Thanks once again to my fantastic crew of children, the sukka is up and decorated – it looks beautiful! I took ds3, ds4, dd9, and dd14 to make some Sukkos crafts yesterday. The littles made some smaller decorations and both of the girls made a new large poster. Ds11 really wants to make a poster tomorrow but I don’t know if I’ll be able to let him spend so much time on it when there’s so much to be done, and then go to get it laminated – I’m going to try, though, since it enhances the holiday for the kids to look around and see their artwork adorning the sukka walls.
This afternoon the kids harvested some pears from a neighbor’s tree, and though they could easily eat them all fresh, I thought it would be nice to use some of them for a dish in honor of Sukkos. After all, Sukkos is the ‘Festival of the Harvest’, so it seems particularly appropriate to use food we personally harvested. 🙂
Last week I also got these fantastic huge winter squash – I don’t remember what they’re called, but they look kind of like butternut but much larger with long crooked necks. I want to use at least one to put in the sukka somewhere as a decoration, but fortunately I have enough to do that and still have plenty to cook with! Here’s my adaptation of a soup recipe I found at an online recipe site:
Roasted Squash and Pear Soup
- 2 1/2 lbs winter squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into large chunks
- 3 pears, quartered and seeded
- 1 inch chunk fresh ginger, peeled and sliced thinly
- 6 c. chicken broth
- 3 tablespoons coconut oil
- 1 medium onion, thinly sliced
- 1/2 cup coconut milk
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- pepper to taste
Put the cut up squash and pears on a large roasting pan with most of the fresh ginger slices. Brush the mixture with 1 T. coconut oil and sprinkle with salt. Bake about an hour at 425 degrees or until tender, stirring periodically to be sure it roasts evenly. If there are any pan scrapings left, save them to include at the end.
Saute onion in oil until golden. Add pears, ginger, squash, and any leftover liquid from roasting pan. Add stock and coconut milk; bring to a boil, and simmer for about 30 minutes. Blend with immersion blender until soup is velvety smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
** It also occurred to me that following the instructions up through roasting the vegetables would make a very nice side dish of roasted squash, pears, and ginger. Yum!
(This post is part of the Real Food Sukkot Carnival and Real Food Wednesday.)
Avivah
This soup sounds really delicious – full of lovely flavours. I love that it has pears in it!
This sounds really delicious. I would love to try it. I really need to get an immersion blender.
I made the soup-absolutely delicious. I never knew that “orange” soup could taste so yummy. I noticed that the pears gave it a bit of a gritte texture-did that happen to your soup too, or was it because i didnt cook the pears long enough?
I also tried your idea of using the roasted vegetables as a side dish. I think that it would have turned out better had I roasted the squash and pears separately, because the squash was ready before the pears. Interesting taste, but I preferred the soup.
Hi, Esty! I’m so glad the soup turned out! I think the grittiness depends on your pears; some pears have a gritty inner core and others don’t. You can tell when you cut them up if they have that gritty texture.
I also preferred the soup to the side dish – it was a good idea to take the concept to a side dish but it was only okay, not phenomenal.