's fine, but it will take a little longer for the little yeasties to wake up and rise. Add the salt and yeast and flour. Yep, all at once.

Use a spatula to stir it. Yep, just stir it. This is the no knead thing, remember? Stir it until the flour is all incorporated. You don't want any wet or dry patches, but that's about it. It will be sticky, and there's truly no kneading, which is very unlike any bread I generally make. Trust me though. It works. These people have a whole series of books on making tons of different breads using this methodology. (So anyone looking for a birthday or Christmas gift for me, ahem.)

That's it. Once you've gotten the dough to this point - which will take you all of eight or nine minutes - place the lid carefully on the container (remember, this is a five gallon container that you're using) so that it is covered but not sealed, as you want the air circulating in the container to feed the little yeasties. Let it sit out on your counter for a couple hours to rise.

Yes, that's the same dough. I didn't touch it, but it's so different. Once it's risen and is nice and flat on top, then stick it in the fridge. It's now ready for you to make bread whenever you want over the next week - whenever you have one hour in the house. Or most of an hour anyway.

When you're ready, prepare your pizza peel that you use to get the bread in and out of the oven. This is where the bread will rise, as well. Sprinkle it with cornmeal. This is what will keep your bread from sticking to the peel and losing all its rise when it goes in the oven. Make sure you're generous - far more generous than you normally are when doing this. I learned this lesson the hard way the first time I made this bread.

Once you've done this, sprinkle some flour atop the dough to make it easier to handle without sticking to you constantly. Carefully take a hunk of dough from your container. Think about how much water and flour and such you used to make this dough. This is plenty of dough for several loaves of bread, and I generally take about a quarter of it for each loaf. And yes, I say about. You don't have to be exact; it'll all be ok.

If you need to, sprinkle a little more flour atop the hunk you removed. Form it into a ball by stretching the dough outward from the center and pushing it under, not by rolling it. Once it's formed into a semblance of a circle, place it on your peel to let it rise. You do not need to cover it with this recipe. Let it rise for twenty minutes, then start preheating your oven to 450 degrees with a stone in the bottom third of the oven. Have a small pan below the stone where you can add water, as well.

Once your oven has preheated for twenty minutes (see - most of this "work" is time you can be doing laundry or making the rest of your dinner) for a total of forty minutes rising time, you're ready to bake it. Use a sharp knife to add slashes to the top of the bread dough to a half inch depth. I do mine either in a tic tac toe pattern or like a shell. Add a cup or two of water to the pan in the oven, then quickly slip the dough onto the stone.

Bake it for 30 minutes, then remove it. Technically, you want to wait until it cools before cutting it, but really? Does it ever happen? Tell me it isn't just our house where we can't wait for our bread to cool before we eat it. Don't store it in the fridge. Please don't store bread in the fridge. Don't put it in plastic either. Let it cool completely before you cover it.

And that leftover dough? Back into the fridge it goes until the next day when you make more fresh bread with almost no effort. When you've used up the last of the dough, there will be a little bit left in the container sticking to the edges. Don't bother washing it out. It's ok. Just make another batch, and the bread will start to have a sourdough flavor to it, yum!

Are you convinced yet?

Enjoy this and more with Blessed With Grace and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday. Also posting now with A Southern Fairytale and her Mouthwatering Monday.

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Tasty Tuesday - Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

Yep, it's fall. And fall in Chicago means that there's frost on the ground when we wake up and the furnace kicks on all night long trying its best to keep the house comfortable as the temperatures plunge. During the day, we might get a respite into the 50s, but it's still chilly, and by the time sets at 5pm (ok, so it just feels like it's 5pm, it's cold again and I'm ready for a bowl of soup and some fresh bread.

This week, I did a roasted butternut squash soup that made a lot of soup - yay! - that the wee ones even liked - yay, yay! - and was super healthy - yay yay yay? - and took a minimal amount of effort. By minimal I mean I started it just before I left to pick Little Miss up from her Daisy meeting then finished it a couple hours later while helping her with homework.

Yum. And yes, I did have some of the soup for breakfast (again) this morning.

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

Ingredients:
1 decent size butternut squash
1 onion
1 bulb garlic
3 c chicken stock (use vegetable stock to make this vegan)
1 c milk (I used rice milk to make this dairy free)
1/2 t nutmeg (ha, like I measured this)
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Split your butternut squash in half with a sharp knife. Use a large knife, and give it a good whack to get it started. I then find it easiest (and safest) to leave the knife embedded and simply pound the squash on the cutting board, much like you might do when splitting wood. Once the squash is open, scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Yes, you can save them for later to roast like pumpkin seeds. (Yes, it's a theme with me right now.)

Lightly oil a 13x9 glass baking dish, and place the halves of the butternut squash cut side down. Peel your onion, cut it in half and place it cut side down, as well. Lastly, cut off the top of your bulb of garlic. Set it on a piece of tin foil, and lightly drizzle it with olive oil. Place this atop your squash.

Roast all of these at 375 degrees for forty-five minutes. You'll see the skin start to soften and shrivel just a bit. When it's soft to the touch, it's done.

Note that I didn't go through the effort of peeling my squash ahead of time or cutting it into pretty little cubes. Nope, I'm of the opinion that minimal effort can still create great dishes. Once it's roasted, you simply scoop the flesh into your soup pot, leaving the skin behind. The skin will practically peel off by itself.

Squeeze the garlic from the bulb into the pot, as well. Try not to be like me. I have a horrible time resisting saving some of the freshly roasted garlic to put on the bread I know I'm going to bake with this, too. Roasted garlic is awesome. And so easy. Little Miss has requested that I make some just for her even. Add the onion, making sure to trim the root end of the onion before you add it. There's no need to cut it any further, as you'll puree everything later. Add the 3 cups chicken stock, and bring it to a simmer for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes of simmering, add the milk. Either use your immersion blender to puree it - if you don't have one, buy one; this is one of the most used tools in my kitchen - or you can use your standard blender. If you use your standard blender, be sure to fill it no more than one-third full and hold the top closed with a kitchen towel. The heat with cause the air in the canister to expand, and you don't want it to blow out hot soup to burn you (see, another reason why an immersion blender is so awesome).

Serve immediately with hot bread. This will last in the fridge for a few days, and personally I like it both hot and cold. The roasted garlic and onion add such a great flavor to this, and so healthy and hearty for a fall day.

Enjoy this and more with Blessed With Grace and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday. Also posting now with A Southern Fairytale and her Mouthwatering Monday.

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