In a Funk / Acorn Squash, Pear, Adzuki Soup with Sauteed Shiitakes
January 15, 2010 – 9:36 amVegeater is in a funk. I left off posting here around about late April, when (Hubs and) my life hit the fan. It is a tale of woe — jobs that we thought were going to work out didn’t; we were forced to leave our beloved community to take a job in another city; we left behind ministries, life-callings, relationships — many people and things that meant (mean) a lot to us. And I just have not had the heart to write posts about cooking and eating and brownies and gardening.
We have lived in New City since August. We pine for Old City, Old Church, Old Friends. New City isn’t very cool (to us). (It’s not very veg-friendly, either.) The decision to move, made with a great deal of weeping and gnashing of teeth, we are still not sure was the right one. Most days we don’t think it was. And all that joy I used to be able to find so easily is elusive.
All that aside, it’s January in the Midwest. I have mentioned before: winter and I are not friends. My skin hasn’t seen the light of day in almost 4 months. This does not make for a happy Vegeater.
One nice thing is: I’ll be done with grad school in May. This semester I have had a really nice change: one of my professors is a vegetarian! He actually, actively, promotes a completely vegetarian/vegan diet as therapy for all sorts of diseases, mostly those at which chronic inflammation is the root. So that’s nice. Not to feel like I’m constantly swimming upstream in class.
Maybe Vegeater is back. Maybe writing about lovely food will help work some of the splinters out, make me remember myself.
So here is effort number one: Today I’m making Acorn Squash, Pear, and Adzuki Soup with Sauteed Shiitakes. I have made this once before, and Hubs and I adored it. I was invited to a Soup Swap (where every guest brings a few quarts of soup and we all trade them out so we have yummy things in the freezer), and this is my contribution. It is a deliciously-slightly-sweet, hearty, inspiration of a soup from V-con; I think the other soup-swappers will really enjoy it. Last time I actually chopped and peeled the two acorn squashes, which was a pain — I had to, literally, bang them on the floor to get them to split open (maybe faulty technique on my part?). I have to make a double recipe, no way am I trying to chop four! So this time, I’m headed to the store in search of frozen cubed squash. Veg-cheater am I.
addendum: Frozen acorn squash was nowhere to be found, so Hubs helped me chop. I won 2nd place in the Soup Swap!