Kicked-up-a-notch Butternut Squash Soup

Over Columbus Day Weekend, I went home for a visit.  Fall in Upstate New York is truly beautiful, magical, and done right.  Few other parts of the county do fall like we do fall.  There are apples, pumpkins, hayrides, and breathtaking fall foliage that is every shade of yellow, orange and red.  I have lived in New York for so long, that I pity anyone who has not ever gone apple picking (being restricted to two rows of two types of apples does not count).  An apple straight off the tree is one of life's simple pleasures.  My parents and I had a perfect fall weekend.  Here's how it went down:

I arrived home late on Friday night.  It was chilly and that's just how I like it.  The next morning I woke up bright and was ready to get this weekend underway.  We had lots to do and not very much time, so we were off to pick up some groceries.  My mom and I decided on butternut squash soup for dinner with crusty rolls.  But we decided to alter the recipe a little to our taste, and because we like experimenting.  This was one of eight butternut squash soup recipes I had pinned on Pinterest (whoops!).  

Once I was back from my visit home, I decided to recreate the soup and it turned out great.  When I made the soup this time, the butternut squash wasn't quite as sweet and flavorful, so I added a small amount of brown sugar and some cinnamon to the soup to help it along a little, and that did the trick.

I had a spark of inspiration while grocery shopping to make the soup and I thought that topping the soup with roasted brussels sprouts, pomegranate seeds, and chopped walnuts.  It did seem a little random, but I was pretty sure it would be delicious...and it sure was!  I loved the crunch of the pomegranates and walnuts, and the roasted flavor of the brussels sprouts.  

Here's how it went:

^^ I cooked two leeks (whites and light green only), onion and garlic until they were soft.  The recipe called for fennel, but we swapped that out for leeks instead because we like leeks a lot!

^^ The recipe called for roasted butternut squash, but I decided to steam it instead. 

^^Once the squash was cooked, I added it to the pot with the softened veggies. 

^^I added in the chicken broth.  

^^And dried sage and dried thyme.  

^^Somewhere in there I used a hand blender to puree the soup, but I forgot to take a photo.  Typical.  But, TADA--the finished product!

^^ I sliced up some brussels sprouts...

^^...and covered them with olive oil, a tiny bit of salt and pepper, and roasted them in the oven (350 degrees) until they were a little brown.

And because I am terrible at taking photos while cooking, imagine there is a photo of the soup in a bowl topped with the brussels sprouts, pomegranate seeds, and chopped walnuts.  It was delicious! 

A few vacation afterthoughts...

Now that I have restocked my kitchen and created a giant pile of laundry to do, I wanted to jot down one other memories. 

The entire terminal at the Grand Cayman was only slightly larger than one gate at Newark Airport.  There was one food place, and a couple of souvenir shops.  Mike and I were sitting in some chairs in the corner, and the loudspeaker was very hard to hear and understand.  I kept hearing what I thought was a variation of my name from the flight we were waiting for, but I waved it off because I couldn't exactly understand what they were saying.  Eventually, I told Mike that I was going to ask the person at the counter if they were paging me.  I walked up and told them my last name, and the woman said yes, we are paging you.  I was a little nervous because I had no clue what they could want.  I said that they had been pronouncing my name completely wrong--they were saying "Megeen"and were leaving the last letter off my last name.  She looked at the list and said "It's spelled Megane.  We thought you were going to be a man."  Uh, okay.  So she said we were pronouncing as it is spelled...false.  If they were saying it phonetically, it would be said "Megain."  She said "I don't know what the 'E' at the end is from."  Well, I do.  It's the first letter of my middle name.  The reason they had been calling me was because I had been selected at random for a bag search.  Lucky me.  It actually wasn't terrible since they weren't looking for swimsuits, a hair straightener or sundresses.  In the end, it was great because my bag was one of last ones loaded onto the plane which meant it was one of the first ones off and onto the baggage claim.  SCORE!

Grand Cayman Adventure: Day 7.

Today is our final full day of vacation…tear.  It went by so fast and it was so so fun to be here adventuring with Mike!  I think that we were good travel partners, and we got to do a little bit of everything, and ate lots of yummy food! That’s what life is all about, am I right?!

