Soup's On!

This round in the kitchen produced not only the soup I'm about to talk about, but it also produced the excess butternut squash that I froze and later accidentally ate in my trash can magic smoothie. Soup, like a smoothie, is a surefire way to use up anything you have languishing in the fridge taking up space and working on growing a mold coat. The following recipe is very, very loosely based upon a recipe from "How it All Vegan", but about the only commonalities it has with said recipe is the use of butternut squash, ginger, and tomatoes. I change quantities and ingredients up every time. I prefer the flexibility of cooking over the chemistry and rigidity of baking for this very reason.
These guys were about two pounds each, but a scant two pounds. I used one for the soup and froze the other for later. I will go ahead and admit that more than half my time preparing food is spent washing and slicing/chopping/dicing/peeling vegetables, and I know that is precisely what prevents more people from cooking with fresh veggies. It is *so* worth it to have them fresh though- and they're cheaper, most of the time, than frozen or canned.
That being said, I do love canned beans. Making dry beans is not hard, but it does require some forethought. And sometimes when I come home and want to make a quick chili or stew, it is a little kitchen miracle to have cans of beans at my beck and call in the pantry. Another bonus- since I don't have a ceramic spoon holder thing-y on my stove, the empty can doubles as a spoon holder before finding its home in the recycling bin.
Into this pot I dumped about two cups of butternut squash, liberal amounts of fresh grated and dried ground ginger, a can of fire roasted tomatoes+ the juice, carrots, a can of great northern beans, a splash of coconut milk, some cumin and cardamom, water to cover, salt/pepper/cayenne to taste, and about two cups of very finely chopped kale.
Here it is, about to be devoured. Here's a tip- this soup was delicious and flavorful with a complex depth of spices. And I didn't use one bit of veggie stock. Chicken stock adds a great depth of flavor to soups and casseroles (from what I remember), but to me all veggie stock does is add a salty/celery-y taste- even when I've gone to the trouble of making my own, I don't feel it's worth it, taste wise. So if a recipe calls for veggie stock, try it with water instead. You probably won't notice and it's far easier than making your own, and cheaper than buying it.
I rounded out this meal with herb biscuits. I found a basic herb bread recipe somewhere (I cannot at all remember) and then modified it to the point where its mother wouldn't even recognize it. Some mods-I cut out the sugar, oil, and nuts, upped the flour, added ground flax seed, doubled the recommended spices, added rosemary and roasted garlic pieces, and used coconut milk from a can for some fat. As I said above, baking does not often lend itself well to improvisation, so I tried to replace what I took out as best I could with complementary substitutes. In the end, these were very, very good. The next day we had them for breakfast with vegan breakfast sausage patties and jalapeno jelly. They were a bit crumbly in a good way, like old fashioned buttermilk biscuits. For a long time I would make quick breads in my loaf pan, but they would go stale before Bobby and I could eat them. Now I almost always make them in my muffin pans so that they are easier to store and to transport. Freezing is kinder to them in muffin form as well.

It's worth it to find some good staple quick bread recipes you can easily tinker with- I could just as easily have gone the other route and made these sweet instead of savory by adding in fruit and different spices. If you Google "quick bread recipes" you'll get thousands of results, or you can just click this link to go to an entire section on quick breads from AllRecipes.com.