Boxcar Kitchen

I love butternut squash but for the longest time, I completely forgot about it since I wasn’t used to seeing it stocked at my local grocery store or market. Pumpkin, acorn, and those funny little green hat squash are pretty easy to come by though. Sometime, last fall I decide to head out on a mission that turned out not to be that much of a mission at all.

I grabbed my market basket and left the house in the direction of the only organic stand at my farmer's market. I figured that this was my best bet. Although I usually get giggly at the thought of organic, I rarely stop by this particular stand because the lady that runs it seems to think I'm some sort of chump and always tries to slough off her worst produce on me. I have to watch her like a hawk. But times were tough and desperate measures needed to be taken. Before leaving the house, I checked my dictionary searching for the French equivalent of butternut without success.

When I finally arrived, I was pretty worked up and had already came up with an elaborate description in French of butternut squash that I was reciting under my breathe. I take a deep breath, look up and see first, a lovely medium sized butternut squash and then second a little chalkboard sign planted firmly into the basket: "Butternut" was sprawled across it in crisp white chalk. Unbelievable. I asked for my buh-tair-nuht and headed home feeling pretty silly. Why are the simplest things so difficult?

This soup is about as laid back as it gets.