Thai Curry Butternut Squash Soup

Posted on October 16, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com

I apologize for not having a photo of this one, as it was a beautiful soup, but my camera battery is dead!

I do want to make this soup again (Steve says is up there with gumbo and potato leek as the top three), so I’ll get the recipe down even without a photo. Also, it is a unique soup. I couldn’t find a recipe quite like it and ended up improvising a bit.

I’m not a fan of butternut squash, which I think is bland and takes way too much preparation work. However, they’re REALLY easy to grow and I have a lot of them. In past years they’ve gone mouldy and soft in the basement, so this year I am determined to do a few things differently. First, I will cut up two at a time when using one and freeze the leftover squash for later recipes. Second, I resolved to find a butternut squash soup I liked.

I knew I wanted a curry soup, but couldn’t find one with Indian curry powder that sounded very complex or interesting. The curry powder seemed like an afterthought, and the recipe couldn’t help adding nutmeg as well. I know nutmeg is used in Indian food, but I really wanted to avoid the whole pumpkin pie squash thing. Having used the technique of throwing in curry powder to spice up a potato-cheese soup, I didn’t want to go that route.

I did find an interesting curry squash soup recipe in Asparagus to Zucchini, a cookbook produced by the Madison, Wisconsin area CSAs. It was too complex, with kaffir limes, curry leaves and lemongrass, which I don’t generally have, but it was a start. Here’s what I made in the end, and it was really exceptional– beautiful, tasty and not difficult once the squash was diced.

Thai Curry Butternut Squash Soup
1 Tbs vegetable oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 Tbs red curry paste
5 cups diced butternut squash
1 can chicken broth (or vegetable) plus 1/2 cup water (approx 3 cups)
1 cup coconut milk (my coconut milk was pretty separated… I used maybe 1/2 cup and then 1/2 cup regular milk)
1/2 cup fish sauce (Don’t leave this out! I am squeamish about it, so gave a first good shot, then tasted and added another long squeeze of the bottle.)
salt to taste
cilantro (for garnish)

Saute the curry paste in the vegetable oil for 30 seconds in a soup pot and add diced onion. Saute until translucent, about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, in a large pot of boiling water, boil the diced squash for 8-10 minutes until soft. Drain. Add squash, broth and coconut milk to the pot. Simmer for 10-15 minutes, then puree with an immersion blender (or in batches in a regular blender) and add fish sauce. Simmer another five minutes and add salt to taste. I did also add a few shakes of a “Thai seasoning blend” I got on clearance when World Market went out of business in town. I believe it has ginger and red pepper mostly, maybe also some lemongrass powder. Lemon grass powder (or whole) and ginger would be good additions to this soup in small measure.

The color of the soup is light, creamy and golden, and it has just the right kick and just the right tang of Thai food. It’s still somewhat delicate, so we took the opportunity to open a good Pinot Noir. With good bread, this could easily be a meal. (We had no bread, so I served it with rice, which we dipped in spoonfuls into the soup.)

The best thing is, I have 9 cups of cubed butternut squash in the freezer, so next time I will cut most of the prep!

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Moneyball

Posted on October 13, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com

I didnt’ have much interest in seeing Moneyball in the theater until a friend told me about his experience seeing it in a major metropolitan area (not Oakland). At the end of the movie, the audience stood up and gave it a standing ovation.

Standing ovations are odd things in themselves. They have become expected, ubiquitous rituals at a theater, and I square it by telling myself that I’ll happily stand up and clap for anyone willing to entertain me in person for two hours. In a movie, it doesn’t make sense, except as the audience affirming an experience shared with the others in the theater. Moneyball, then, was about something that could make people rise to their feet and applaud rolling credits. Perhaps, I thought, it has something interesting to say about America and about this moment in our history.

It turns out, it does. The movie is wonderfully entertaining, with excellent acting performances and a cast of characters that clearly includes many real athletic scouts (their acting is not excellent, but it’s always fun to see real people in a movie). But what is the story? What kind of American hero is Billy Beane?

