RECIPE OMG

Guys, my pride knows no bounds.  I read cooking blogs like there's no tomorrow, but I don't venture out on my own!  But then I did!  And it was outstanding!  With too many radish leaves to compost and a beckoning butternut squash, I googled soup recipes.  Well, first I just googled those two foods together, but got several sites for what to feed your bunny rabbit.  When I added 'soup' to the terms, I got several for radish leaves and several for butternut squash, but none I liked that combined the two!   So I went with the radish leaves one (from Epicurious, from Bon Apetit) and pretended the butternut squash was four russet potatoes and a few other swaps like that.  Here goes, for your cooking pleasure and for my ease of finding again.

Butternut Squash and Radish Leaves Soup

1 butternut squash, peeled, seeded and 1-inch-cubed
bunch of radish leaves, well washed (mine were all the leaves from about 8 radishes)
3 cups chicken stock
1 T butter
1 onion, chopped
2/3 c milk, room temperature
sea salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Melt butter in large saucepan, add onions and sautee until soft, about five minutes.
2. Add radish leaves and heat until wilted, about two minutes.
3. Pour in chicken stock and add squash, simmer until tender.
4. Puree squash and leaves in blender in batches, and temporarily store the puree in a different bowl or pot for a second.  You'll be left with the stock and maybe some onions still simmering in the main pot.
5. Once everything is pureed, add it back in to the main pot; add milk and stir until smooth.
6. Salt and pepper to taste.
7. Serve, or serve with dollops of soft cheese, like that triangle cow Swiss cheese, because life is awesome.

Someday I'll have a real camera and take preposterously good pictures and then my recipe posts will be as sexy as everyone else's.  Until then, IMAGINE WHAT THIS FOOD LOOKS LIKE

It's that time of year! Plus, NRM update!

So the calendar says summer is over, the weather is about to agree (high of 72 is in the ten-day!), and we will finally have a five-day week of school (barring, of course, tornadoes, volcanoes or the black death).  You know what that means!  I love fall as much as anyone else who says her favorite season is fall, but I AM PUMPED FOR CHRISTMAS.  Getting excited too early is par for the course, but it is kicked up a notch this year because it's our first Christmas with a house!  And real neighbors!  And our own appliances!  I am going to combine these three awesome things into one by baking tins of delicious treats for our very welcoming neighbors.  We're going to have a tree!  And real stockings!  AND A DOG OMG

But it isn't even Halloween yet, so I'm going to try to chill my gills over here.  Speaking of which, I literally realized The Greatest Halloween Costumes for Justin and me last year on NOVEMBER 1 (I'm sure you can imagine how mad I was at myself for such horrible timing, but it was a pretty sweet Halloween anyway), so we're just hanging out waiting for the Halloween party invites to come pouring in.  Any day now, that non-water-proof mailbox of ours will be bursting with them, I know it. 

For those of you keeping track at home, we are currently 11 days into another No Restaurant Month.  But!  We like to be neither insane nor lonely, so we make exceptions when we're eating out with friends, like I did with my birthday friend Kathryne the other night at everyone's favorite birthday restaurant, Guardado's!  I could eat their tapas every day and be happy about it.  In fact, I decided to recreate one of them at home, so Justin and I hit up the cheese shop in Wegman's, and, well, we may have spent some money on some cheese.  And!  Justin's been sick this past week, so sick that one day he bought a breakfast sandwich in some kind of woozy haze, completely oblivious to NRM.  Haha, oh well!  AND we're going out with MORE friends on Thursday, so this NRM is a little more lax than last year.  But for just the two of us, we're doing great!  We've had picnics with friends and packed lunches when we knew we'd be out all day, how adorable is that.  I just made this and I'm about to combine these two recipes, who even am I!  Wish us continued luck!

PS - I meant to introduce There Should Be last time.  Sometimes we have good ideas that we're pretty sure don't exist yet.  If they do exist, please let one of us know.  If they don't exist, but you can invent it, PLEASE DO SO.  Here are some more!

You know what there should be?  There should be an app that uses GPSes so precise and so powerful that they can guide you to available street parking.  Can you even imagine driving in DC or any other over-trafficked city?  It would be SO MUCH BETTER.  There should also be a function on cars where your wheels turn 90 degrees and drive perfectly sideways, and those people who are terrified to parallel park need fear no more.  There should also be an app where you take a picture of a dog, and it spits out its breed(s).  Bonus for what percentage of what breeds it is.

See what I mean?  SUCH GOOD IDEAS THAT WE ARE INCAPABLE OF INVENTING :'(  I feel like we should team up with that commercial about getting your idea patented, with the caveman and the guy who invented an off-brand slip-n-slide.