Apple-Butternut Squash Soup

Some days you wake up in the morning and want to rock the "it's fall in New England" thing so hard it hurts. On those days, you may want to eat this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Ingredients:
1-2 butternut squash
2 apples
1 can veggie broth
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 onion
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 tsp thyme
1 tsp salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup light cream

1. So the first thing, actually, is to figure out how much squash you have. The recipe I was working from called for about 3.5 lbs of squash, so I've been guesstimating their weight using a set of hand dumbells for comparison. I made a full recipe with a ~3 lb squash, and a 3/4 recipe with a slightly greater than 2 lb squash, and those were both good. When I made the smaller recipe, I still used the full can of veggie broth and decreased the water.

2. Cut onions (small), peel and cut apples (small slices), peel, cut, and de-seed squash (1/4 inch pieces). Butternut squash, incidentally, are Not Fucking Around as a vegetable--that's some seriously laborious chopping.

3. In the bottom of a 4 qt saucepan, sautee onions in vegetable oil for 10 mins.

4. Add everything else. Cook for 30+ minutes.

5. If you have a blender, you could pull out some of the mix and blend it, but who has a blender really? I used a strainer and a fork to mash up some of the bigger squash bits. It will be pretty textury soup, but that feels right to me.

6. Eat. Serves 8 if you made a full recipe. I recommend eating it with other summery tropical dishes like potatoes and brussel sprouts.

I've realized that I write recipes tailored to people who have the exact same stuff in their kitchen that I do (strainer but no blender, hand dumbells but no scale). (Technically the hand dumbells aren't usually in the kitchen.) I'm okay with this.