He’s a failed professional baseball player who chose the major leagues when he wasn’t ready, when he should have gone to Stanford on a scholarship. He looked like a great player to the scouts, who analyze players in a certain, romantic way, and who are looking for stars. In that system, he failed miserably.

As a general manager for a team that has one of the worst budgets in the Major Leagues, the Oakland Athletics, the game as it is played also isn’t working. He can’t win with the best players he can buy. It doesn’t work to identify young stars and develop them, because as soon as the stars help the A’s get close to a championship, they’re bought off by teams with bigger budgets. As he says, he doesn’t want to be a farm team for the Yankees.

So he changes the questions he’s asking and changes the way he plays the game. He enlists a Yale economics graduate and they assess players differently. According to the system they’re using, they choose players according to their ability to get on base (as determined by their stats). Rather than saying, “We need a star first-baseman to replace Johnny Damon,” they say, “We need three players, and they all need to be guys who can get on base a large percentage of the time.” They find undervalued players and recruit them.

However, they also (according to the movie) train and change these players to provide strengths that others didn’t see in them. They get the players not to look at their shortcomings but to see themselves realistically and play from the strengths that they have. They teach a catcher to play first base, because they need his hits. Beane wants them to stop doing the thing they were originally assessed for and supposed to be great at and concentrate on what the statistics show they actually can do.

More than putting together a budget team, Billy Beane puts together a team whose parts work together to produce wins. Lots and lots of wins. According to the film, it’s this change in thinking that leads the Red Sox to finally win a World Series in 2004.

It’s an odd thing, really. In one way, it’s a cold, heartless system, based on mathematics and statistics. On the other hand, the current system of player analysis seems just as cold and heartless. It is more romantic, building young men up with lavish praise of their talent and skills, and it provides the stories we hear in baseball commentary and tell each other over baseball cards and fantasy baseball leagues. But when they don’t live up to the hype or promise, they’re discarded and, the movie suggests, real damage is also done to their psyches.

The movie is not romantic, especially for a baseball movie. It embraces its inner geek, and although Brad Pitt is beautiful, charismatic and chews tobacco, there is surprisingly little baseball action in the movie. The games are mostly played out in documentary-like fashion. They are collections of hits, runs and scores, not feats of superhuman ability or “heart.”

So what would make an audience get to their feet? Maybe it is Billy Beane’s desire to do things totally differently when facing a situation he can’t win, the big money market of professional baseball. Maybe there is a recognition that we, America, are not the high-budget team of all-stars we once were.

Our budget is low and we’re not living up to our potential as stars. We need to change the game. We need to be realistic about what we can do as individuals. We also need to nurture new skills, the things we can do, and play our parts so we can get the most runs. Not every time, but enough times to be in the winning column. The truth is, this movie is not about the big winner. It is a movie trying to convince Billy Beane that falling short of the big win doesn’t make his whole season and its successes meaningless. What he does counts. What he does turns baseball on its head and yet serves up a game that is wonderful for the fans to watch and satisfying for the team to play.

In the end it’s surprising that the movie is offering people hope on a grand scale. It might be a good sign.

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Ten Years Later

Posted on October 5, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com

On September 11, 2011, I woke up in Madison, Wisconsin, where I was visiting friends on my way back from a visit to Chicago. You couldn’t escape the day, the anniversary, if for no other reason the media had turned over an entire week to commemoration, follow-up, analysis, revisiting, and basically any story they could come up with related to 9/11.

After Mass at Holy Wisdom Monastery, just three miles from where my friends lived, I headed home to central Minnesota. At noon, I turned off the radio and observed a couple minutes of silence, the landscape rushing by, my mind of course still fully engaged with driving. I couldn’t stop– and this feeling of hurrying forward seemed to me somehow related to the country’s response to 9/11. Ten years of hurrying forward.

When I got home, I jotted down a draft of this poem, which I’ve returned to a few times since. I have a sense that it is already not timely, that events keep moving forward almost too quickly, without enough reflection or, more importantly, connectivity between them. I think that’s what I like about the poem– that it captures the sense of rushing on, and in this particular historical moment ten years later, of our fragmentation as Americans, our inability to come together and make sense of our country and our world situation.

