butternut squash & carrot soup with cinnamon

I wanted to make a healthy veggie filled soup that my 1 year old would actually eat so I whipped this up today.  I decided to use cinnamon ‘cus my kiddo likes to chomp on cinnamon sticks and it actually turned out great.  Might seem a bit weird at first to have a cinnamon-y soup but the cinnamon is not overpowering and goes really well with the squash and carrots.

1 medium-sized butternut squash  /  4 carrots  /  1 medium yellow onion  /  3 – 4 cups vegetable stock  /  2 – 3 cinnamon sticks  /  2 garlic cloves  /  avocado oil  /  black pepper to taste

First, peel the butternut squash and chop up into roughly 1 inch chunks.  Chop up the carrots, onion and garlic.  You can be pretty lazy about all this prep since everything’s going to be pureed after.  In a large pot over medium heat, pour in a couple glugs of oil and then add the onion and cinnamon sticks.  Turns out, cinnamon sticks and onion cooking together smells amazing.  When the onions are turning translucent, toss in the squash, carrots and garlic and let it cook a bit for a few minutes.

Next, add enough stock to cover everything.  Throw a cover on the pot and turn the heat down to low-medium and just leave it to simmer away for 35 to 40 minutes.

Take off the heat and remove the cinnamon sticks.  Add black pepper to taste and some salt if necessary.  If you used regular store-bought vegetable stock, you probably won’t need any additional salt.  Using an immersion blender (or if you don’t have one, you can pour the soup into a regular blender), blitz until smooth and that’s it!

turkey meatballs

These are the best meatballs, seriously.  And they’re made out of extra lean turkey so that’s a bonus!  This is adapted from a recipe by Jessica Alba (yes, the actress who I’m not sure actually acts anymore) from when she appeared on Martha Stewart.  She uses pretty basic meatball ingredients (except for maybe zucchini and carrot) but what I really like about her recipe is that she simmers the meatballs in chicken broth. Turns out this is a fantastic trick to keep them from turning out dry and makes them extra tasty.

This makes about 1 and 1/2 dozen meatballs

5oo grams of extra lean ground turkey  /  1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs  /  1 large egg  /  1/4 cup finely chopped onion  /  1/4 cup finely chopped carrot  /  1 tbsp Italian seasoning  /  1/2 tbsp salt  /  1 tsp garlic powder  /  1 tsp ground black pepper  /  1/2 cup chicken broth, no salt added (if you have regular sodium chicken broth, you’ll definitely want to cut out or cut down the salt in the recipe) /  avocado or grape seed oil

*I didn’t have any on hand and couldn’t be bothered to go out and get one but you can also add in 1/4 cup finely chopped zucchini

Toss all the ingredients except for the chicken broth and the oil into a large bowl and simply mix it all up with your hands until everything is well combined.  Then roll them into meatballs that are roughly the size of golfballs.

Heat up a thin layer of avocado oil in a large skillet over medium to medium-high heat.  Add the meatballs and cook, giving them a flip every now and again, until they are browned.  This takes about 5 to 7 minutes.

Once your meatballs have browned up nicely, turn the heat down to low and add half of your chicken broth.  Cover with a lid and let it cook until the chicken broth is almost all absorbed, which will take another 7 minutes or so.

Take off the cover and add the rest of your chicken broth.  Turn your heat back up to medium and then let your meatballs cook uncovered until all the liquid is gone.  And that’s it!  We’ve eaten these before with just some salad and tonight we had them with some spaghetti.  Enjoy!