Ambercup Squash "It's Finally Cold" Soup

YEP. Autumn is here. October 18th and it's finally less than 80 degrees (F) during daylight hours. In fact, it only got into the 60s today. I got to show off my cute new fall coat. I might even carve my pumpkins this week (I've been delaying the carving for fear of the aforementioned 80 degrees rotting my carved pumpkins well before Halloween).

To celebrate, I'm finally cooking my ambercup squash. I bought it last week and baked it as soon as I got home. Then I cut it into pieces and stored it in my fridge and had no idea what to do with it. WELL NO MORE. Today soup.

(in the background: pumpkin and butternut that I surely have big plans for.....)

Here's what you need:

• 1 ambercup squash
• 1 and 1/4 cup vegetable broth
• 3/4 cup cashew milk (or other nut milk... or regular milk I guess, if lactose is your friend) (also, to learn how to make cashew milk, go here)
• About 1/4 cup chopped sweet onion (more if you like, but that's about what I used)
• 1 tbsp soy sauce (ish... gonna be honest, I used 2 leftover soy sauce packets from store-bought sushi)
• 1/4 tsp paprika
• 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1/4 tsp garam marsala
• sea salt to taste
• coconut nectar to taste (I probably used 2 tbsp) (you can also use molasses, buckwheat honey, maple syrup... I just wanted something with a molasses-type taste and coconut necter is low glycemic and awesome)

Here's how I made it.

• Preheat your oven to 350 degrees (F). Take an ambercup squash (or a butternut or pumpkin or other similar squash). Cut it in half and scoop out the stringy stuff and seeds (you can then bake those.... the seeds, not the stringy stuff). 
• Next, cut your squash into crescents. The skin is pretty easy to cut through (fuck you, acorn squash) so you shouldn't have any trouble. Put the crescents on a baking sheet (I covered my baking sheet with foil for easy clean-up) and then forget about them for like 40 minutes. Do your thing. Check on them occasionally. Once they're soft (stick a fork through 'em, seem like they'd do well in a blender soft), remove them and let them cool.
• Once cool, run a knife between the skin and meat (squash meat) to remove the skin. It's edible, but I want creamy soup, not not-creamy soup.
• Put the squash in a blender with your vegetable broth. BLEND.
• Put that in a sauce pan.
• Add the rest of the ingredients (you can use a hand blender to blend the onions in, or blend them with the squash and broth, but I did not) and cook on medium heat for about 20 minutes, stirring often.
• Serve warm, eat.

This soup is pretty darn tasty, if I do say so myself. 

I love squash soup and I love fall. Make this! You'll like it.

Steve

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

These words by the late Steve Jobs give me knots in my stomach. Consider this man and how he left this existence. As I think of him, I find myself considering my own existence and my desperate - albeit vain - desire to make an impact on the world around me. I am a songwriter. I need an audience to thrive. It is endlessly rewarding to play a good show. It is hopelessly daunting to imagine what it will take to be valid/lucky enough to make a living doing this thing that I love.

Death takes everyone. Even the icons.

I hope that one day I, too, will discover what I am meant to become.