Ten Years Later

by Susan Sink

I’m driving through Wisconsin
as fast as I can, watching for troopers,
annoyed by those too close behind, those
too close in front, when I shoot
under an overpass and standing there
is a woman with a blond pony tail
holding a large American flag,
alone, her head down, looking at nothing.

In Minnesota, passing under another bridge,
a more exuberant group—adult chaperones
and ten or twelve children with flags waving,
children who weren’t even born then—
make this a day of victory more than mourning.

In the rush of traffic, I think about the quiet skies
in the days after that day, the two wars,
the children growing up in a curious wartime,
the young widows, alone, with flags,
and like the many stranded years ago,
I want only to get home.

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House of Prayer

Posted on October 4, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com

In mid-September I started a new job. I moved from being the communications director for the Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict, the largest community of Benedictine women in the United States, to the part-time administrator of a 13-room, 17-bed retreat house, the Episcopal House of Prayer. The distance between these two places is only 10 miles. The Sisters’ monastery is in St. Joseph, Minnesota, and the House of Prayer is on the campus of Saint John’s University and Abbey in Collegeville.

I am right down the street from where I started in this area, in 2005, when I moved here from Southern California to be a scholar at the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research. After that year, I worked for two years as an editor at Liturgical Press, which is also on the campus of Saint John’s and a ministry of the Abbey.

The House of Prayer came out of the great ecumenical spirit of this place, a collaboration between Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota Bob Anderson (1934-2011) and Abbot Jerome Theisen 21 years ago. It builds on the great beauty of this part of the state as well.

One of my misgivings about not working for the Sisters anymore was a sense that I’d be moving away from the deep German Catholic heritage of this area. I’m really taken by the culture, particularly the old farmers and those who grew up on farms, hard-working and completely engaged even in their 70s and 80s.

I need not have worried. The first person I met here was Dennis, one of our two house cleaners. He turned 78 years old last year, having had a long career as a dairy farmer and another as a college custodian before retiring 11 years ago. He tells charming stories about “the wife,” and “the boy” and “the girl,” his children. He has one of the thick German accents I love to hear and am quite aware are not going to be heard in another 10-20 years.  He reminds me of my own grandfather, who was too social to retire and went to work in a produce department in his 70s just to stay active and continue to interact with people. 

Today, though, while the women of St. Victoria’s Parish held their retreat in our fireplace living room, an older man came in from the parking lot. I met him in the lobby and asked if he’d just stopped in to take a look. He said he’s often passed the sign, “House of Prayer,” and thought today would be a good day to stop. I saw he had a rosary wrapped around his hand. “I’m not far from Albany, where I’m going, but it’s such a nice day, I thought I’d see this house of prayer.”

“Let me open the oratory for you,” I said, taking him down the hall. I explained that we’re a retreat house and that he was welcome to pray in our prayer space for as long as he liked. I unlocked the space and explained that we usually take off our shoes before going in. “That’s fine,” he said. He looked in curiously at the circle of chairs, the meditation mats and cushions on the floor. I have to say that the light in there at that time on this October day surprised even me. It made the whole place glow orange.

I asked him his name, and he said, “Norbert. Norbert Overman.”
I told him mine, and he looked quizzical. “Zink?”
“Sink, like the kitchen sink,” I said, and he chuckled.
“Stay as long as you like,” I told him. He started to take off his shoes as I left.
“Thank you,” he said, his rosary still wrapped tightly around his hand, the light from the open door flashing off his purple shirt.

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Squash Stew with Cornbread Dumplings

Posted on September 30, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com

At the dentist’s office yesterday, I was looking at some Better Homes and Garden 30-minute recipes. The one that really got me was for butternut squash. The recipes promised to go from fridge to table in 30 minutes or less. The first instruction was: peel, seed and cube the butternut squash. Uh, 30 minutes are up!

