Squash-Apple Soup

I'm back from my much needed vacation and while away I found some new recipes. This is one of them and my goodness was it good! It's very fallish here in Cleveland right now and soup with grilled cheese is my kind of easy meal when it's a bit nippy out. (This would also be great with just some hearty bread - like sourdough - and cheese!)

This recipe calls for the frozen winter squash packs, but seeing as I can only find frozen winter squash in the organic section of the store, and the 'organic' label makes said package a whopping 3 plus dollars, I went with the slightly more time consuming route, but much more cost effective. I bought the acorn squashes for under a buck a piece and it took less than 30 minutes for me to cook, de-seed (I think there's a technical name for that, but I don't know what it is), and smash up the squash 'meat'. Well worth my time and money.

**As a side note, I had no idea how many squash it would take to get 4-5 cups of the smashed goodness, so I just bought 4 of them, thinking that I knew each one would produce at least a cup a piece. Yeah. At least. Try 2.5 cups a piece. So I had to put my cute little crock pot away and get the big daddy one out so I could double the soup. But now, I have an entire soup meal (8-10 cups worth) in my freezer!
***SECOND SIDE NOTE: I just realized that the recipe calls for butternut squash if you're not doing frozen and I totally used Acorn squash on accident. SO glad that it still worked. haha

Butternut Squash-Apple Soup (Crock pot style)

• 3 12oz frozen pks winter squash thawed and drained (4-5 cups Acorn or Butternut squash cooked, de-seeded, and smashed)
• 3-4 cups chicken broth depending on how thick you want the final product to be
• 1 medium golden delicious apple - peeled, cored, and chopped
• 2 T minced onion
• 1 T brown sugar
• 1/2 t ground sage (I didn't have sage on hand so I used tarragon instead. FAB-U-LOUS)
• 1/4 t ground ginger
• 1/2 c heavy cream or half 'n' half (I actually used normal 2% milk and it was just fine) (I think if you used almond or hazelnut milk, this could be considered heart healthy!)
  

--Combine all in crock pot (except milk!), cover, and cook on high for 3 hours
--Puree (with a handy-dandy hand mixer if you have it!)
--Stir in milk right before serving