Chipotle Roasted Butternut and Apple Soup

Another instant classic. I can't fully claim this as my own since I got the idea from a recipe on About.com and by reading the comments I was able to reconstruct and improve upon the original recipe. Every time I made this recipe I have made more and more refinements with each iteration and this is the latest that has yielded the best results. This soup is an instant hit no matter where I serve it and a great fall recipe that will liven up any occasion. It is a little bit time because it involved roasting, but it is well worth the effort and really brings out the aromas of all the spices. This dish can also be made vegan with a few adjustments.

Ingredients:
  1 1/2 tbsp butter (omit if vegan)
  3 tbsp olive oil, (divided, 4 tbsp if vegan)
  1 tsp of chipotle chili powder (divided)
  1/8 tsp of ground cloves
  1/4 tsp of cayenne pepper
  1/4 tsp of coriander
  1/2 tsp of cumin
  1/2 tsp of cinnamon
  1 tbsp ginger, grated
  1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
  1 1/2 large onions
  4 cups of butternut squash, pithed, peeled, chopped
  4 cups of chopped apples
  1 1/4 cup of vegetable broth
  1 1/4 cup of unfiltered apple juice
  Greek yoghurt or sour cream (optional)
  a few sprigs of fresh parsley (optional)
  a few warm flat breads such as pita (optional) 

Preparation:
1: Preheat oven to 400 °F.

2: Place chopped butternut squash and apples into a bowl and dump in 2 tbsp of olive oil, 3/4 tsp of chili powder, cayenne pepper, coriander, cloves, cumin, and cinnamon. Mix the spices and oil to coat the squash and apples well and pour onto a baking sheet. Place in oven and allow to roast for 40 ~ 45 minutes at 400 °F.

3: In a large pot or dutch oven, place 1 tbsp of olive oil and butter (if vegan 2 tbsp olive oil) in pot on medium high heat. Be careful not to brown the butter. When mixture is hot place onions, garlic, ginger, and 1/4 tsp of chili powder to the pot. Allow to cook for ten minutes stirring frequently, taking care not to brown the onions. Turn heat down to medium if necessary.

4: Pour in vegetable broth, apple juice, and the roasted squash and apples. Bring mixture to a boil, cover, and cook for 30 minutes on low heat. The squash and apples should be very soft and this is crucial for the next step.

5: Pour the soup into blender or food processor carefully and puree until the texture is thick and creamy. This step can be done in batches. Pour the pureed soup into the pot or storage dish making sure consistency is even.

Can be served with a dollop of Greek yoghurt or sour cream and a few sprigs of finely chopped fresh parsley. Goes great served with a warm flat-bread.

Vegan Adjustments:
To make this vegan make the following adjustment: replace 1 tbsp butter with 1 tbsp olive oil or margarine and forgo the Greek yoghurt or sour cream.

Notes:
This will yield a reasonable amount of about 7 or 8 cups, but will leave you with some extra squash most of the time. This dish has an excellent assortment of flavors, encompassing all of the various palettes. It has an almost Indian feel to it in many manners, but also a very Meso-American quality as well. It's a sophisticated spin on a very simple autumn dish and has a lot great side dish parings.

It's Good to be Home

No poetry today, sorry if that is what you were expecting. Instead, I have some great news: for those who are not following me onTwitter then you probably have not heard that I have finally found an apartment and have gotten settled in. Next up on the itinerary is a job that works me full-time, or at least more than my current one. So this Thanksgiving -- as lonely as it is since my roommate is spending the weekend in Junction City -- I still have something to be thankful for. It truly is a blessing to have a home, some peace, and some privacy. Something I have been waiting months for.

That being said, I am still holding a lot of anger at my former employer for what they did to both my brother and myself and I am not sure if I can ever really forgive them for what they did. I don't hold my own boss personally accountable, or even the district manager where I worked. They had to play the game, and the game sucks. But there is still honor left in this world and good people are found in the most unexpected places. The people at my current job have tried to help me out as much as they can, even though "resources [read: hours] are very limited." I just hope I can get a full-time job by the end of the holidays.

In the meantime, I guess I will be posting here on a more regular occasion. That means more poetry, and hopefully a few more parts to the anthology I am working on. It certainly is a lot more easier to come up with ideas now that I am outside the shelter and I will also probably be posting some recipes as well since vegetarian cooking is another passion of mine and one that I hope to be able to express more often.

Well, until next time, thank you all for your readership.

The Rainforest

What do I hear among those great trees?
A bird upon its nest, feeding its young.
A busy workshop called Hive full of bees.
An aardvark eating ants with it’s long tongue.
Soft and humid wind blowing through the leaves green.
One hears the little feet thump: the rain.
The whispers of many insects ser’nade.
Pandas on the ground munching bamboo cane.
And ants acting as Mother Nature’s maid.
O what great wonders I wish to see,
No more in the year 2123?

Of Hope and Things Most Bleak

Tell me o great Luna of things to come
And tell me what hope means for me
Is thus true that man may consign his doom to a world of hellish fire?
Also is that true man may poison Nature with his waste?
Now I ask thee, o great one, what is there to hope
When justice is in chains
And in chains are those who should be justly free?