It might not take that long, but at least 20 for a good-sized squash. I’ll admit my squash came in at about 4 lbs each, but they’re no more difficult to peel and dice than any other. Luckily, I thought ahead on this recipe, knowing I wanted to make it mid-week, and cut the squash up while watching the Minnesota Vikings collapse in the second half for a third straight week on Sunday. So I had a big bowl of cubed squash ready to go.

The recipe is from the book Sacred Food for Soulful Living compiled by the Reverend Ward Bauman. He’s my new boss, the director of the Episcopal House of Prayer. If you order the book on the website, I’m the one who will process your order and send it to you!

Ward learned to cook from his mother in California, but he honed his skills and developed his culinary art while living in Iran for 4 1/2 years. He then got a job as the cook at a retreat center in California, where he got very good at cooking for large groups. Now he cooks for many of the retreats at our facility, tasty, vegetarian dishes that are complex and use a lot of cumin and cinnamon.

I have been looking for butternut squash recipes, and decided to try this one because it used so many ingredients I still have from the garden, including the last of the zucchini and poblano peppers. The only thing I didn’t have was the basil, so I left it out. I love how the dumplings turned out, baking on top as the zucchini stews. I set the timer for 20 minutes and they were baked perfectly. I do think I should have let it cool a bit more before serving to avoid burning my tongue!

This could use a bit more heat, red pepper maybe, or just more of the spices it calls for. I did put extra cumin in it. It blends wonderfully with the cinnamon. The corn is great in the dumplings, and I might even add some to the stew as well next time. This one is good enough for company, but takes about an hour even with the squash already diced. Also, I didn’t realize until just now it should have baked the last 20 minutes. I just left it on the stove with the lid on. However, it did burn a bit on the bottom, not really sticking or giving a bad taste. That wouldn’t have happened if I’d baked it like I was supposed to! Also, we ate it with sour cream, which was excellent.

Squash Stew with Cornmeal Dumplings

2 Tbs vegetable oil
5 large cloves of garlic, minced
1 large onion, chopped
2 large poblano peppers, seeded and diced
2 1/2 lbs Roma tomatoes, chopped (I used one quart jar of canned tomatoes)
3 lbs butternut squash, peeled and cut into 1-inch dice
1 1/2 cups vegetable stock
1 Tbs ground cumin
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp oregano
1 1/2 lbs zucchini and summer squash, thickly sliced
1/2 cup basil, chopped
1/2 cup parsley, chopped

Dumplings
1 1/2 cups yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 Tbs sugar
1 tsp salt
1 large egg
3/4 cup milk
3 Tbs butter, melted
1 cup corn kernels, fresh or frozen (thawed)

Saute the onion and garlic in oil until translucent and beginning to brown. Add the chiles, tomatoes, butternut squash, cumin, cinnamon, oregano and stock. Bring to a simmer, cover and cook until squash is tender, about 30 minutes. (Cut up the summer squash and make the dumplings while waiting.) Add the zucchini and summer squash, basil and parsley. Add salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a simmer again.

Spoon the dumplings over the hot vegetables in 8 mounds. Cover tightly, tenting if using foil, avoid touching the dumplings, and bake at 400 degrees until dumplings are firm and dry, about 20 minutes. Do not over-bake or the dumplings will be dry.

Dumplings: Mix together the dry ingredients. Mix together the egg, milk and butter. Mix the two mixtures together well. Stir in the corn kernels. Let stand until the batter is thick enough to hold its shape, about 5 minutes. Drop onto stew as directed.

Serves 12 (I’d make this for 6-8 as a good one-dish meal. As you can see above, we polished off about 1/3 of it easily.)

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Migration

Posted on September 28, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com

We’re in the midst of some amazing migratory activity here. Yesterday, I swear, a giant flock of seagulls was circling over the prairie for hours, completely silent, swooping up insects but never landing.

Saturday I was reading on the porch to an utter cacophany of chatter from a large flock of starlings that had taken up temporary residence in our cottonwood trees. I think they first staked out the fir trees at the edge of the property, where they sounded like some giant, creaking machinery. Then they moved in closer, filling the cottonwoods and really making a racket.