It was pretty cloudy and hot today, so it was great that we had planned to go to breakfast and then to the turtle farm.  Lauren’s was our restaurant of choice and it did not disappoint.  Mike had a breakfast burrito and I had a crepe filled with fresh blueberries, strawberries and pastry creme.  I had been craving a sweet breakfast so this was right up my alley.  Next stop was the much-anticipate turtle farm.  Mike and I opted not to swim with the turtles since we had swam with stingrays and gone snorkeling other times.  The turtles were HUGE.  And gorgeous, and very social creatures.  

^^ The turtles were HUGE!  I have no idea how much they weigh but they were much bigger than I expected them to be.

^^ This turtle looked that he/she was trying to walk up the stairs.   

^^ A turtle collision.  Lots of bumping into each other.

^^ This guy was very social--he let me get a close up of his face! 

They are housed in huge outdoor tanks, and they swam into, over, under and next to each other.  Then we headed over to smaller tanks where they house smaller but still big turtles.  My very favorite part came next…the baby turtles!  I’m pretty sure I skipped over to the tank like a little girl.  They were seriously adorable.  And we got to pick them up right out of the tanks and hold them.  Yes, you heard right…we got to HOLD THEM!  I about died.  We washed our hands with sanitizer and then reached right and picked one up.  They are quick swimmers, so it was easier said than done.  The way you hold a turtle is with two hands around the shell, kind of like you hold a baby under the armpits.  If you rubbed under their chins they calmed down and stopped struggling to get back into the water.  They were darling.  

^^ Mike using his animal magic to calm down one of the baby turtles!  I really did hold them too, but Mike has those photos on his camera.  The babies were super adorable, but did not like being held...unless Mike was rubbing them under their chins.  Animal whisperer ;)

^^ A close up of the baby's face.

We headed inside and learned a little about female turtles laying eggs, and we got to see a super teeny tiny turtle that was not more than a week old.  One other fun tidbit that we read about was that turtles need only 1-3 seconds to breathe above the water and then they can stay under water for 4-5 minutes.  Fascinating. 

^^ See the tiny turtle in the corner of the container?  It's less than a week old and smaller than my hand.  Adorable! 

^^ A few zoomed-in shots of the newborn turtle!

We then stopped at Cemetery Beach and saw some beautiful light aqua water, and took a few photos.  Apparently the beach was not well-known until recently, and since there were no cruises in, it was nice and quiet today.

^^ Cemetery Beach.  Such pretty water, even though it was choppy! 

After a quick pitstop at Hell (yes, it’s really called that, and yes, it’s a complete tourist trap), we headed to Camana Bay to check out the shopping.  Camana Bay is a huge, gorgeous, upscale shopping/office plaza that is really aesthetically pleasing.  There are a bunch of restaurants and shops that overlook the water.  There were Adirondack rocking chairs in a really pretty light blue color.  It was so peaceful to sit there and chat for a while.  We popped into a few stores and then  headed back to our hotel.  Since we have a lot of random food to eat tonight, we are cooking and relaxing in front of the TV.  It rained all afternoon, so unfortunately it wasn’t really conducive to sitting outside and reading which it what I would have liked to do instead.  

^^ The view from the observation deck at Camana Bay.  It was about 4 stories up and the walls were mosaic!  The view from here was awesome, and check out the colorful shutters on the windows! 

All in all, our vacation that we looked forward to for months was incredible!  It was wonderful to decompress, get away from work and stressors and hang out with my boy.  I cannot wait to start planning our next vacation!  Until next time, Grand Cayman.  Thanks for showing us a great time, chockfull of memories.

^^ On our way back to the U.S.!  Our trip was amazing.

Grand Cayman Adventure: Day 6.

Both of our skin was slightly sore from lots of sun so we spent the day on the beach in the shade of palm trees reading.  Reading on the beach was what I was really looking forward to about this vacation, so I’m so happy that we’ve been able to get a lot of that in this week.  It doesn’t get much better than that, if you ask me!

We kept it low key and had leftovers for lunch and watched some TV to prepare for our adventure of the day.  Around 4:30 we headed up to Rum Point for some dinner at Kaibo before heading out on a nighttime bioluminescence kayak tour!  Kaibo is a casual beach bar/restaurant that is right on that water.  The drive down the to the restaurant was dotted with lovely homes which were fun to look at and drool over.  The upper level of Kaibo is a more formal restaurant but it is not open during the “off-season”, but I imagine that Kaibo is usually hoppin’ during the summer months when the cruises dock.  I enjoyed a shrimp caesar wrap with a side salad (lots of lettuce!) and Mike had a huge burger with great fries.  There was a group of jetskiiers who had been at the bar drinking, and they got on the skis and one couple promptly fell off the ski.  It was hilarious to watch.  We had lots and lots of time to burn before the kayak tour, so we headed to Rum Point and assumed that some of the shops would be open, but alas, they were not, so we took some pretty sunset photos on the pier and then took a short drive and sat in the car and chatted.  These sunset photos really don’t do it justice.  It was gorgeous!

