This soup feels like an indulgence. It’s creamy and filling, and complex tasting using just a few ingredients and it takes just a few minutes hands on time to make, and just one pot.

My favorite thing about this soup is thinking of delicious toppings and food to dunk in the soup. Here I sauteed some apples and added bacon and some cheddar cheese.

Basic is always good too, here I had some sage butter with croutons and it was so good.

You can use any orange flesh winter squash. I used a butternut squash.

Gather your ingredients.

• 1 pumpkin, butternut squash or any orange flesh winter squash, about 2 1/2 to 3 pounds seeded, peeled and cut into cubes
• 1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for drizzling
• 1 large onion, or a couple leeks chopped
• 1 teaspoon salt and 1 tsp pepper
• 4 garlic cloves, pressed or minced
• 3 to 4 cups vegetable broth or water. I used Better than Bouillon
• 1 to 2 tablespoons butter or oil
• Sage, ginger or other herbs are optional but delicious
• Any fun additional topping or dunking vessels you like! Black beans! Tortellini! Grilled peanut butter and jelly! Granola! Leftover roasted vegetables! Add some cream, coconut cream, or curry! Kale or collards! Blue cheese and walnuts!

Warm the butter or oil and sauté the onions until they are soft, about 5 minutes.

Add the peeled and cubed squash, herbs if you are using any, garlic and salt and pepper and cook that for about 8 to 10 minutes until it just starts to soften.

Add the water or broth and simmer until the squash is really soft, about 30 more minutes. You should have just enough liquid so the squash is poking out like a crocodile’s head in a swamp. You can adjust as needed.

I used an immersion blender to mix mine. You can move it to a blender and blend until smooth, leave it chunky or mash it with a potato masher until it semi-smooth. It does have a lovely shiny creamy texture if you blend it.

Leftovers are of course great.

Hope you are all the winter squash in your CSA share!

Mo