When baby girl saw me set this down to photograph it, she made a beeline for the bowl. I get it, because I can’t get enough of it either. I made it last night and ate so much that I had that stomach-bursting feeling that comes from too much soup. I woke up this morning and photographed it and ate another giant bowl. It’s meant to be for Thanksgiving dinner so I’ll have to slow down a bit if I want to have any left for everyone else.

Ingredients
- 2 Delicata squash, halved and cored
- 2 ripe pears, halved and cored
- 1 large sweet onion, diced
- 4 tbsp butter
- 2 1/4 cups stock
- 2 tbsp heavy cream
- 1/2 lemon
- 1 tsp curry
- 1/4 tsp coriander
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- Balsalmic glaze, for garnish

Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees

2. Lay Delicata on baking sheet covered with foil or Silpat. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle on salt and pepper, roast at 375 with flesh side down. When squash is soft to the touch (about 40 minutes), pull out of oven and turn over and let cool.

3. Lay pears on same baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, salt, pepper, and roast at 375 with flesh side down. Length of time will depend on ripeness of pears. Don’t overroast or they turn into mush. Pull out of oven when pears are soft to the touch and let cool.

4. Brown butter in large heavy-bottomed pot and add onions. Cook onions, stirring occasionally until they turn golden and start to brown.

5. Scoop flesh out of cooled squash and pears. Add to onion mixture.

6. Add stock, cream, lemon, curry, coriander, and nutmeg. Simmer together for 5-10 minutes. Blend until creamy.

7. Scoop into bowls and garnish with balsalmic glaze.

Look at me, acting like some sort of food blogger leading up to Thanksgiving. I can’t decide if this is the best time to post recipes, because people are seeking them out as they plan their menus, or the worst, because everyone is overwhelmed with recipe posts via the blogs they read.

Oh well. This is really about me wanting to be able to bookmark this recipe on my Make It Again board. I might post another one tomorrow too, the pear and squash soup I’m bringing as our contribution to Thanksgiving dinner (along with the dish below). Each time I remember to look at that board I spot old favorites perfect for the particular season I’m experiencing. Like this coconut curry lentil dish with spinach that I plan on making once I’ve recovered from my post-Thanksgiving food coma.

The thing I love most about this dish is the combination of flavors. The aspect I love second-best is that you can prep your ingredients as you go, roasting your Brussels sprouts while dicing your onion, chopping your sausage while browning your onions.

Ingredients
-1 lb brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved
- 2 tsp bacon fat
-1 sweet onion, diced
- 1/4 lb sausage links, chopped
- 2 tbsp honey mustard
- 2 tbsp white wine
-1 tbsp balsamic glaze
- Hard cheese, like Parmesan
- salt and pepper

*Butter can be substituted for the bacon fat. Water or stock can be substituted for the white wine.

Instructions
1. Preheat over to 375 degrees. Prep brussels sprouts while oven warms.
2. Drizzle brussels sprouts with 1 tsp melted bacon fat, salt, pepper and put in oven to roast.
3. Melt remaining teaspoon bacon fat in pan while chopping the onion. Add onion to pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and let carmelize.
4. Chop sausage. Pull brussels sprouts out of oven when outside leaves are a very dark brown ( set those off to the side and eat them like chips, they’re addictive!). Add sprouts to onion mixture when onion is turning soft and golden.
5. Cook onion and sprouts mixture for about 10 minutes more, then add sausage.
6. Cook until sausage starts to brown, then add honey mustard, wine, and balsamic. Cook down for 3-5 minutes. Grate cheese over the top, salt and pepper to taste, and stir it all together. Delicious hot and also just before it reaches room temperature.

I made this at my friend’s house in Houston, based on an old recipe that had a list of ingredients and sparse directions. I improvised a bit, and the result is a staple I plan on making again and again until spring. I wanted to post it now because this soup is good the day of, but great the day after. Which means you could make it on Wednesday and eat it as part of your Thanksgiving meal (or while you’re making your Thanksgiving buffet).

If you’re hosting a Thanksgivvukah celebration this is obviously not a kosher option .

 Ingredients
- 1 lb ground pork
- 2 tbsp nutritional yeast*
- 2 tbsp butter
- 1 white or sweet onion, diced
- 4 large carrots, peeled and chopped
- 1 bunch celery, chopped
- 3 leeks, diced
- 4 cups stock
- 2 cups water
- 2 cups milk
- 5 tbsp Braggs liquid aminos
- 1 1/2 tbsp Worcestershire
- Juice of 1/2 lemon

-salt, pepper, and italian seasoning, to taste

Optional:

- 1 bunch kale, strip leaves from stems and julienne
- potatoes, chopped (add these when you put the carrots in)
- Use italian sausage instead of ground pork and nutritional yeast
- Substitute soy sauce for liquid aminos, taste after each tablespoon to gauge amount needed

Instructions

1. Brown pork. Cook until just done (don’t get it really brown, it will be overdone in the soup if you do) and then sprinkle salt, pepper, italian seasonings, and nutritional yeast over pork.
2. Melt butter in large pot. Add in onions and cook until they start to turn golden. Add in carrots and let brown for a few minutes, then add celery and leeks and do the same.
3. After 10-15 minutes of cooking all the vegetables together with no liquid, add the stock, water, and milk. Add Braggs liquid aminos and Worcestershire.
4. Once carrots are soft, add in the cooked pork and the juice from the lemon. Add kale at this point if you are using it.
5. Simmer together for a few minutes until kale is softened. Enjoy!

*Don’t stress if you don’t have any nutritional yeast. This soup will be good without it, but the nutritional yeast gives it a hint of cheesiness that I love.

One afternoon I tossed together tomato, basil, corn, salmon, avocado, and feta. Drizzled it with some good olive oil and balsamic glaze, sprinkled it with salt, and ate it all up in just a few bites.

I called it Summer Salad because I am incredibly creative. I think you should try it too.

I’ve moved back into weight-loss mode full-time (it will be a glorious day when I don’t have to devote so much time to this anymore!) and I’m gearing up to start That Weight Loss Challenge 4. Last year I started it around my birthday and so I figured I’d start another one around the 15th of April again. We’ll have the Facebook group (I just removed everyone from the existing one so we can start fresh and try to limit the group to active members), and we’ll use DietBet for the prizes (I’ll explain more later), and I’ll offer up a Jenna Cole session once again. It’s going to be awesome. And I’m not going to get pregnant and drop out halfway through this time .

For the past two weeks I’ve been using an app called The Eatery to track what I eat. It’s like someone took my food blog idea, and gamified/social-networkified it!

Source

The idea is really simple. Take a picture of what you eat, and rate it on a scale of 1-100. 1 is fat, and 100 is fit. Then your food will be shown to other people using the app and they will say where they think it is on the scale of fit to fat. Then the app takes all of your data and creates a variety of charts/graphs to show you how you’re doing over time.

The gamification aspect has been really effective for me, as I constantly find myself thinking “Do I really want to eat this? If I do, I have to take a picture and show Eatery and then my score is going to go down.”

Source

The company, Massive Health, has been acquired by Jawbone and I’m not sure that they’re going to keep the app going indefinitely. That’s fine with me though, as it’s doing what I need to do right now. And if they integrate the app into the Jawbone UP I’d probably consider buying one just so I can keep using it! That’s how much I love this app!

I’m writing this post in part because I hope that Jawbone will see it and think about maintaining the app (fix the ability to connect to Facebook friends please!) but also because I’m wondering if anyone else is using it, or would like to start using it? I think it would be fun to compare our weekly scores and see if we can beat each other.