Revenge of the Dinner Plans

Well, I'd intended to have a simple dinner of Thai spiced Squash Soup and a sandwich featuring some 2 year old cheddar that my parents got me for Christmas. Things rarely go as plan, since I had to work the late shift this evening (and actually stay), grocery run and oh crap, I need laundry. Gah! The cats!

I'm looking after a friends cats while they're out of the country. I can't tell them apart. All I know is the one upstairs gets 2 scoops of food, and the one downstairs gets three. Beyond that, they each have their own litter box which I think is used excessively. I know I'd previously mused about getting a cat. Let me just say... not this side of hell will I ever own a cat of my own volition.

That rant aside, I broke dinner up into two stages. The first was the lovely sandwich at 7:30. The soup would have to wait but I was determined to make it tonight. I'd agonized over which squash to get at the grocery store, finally deciding on a pair of buttercup squash, after passing up the acorn squash and the sole butternut squash. While tempting, the spaghetti squash was right out as it was too fibrous. In retrospect, I chose well but I'll try the acorn squash next time as the combination of the buttercup and coconut milk was a little too sweet.

The first step was roasting the squash, as the recipe says. That was certainly a wonderful smell to fill my apartment and the wait to get the squash out and start making soup was agonizing. From there it would have been fairly straight forward if I'd had a hand blender, but I wasn't able to find a decent on on the way home. I really should have kept looking. No, really.

In the end, the soup turned out fairly well, but there are some changes I'd make. First, I'd simmer the coconut milk and curry paste together before adding the squash. I really need to learn how to work with curry paste though, as it's not something that you can really just drop in. Second, instead of adding water to thin, I'll use vegetable stock to give it a little flavour. Right now, you can taste a bit of the spice and a lot of the coconut milk. Finally, I'd like to try it with a tablespoon or two of fresh ginger. Perhaps that would lighten it up a bit.

That's baby spinach which I added as I served it. I love spinach! So, there you have it. Day two of not ordering out. Let's see how that survives tomorrow night. =)