^^ A view of Kaibo from the front.  The water is to my right.

^^ A couple of shameless selfies on the dock at Rum Point while killing some time before our kayak tour.

^^ The sun was setting while we were on the dock at Rum Point.  It was exquisite, and breathtaking and a thousand other things, too.  I loved watching the sunset, but boy, did it set fast and got super dark!

Finally it was kayak time!  We had a quick orientation about safety and then we got into our two-seater kayak.  Each kayak had a red light on the back, and the guide had a seining green light for us to follow.  Mike and I were very efficient kayakers, and were flying past the other people in the group.  It took about 15 minutes for us to get to Bio Bay, where the bioluminescence organisms live.  We were instructed to develop our night vision by not looking at bright lights for a few minutes before getting into the kayaks so that we would be able to better see and enjoy the organisms.  We were not allowed to take photos during the tour, but trust me when I say that it was like watching the water sparkle.  It was possible to see the organisms “sparkle” in the water when you put your hand in the water.  It appeared like there were bubble in the water, but they were really the bioluminescence moving around.  We “played the piano” and made our hands into fists and then opened them quickly.  It was a really cool experience, and it was also lightening off in the distance so that made it feel even more adventurous!  There was no thunder but I still felt like I was being rebellious.  Mike and I were exhausted when we got home so we went right to sleep.  

Grand Cayman Adventure: Day 5.

Rumor had it that the weather was supposed to be kind of yucky today—rainy, windy, not very conducive to beaching.  Good thing we had planned to take a submarine tour which is as close to scuba diving as I likely will ever get.  I was really excited!  Up to this point, Mike and I hadn’t had any dessert while on vacation, usually because we were so stuffed at the end of our meal.  So we planned to go out to breakfast to a place that got great reviews on TripAdvisor.  It is called “Bread and Chocolate” and it boasts a vegan menu.  I was really excited to give it a try…I love quirky, unique little restaurants.  We both decided to have the signature dish—french toast made with tahini (in place of the traditional eggs), fresh hazelnut and chocolate spread, bananas, strawberries and vanilla bean coconut milk ice cream to top it off.  It was perfectly delicious and decadent, and I did not want to ever finish eating it.  Major yum!  

 ^^ The signature French Toast.  Seriously incredible! 

^^ Mike was super excited about our breakfast date!

After we stuffed ourselves, we had a couple of hours to kill before our submarine tour, so we wandered down to the George Town and poked into a few shops.  Most of the shops were either very touristy and had all sorts of personalized magnets, t-shirts, and coffee mugs, or the stores were very high end and we would never have been able to afford anything in them, so we stuck to the tourist traps.  We also did some classic parking lot hopping as we discovered parking lots that were closer to our submarine launch location and were free—we ended up with a prime spot.  

The submarine tour was so cool!  I learned (or relearned some basic science I had first learned in elementary and middle school but somehow was more interested in at the ripe age of 25) so much from listening to the tour guide, and saw some pretty cool looking fish.  There was a black durgon fish that we saw that was really cool, along with a cool black and white striped fish, and tiny bright blue fish, too.  We passed a sunken submarine, a bronze mermaid statue and some really cool coral that looked like brains.  The tour was all too short, but I am so glad that we got to do it.  

^^ The submarine before we boarded.  We had to climb down a steep and narrow ladder to get into the vessel.

^^ This fish just happened to swim right by my porthole and lingered long enough for me to snap a photo. 

^^ A vessel that was intentionally sunk.  Reminded me of the beginning part of Titanic...

^^ An anchor.  I've never seen a dropped anchor before so I had to document.

