Celery...

So I have found a new favorite ingredient. Celery. I have long underestimated how great a cooking flavor this is. For years I have known this stick of food as something you eat when you are dieting. A food that uses more calories to digest than you get from eating from it. If you have a wild hair, you can put peanut butter on it and call it a snack. Or if you are my wife you can have "ants of a log" (peanut butter and raisins). On a whim I decided to buy a bunch of celery ($1.25) for a vegetable curry that I was making. The curry turned out super great. As I was preparing it, Bryn told me something that I didn't know (which happens often). Naturally, celery has a high salt content. To put this it into perspective a bottle of Gatorade has the same amount of salt as one stick of celery. So I have been snacking on it all this week, especially when I'm fighting the munchies.

Today, this being fall, I made an acorn squash soup. And, of course, I used celery. Bryn didn't like the fibers in the soup that is normally smooth, but the taste was leaps and bounds above any other acorn squash soup that I have made previously. I even garnished it with lemon thyme. Yes, I took the picture above before we ate. It was a nice, yummy fall time dinner. I put the recipe below, just in case you want to give it a try.

Acorn Squash Soup

• 3 acorn squash, take out the seeds and cook for 55min at 325 so you can gut it
• 5 carrots, scraped and sliced
• 3-4 sticks of celery
  
• 1 medium onion, sliced
• 3-1/2 cups canned chicken or vegetable broth
• 1/3 cup water
• 4 tablespoons margarine or vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon paprika
• 1 pinch ground allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 cup half-and-half or sour cream
  
• Fresh thyme for garnish

Cook in a crock pot for 3 hours and then blend until smooth. Enjoy.