Butternut Squash Soup

I love to read recipes, but when it comes to cooking I usually do a bit of creative fudging. From the time I was sort of a latch-key kid, I would tamper with recipes, usually adding more spice than called for. Back then, we didn't worry about shelf-life, and we probably had way old expired tins of spices. We also lived on the cheap generic foods, and these often needed sprucing up. So now, I can afford quality ingredients, but I still have that skill of knowing what is going to taste good together, and how much.

I have been so tickled with my recent purchase of a KitchenAid Immersion Blender. (I found an Xmas gift card for Target that I forgot I had.) I've been eating fruit smoothies for breakfast ever since.

Tonight I used it with soup for the first time. So easy! Simple cleanup! I wonder why I waited so long to get one of these gadgets. I made the soup in my other fairly new gadget I just love using, the Nesco 3-in-1 Digital Electric Pressure Cooker.


Vegan Butternut Squash and Potato Soup

• 1 butternut squash, peeled and cut into 1/2 to 1 inch cubes
• 3 yukon gold potatoes, cubed into 1/4 to 1/2 inch cubes
• 3 small leeks, penny sliced (I just let those float in water a little while to get clean)
  
• 7 or 8 cloves garlic, chopped (my philosophy is, you can never have too much garlic)
• 1 box no-chicken vegetable broth

Load all into pressure cooker, set to pressure cook on high for 4 minutes. When done, allow 10 to 15 minutes for pressure to dissipate, though it's probably still done if you release the pressure sooner.

Add about 2 teaspoons ginger powder. Use immersion blender until you have the consistency you want. I still wanted some lumps.

Salt and pepper, and/or maple sugar at table to taste. Yes, you read that right, I have some of that expensive real maple sugar. It's great for just this kind of garnishing.

Am I good at cobbling things together, or what?