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.