I finally roused myself and went to take a look. It was camera-worthy, so I went for the flip. I have a feeling starlings are what caused all the trouble for Alfred Hitchcock, as they really do travel in enormous groups. There are reports of them blackening the sky as they lift from a field. My starlings were not that numerous, but the sound and their black bodies filling the trees was ominous.

I took this video, which almost captures the sound. Turn your speakers all the way up and watch/listen for the spot, about 30 seconds in, when they fall into a sudden hush and swoop from a cottonwood at back to the ones along the driveway. The sudden silence and rush of wings took my breath away.

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Watermelon and Paul’s Letters

Posted on September 24, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com

I’ve spent the last ten days, and really the ten before it, being mostly overwhelmed. Starting a new job, making food, finishing up a large volunteer project — but most of my energy has gone into working through the New Testament letters as part of the Art of The Saint John’s Bible, volume 3 project. Coming face to face with passages in Paul’s letters has thrown me for a real loop, and I can’t even really explain it now, though every day I understand it a bit more.

My evangelical history with these passages, my graduate work on Paul where I was encouraged to radically re-envision Paul’s role and words, and my ongoing attempts to really embrace and incorporate Catholic theology, all collided and have left me feeling somewhat disoriented. I’ve always found Paul daunting but a bit thrilling, too. However, I’ve felt free to think and reflect on Paul myself, with no real consequences. Writing for a general audience about the letters is something else again. My daily task is to go page by page, letter by letter, and write something that gives context to the highlighted passages. But I also need to consider the whole of what has been emphasized in the text treatments and, in some ways, try to figure out the intention, not so much of Paul as of the Committee on Illumination and Text that put together the plan for The Saint John’s Bible.

I’m almost there, and after more erasing and restarting than in any other part of this project, I will have a draft of Letters today and can move on to, gulp, Revelation! In many ways, however, Revelation is easier. There are several full-page illuminations with lots to discuss, and the overall message is fairly simple and clear!

I have been wanting to share one more garden delight. When harvesting before the early frost, I came across this one, perfect, beautiful watermelon! I planted just as many watermelon plants as pumpkins, but after early vining, I couldn’t find them in the mass of squash plants. So I was thrilled to pull this guy out of the field.

Last week when Steve and I were both home for lunch, I cut it open. Watermelon! Pink-fleshed and incredibly juicy, it was slightly sweet but not too sweet, and had seeds just like in the old days before genetic modification bred them out. The knife slicing through flesh and rind is always so satisfying in watermelon.
It made me very happy to eat the little guy.  
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Early Frost

Posted on September 14, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com
squash patch as far as the eye can see

It is tempting soemtimes in the garden to pretend that I’m on the PBS reality show Frontier House. On the show, two families and a young couple build their log cabins and spend the rest of the time chopping wood and storing up food in the hopes of living through the winter.

Oh, and fighting amongst themselves (it is a reality show) operating their still, selling baked goods to people in the 20th century, etc. It’s really great. In the end, it is determined that only the young couple would have had enough food and wood to last the winter. (The kids are not much help and require food and warmth.)

Steve and I would not make it through the first snowstorm, of course (and not just because we don’t have a fireplace). Still, when one is out picking cartloads of heavy squash, it is fun to imagine that one is actually providing all the food necessary. This winter, I do believe, we could live on pumpkin alone. It wouldn’t be tasty or fun and might cause other digestive issues, but we might live to see the first greens of spring.

Yesterday I lugged these six mammoth pumpkins from the squash patch. I could not even pull the cart until I’d unloaded the butternut and spaghetti squash into a wheelbarrow and taken them down separately. What is more extraordinary is that, from three plants, there are another 13(!) large, green pumpkins out there still. Unfortunately, tonight they’re predicting a frost/freeze, and though I am up for covering up the basil in the beds, I don’t have enough blankets or even tarps to cover up the rangy pumpkins and other squash. Which is good. Because even if I give away three of these, I’ll have more pumpkin than I can manage (though my friend Deb has a great recipe for pumpkin cookies). In fact, I’m a little sad that they’re SO huge, because I was hoping to make the soup from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle where she cooks the pumpkin in the oven and scrapes down the sides and adds cream to make soup. But none of these suckers will fit in my oven.