We were both pretty tired from our morning wanders so we drove back to the hotel, had some leftover pizza for lunch and changed into our bathing suits for our daily dose of reading on the beach.  It was cloudy and grey, and very windy, but gosh, was it wonderful to sit on the beach, read my book (I read such a great beach read while on vacation—bliss!) and have a fun, fruity drink.  Eventually the clouds got really dark and it looked like we were in for some rain so we packed it up and headed inside.  We had a casual dinner and watched some TV, and headed to sleep early.  This vacation is just flying by too fast, which I think means we need to book another vacation for a few months from now ;).

Grand Cayman Adventure: Day 4.

Mike and I both woke up and our first thoughts were that today needed to be a day with little time spent in the sun.  We are both a little burnt, and man alive, I forgot how much the sun makes me tired and always hungry.  Our plans as of last night included going to the turtle farm and a few other things closer to George Town, about a 25 minute drive from our hotel in Bodden Town.  Instead we opted to take a drive toward the northern part of the island, and check out the blow holes.  The blow holes were really fun to watch and were mesmerizing! It was a very windy day and the waves were crashing, and when the water got to the blow holes it really shot up in the air.  We did not get very close to the holes, but from where we were standing we could feel mist when the water shot through the blow holes.  

VIDEO COMING SOON

^^Here's a short video of the blow holes, just ignore my voice narrating.  

From there, we drove around the island and got to pass so many gorgeous and gigantic homes on the water.  Mike pointed out that many of the homes are made of concrete so that they can withstand strong storms and hurricanes.  There were a surprising number of homes or plots of land for sale that we passed during our drive.  If someone offered to give me one, I’d happily accept.  

We stopped at Rum Point beach and walked out onto the pier to look at the views.  While we were out on the pier we noticed that a storm was brewing.  The clouds were pretty dark so we walked back toward the beach and decided to split a drink while the weather was okay.  Rum Point was much more touristy and catered to people who were coming to the beach for the day from cruise ships and other tours.  There were lots of chaise lounge chairs; brightly painted picnic tables; kayaks, paddleboards, jet skis and other things for renting; two separate restaurant/bars and a gift shop.  It wasn’t super crowded when we were there so it was actually a fun place to see, but I think that if it was really crowded I would be a little overwhelmed.  

^^ A few photos of Rum Point.  It was pretty cloudy but the water was still a pretty blue color.

^^ A kind woman offered to take some photos of us after she saw our failed attempt at a selfie.  It was bright out and in hindsight I probably should have worn my sunglasses, but the top one turned out okay :)

Earlier in the day, Mike and I decided to follow the suggestion of a woman who we had met on our first day in Grand Cayman, and were going to try Kurt’s Korner for lunch.  We found Kurt’s pretty easily and it was a cute little upscale shack that was painted bright teal and had accents of bright peach.  It was so cute!  The tables were pretty much the exact style tables I’d like for my home one day…even the stain color was perfect.  There were several specials of the day, and a full menu.  I had some really refreshing fresh-squeezed lemonade and a delicious fish wrap (a homemade wrap!) with lettuce, tomato, grilled onion and a squeeze of lime juice.  It was fantastic.  I was able to substitute their house salad for french fries.  The salad was also awesome and had a unique twist—lettuce, tomato, red onion, cucumber, apple, pecans and a fruity dressing.  Mike had a spicy Brac burger—burger, American cheese, jerk hot sauce, lettuce, tomato, grilled onion.  He really enjoyed it.  The cool part about our lunch was that we got to experience a true Caribbean rain storm.  About 10 minutes after we arrived, the sky opened up and the rain came pouring down.  It was still really windy so the rain was blowing into the eating area and the waitress had to rush around closing the rain curtains.  The rain curtains were basically huge pieces of thick fabric. 

^^ Mike and the kitchen at Kurt's Korner.  The orange fabric is the rain curtains.  Such a cool place to eat lunch and experience a true Caribbean rainstorm! 

^^ Obligatory food photo.  

VIDEO COMING SOON

^^ I'm going to try to upload a video of the super rainstorm that we experienced during lunch.

When we came back to the hotel from our adventures, we took a few minutes to to relax and then headed down to the beach to read and relax.  Even though it was windy, it was perfect weather for reading and napping on the beach.  Hearing the waves crash will never get old to me.  Mike and I each had a drink on the beach and then we noticed some storm clouds that were approaching.  It was cool to watch the storm approach and to see the rain falling in sheets from far out.  It started raining once we were in our room, and we spent the rest of the day relaxing and letting our bodies be out of the sun for a while.

^^See the sheets of rain in the middle of the photo?  So cool!