The madmen were laughed at when they said it was all coming to an end
Yet we pray together that their visions err
Earth as fragile as a blown glass ornament
As fools we carry her with oiled hands
And so the fate of man is sealed

But even so in this dim world I still find hope
In that hope there is virtue, and in virtue comes goodness
Where there is wrong, there ultimately must come right
And so the gods decree, man is far from perfect

Yet if one were to change and better the world
If one were to inspire
If one were to educate and give charity and follow virtue
Then so may others
And out of that one change shall arise the greatest hope

Nature’s Hands

Between the rivers wide, in the plains and mountains, and down in the valleys low
In the high trees and fields green, and the deserts in witch no seed can sow
There lays a maiden so majestic, her grace would make any man fancy
She’s everywhere we go, taking care of our paucity
A woman so caring, and loving, she holds us all in her arms
And gives us scenes of beauty that are the of greatest of charms
Her reach is long, stretching across all the lands
And caressing all of us with Nature’s hands.

Life at the Homeless Shelter (Why I Have Been on Hiatus)

Hey there everyone:
So I am going to keep this quick. Those not subscribed to my page on Google+ and Twitter may not have heard the news that I am on hiatus right now because I have been staying at a homeless mission in Oregon. This has made things very to keep things updated, especially since the recent techs that manage the computer area decided to revoke me special permission to post things to my blog -- which I how I was making so many posts at first.

Basically, staying at the mission here has been draining. I stay in a communal dorm that is basically two rows of a bunk beds two high on either side of the wall. About 150 beds per dorm room and there are three of them total. Most of the residents here are elderly and smoke so many suffer from conditions such as COPD so getting a decent sleep is near impossible because in addition to snoring of all types there is constant coughing at decibel levels I didn't think were even possible. And most are not courteous enough to get up and leave the room when there fits starts. Days end at about 21:30 or so and begin at 0:530. Some of my days begin at 04:30 because I am fortunate enough to have a job, but I don't get to go to bead early for it. And woe if you have to work a night shift, they do not let you sleep during the day. Not that you really could in the day room since there is always someone bothering you or making ridiculous amounts of noise.

The food here is in a word, awful. And not just from a culinary aspect. The food here is overcooked and lacking basic nutritional value for the most part. This would also explain the amount of sickness here as well. Since living here my own health has taken a nosedive and I attribute it in part to being malnourished. I take supplements to make up for what is missing and eat mostly what I can get on food stamps which has made things better, but not being able to really cook really stymies one's choice. On top of that, I am of vegetarian persuasion and rarely are foods here suitable in that sense and I cannot really digest meat that easily.

However, those are quite minor bitches. Poor food and no sleep are really to be expected. This is life on the "transient" side of the mission. There is another side that is called "The Program" which is designed to basically entrap people into staying at the mission so that the people that own it may profit off them while paying them next to nothing: $25 a week, somewhat better meals, a dorm room shared with just eight others, and a locker. The work is for eight hours of the day like a normal job, and six days a week. Basically, once you enter you have no time to look for a real job and are stuck. In addition, the mission does not help with employment outside of allowing people to use an upstairs computer room for an hour a day. Barely enough time for anyone with any real job experience to fill out most applications. The limitations of "the Program" are horrendous and designed to take advantage of the presence of recovering addicts and those of lesser intelligence that think they are getting their life together. The reality is that for many they get trapped in the Program or flip-flop between the two sides.

To make things worse, the mission here has stuck up a deal with the City so that it can basically be used as a spillover facility due to overcrowding at the jail. Instead of the City jail being used to house criminals, the local law enforcement has instituted a policy of placing ankle bracelets on suspects and sending them to stay at the mission. This has led to a recent influx of addicts, weirdos, and criminally violent people that mingle with both those like me who are clean and down on our luck and with our own psychos which have their own brands of crazy. In essence, it is a policy that endangers the most vulnerable.

To top all this off, even though the mission is considered a drug-free zone, the addicts are still basically allowed to come in tripped out and drunk. This is despite the rule otherwise which rarely and selectively enforced. And often without any real proof. The mission does not provide urinary analysis kits or breathalysers which are now quite inexpensive in bulk because doing so would effect their own business of basically boosting their counts of people "served". It would also empty a large portion of the available "workers" on the Program side and reduce their ability to make income through their various businesses (mostly paper recycling).

This has made what is supposed to be a safe and "Godly" place that supposed adheres to "Christian values" (by the way, did I mention that everyone here must either attend an hour long chapel or bible study, including the Program workers?) a very chaotic, noisy, and at times a dangerous place that profits unfairly off the very people it basically employs. These complaints go mostly ignored and unheard by the staff in charge, even the ones that do seem to care about the people there. This place isn't really here to help out its inhabitants and is really more in the business of helping out the City keep the homeless here off the street and out of sight. Meanwhile, no one here receives the help they really need including sick, elderly, veterans, and the mentally ill.

Matricide

There she lay cold and barren
Soulless, her breath stolen by greed
Covered in ash, in blood… rotting
Nary a sound from her mouth
Silence in the dead night
She lay covered with those that hath exhaled life

No man mourns her for death
No tears shed upon the day of her death
Not a single lily was placed on her coffin
The eulogy, great: but no one can speak those words
Her funeral, empty: cold is the earth on that unspoken day

Blood poisoned with toxin old and new
Poisons that run deep, and thicken the aer with it’s vapours
And salts the soil below her so to impede life
Smother all with the ashen powder that slowly choked all

Dead she lay, dead all lay
Upon the fiery ground
As snow fall upon our lifeless bodies

Such a fragile and lonesome thing…
Man has committed many murders

But none as loathsome as Mother Earth