I’m planning on putting the new machete we bought at Wal-Mart to good use cutting them open, however!

Because of the frost, I’ll be out picking as many cherry tomatoes as I can, and trying to identify a few more ripe squash. The frost is three weeks early, but I will only lose the tomato plants, zucchini and struggling beans. (I will be sad if I lose the large ancho pepper plants.) I’m ready to bid the summer plants farewell, as they have all been good to us this season.

Enjoy this day of fall– not the last, as after the freeze it should go back to normal for some time. I’m ready to turn to the root vegetables and fall greens.

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Labor Day

Posted on September 5, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com
tomato sauce
Last night it was comforter weather, with the temperature dropping down to the low 40s. I’m hoping a frost won’t come for a few more weeks, but I’m ready if it comes early. Today was one of those gorgeous days in the 70s with fluffy white clouds sailing through the sky.

I was quite anxious last week about my ongoing writing project for The Saint John’s Bible. I received the files of the images a few weeks ago and was pulled from volume two, Historical Books, into the final volume, Letters and Revelation. All I had to see was a list of the illumination names: “The Woman and the Dragon” and “The Cosmic Battle,” to realize that this would be a challenge. The Book of Revelation.  Hmmm.

Additionally, there are a lot of text treatments in the “Letters” portion of the volume. What I saw on the pages were phrases like “the wages of sin are death,” and “Therefore since we are justified by faith.” Oh, wow. I was definitely getting out of the territory of King David and Ruth and Solomon and wouldn’t have stories to tell so much as, well, theology! Much of which is at the heart of the Reformation!

It stressed me out a bit. Especially since I was feeling so distracted by all this produce. But after spending a few hours Saturday with the texts and Raymond Brown’s An Introduction to the New Testament, writing an introduction to the Letters portion and getting my pages of files in order, I feel much better. In fact, as I should have known it would, it falls into place quite nicely. And the illuminations in “Letters,” namely “Fulfillment of Creation,” “At the Last Trumpet”  and the “Harrowing of Hell,” well, I can see how these lead up to Revelation. So bring on the eschaton, I’m ready!!

It also freed me up to really focus on cleaning up the garden and working with produce if that’s what I wanted to do. Today I dried peppers and with the last big bucket of tomatoes, I made “the gravy,” putting them through my food mill and then boiling down the sauce and canning four pints. The kitchen smells fantastic! I’ve put aside some fresh and some canned produce to take with me to Chicago (squeezing in a visit before the new job starts on the 12th). Also made a great pizza last night with all sorts of veggies piled onto it. Saturday I made a giant Greek pasta salad, and there were enough ingredients to make a simpler version again yesterday. It does feel like the frenzy has past and now, like those clouds, I can float along a little while and settle into life.



zucchini, swiss chard, tomato, onion, feta, garlic, peppers



And for a few weeks, I’ll be thinking mostly about the apostles Paul and John and the fulfillment of the vision of God’s kingdom. I’ll let you know how it goes! 



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Zucchini Rice Mexican Style

Posted on September 2, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com
I get weary of eating zucchini just about the time it starts getting desperate to leave offspring and putting out tons of fruit. But last week I figured out something great to do with it that is easy, delicious and also makes use of the season’s peppers and tomatoes. I made it the first time because I had an avocado and leftover green rice, but I’ve since made it with regular rice.
Zucchini and Rice, Mexican Style
1-2 zucchini grated
1-2 cups cooked rice (Green rice is best, but any rice will do.)
sunflower oil
1 Tbs cilantro or cilantro chutney
1 small hot pepper, seeded and diced (jalapeno or serrano)
1 sliced avocado
2 tomatoes cut into chunks
sour cream
In a skillet, sautee the zucchini in sunflower oil or other vegetable oil (you could also add onion and garlic, of course) until soft and some liquid has evaporated, about 8 minutes. Add rice and diced pepper and heat through. Stir in cilantro chutney. Serve in a bowl topped with avocado, tomatoes and a dollop of sour cream.
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