If you’ve been a reader of my column for a while, you know that I absolutely hate squash.
And while I mostly mean the summer varieties of yellow or Zucchini – I also lump Okra into that pile and try to avoid it like the plague.
When the vegetable type crosses into cucumber, watermelon, or other melon territories, then I’m a little more lenient on my overall dislike.
Pumpkins also escape the same fate as other squash because they’re a fall seasonal staple and easier to flavor accordingly.
But, it’s always been a food aversion sort of peeve for me to have something so slimy and full of seeds be enjoyed wholeheartedly by my mom.
She’s tried in vain for years to get me to enjoy it – trying recipes including everything from sautéed and smothered with cheese to being baked into Zucchini bread with a dash of cinnamon to disguise the taste.
However, I always found the latter form to be too moist in the long run and not nearly as sustainable as I’d like it to be over time.
I just don’t want soggy bread before I even have a chance to add butter to it when it comes out of the oven piping hot and fresh!
We’re looking into getting a new batch of cheesecloth to hopefully alleviate this problem and I’ll report back later on our findings.
Still, in a recent effort to maintain a healthier household, I dug through my memory bank to find a recipe for squash soup that I remember making almost a decade ago.
Unfortunately, it was a recipe of the internet and the paper copy we made has since disappeared.
Which left me with a small window to search for it before Mom just took over and fixed the squash however she wanted.
And that basically means I wasn’t going to like how it panned out and would probably spend a good 15 minutes trying not to gag it all down with my dinner.
But, like with anything, given enough time and careful keyword searching, I can find it online.
I don’t know if it’s a millennial gift or some sort of lucky streak, but, I managed to find the recipe I vaguely remembered and put it into practice.
Now, Mom and I went back and forth on how much Velveeta cheese would ruin the nutritional level of the squash, but, I remain adamant that it was used to enhance the vegetable’s flavor profile.
Long story short, that means I also had no qualms about using the whole regular-sized block to accomplish my goal.
Overall, once mom left me to my own devices cooking the squash, it turned into something resembling a vegetable bisque instead of regular soup – maybe even leaning towards cream of squash soup territory.
A bisque is a smooth, creamy, highly seasoned soup of French origin, classically based on a strained broth of crustaceans.
Mine is different due to the squash, adding rich Velveeta cheese and using a blender to render all the gross bits of squash into a puree.
Mike gave the soup his seal of approval, so, we’ll be able to add it into our rotation when we’re overloaded with squash.
Mom has requested that we save it for the fall season, but, I’m not sure I can wait that long before making it again.
One thing’s for sure, we’ve got enough leftovers for probably another round of squash soup night later this week.
