One of my favorite soups is roasted butternut squash. One day while I was puréeing the squash/onion/garlic in batches in the food processor I thought there must be an easier way to do this. I went online and discovered the wonderful world of immersion blenders.

I don’t know why I never thought to buy one before. I mean, we all know I’m the crazy soup lady and that I love kitchen gadgets. It only makes sense that I would have one, right? I asked for one for Christmas, and it is one of my favorite gifts. So far I’ve blended roasted butternut squash, black bean and split pea soups. I’ve also used the chopping attachment and the little beaker for making hummus.

The attachments work well enough for small projects, but I’ll still get out the food processor for heavy duty chopping. The blender, however, is genius! It’s so easy to use and quick to clean up that I’m kicking myself for not getting one sooner.

I wish I was better at food photography because right about here would be where I would post a fancy picture of my roasted butternut squash or a nifty shot of my hummus, but alas, I’m good with the blender, not the camera. You’ll just have to settle for a stock gadgety photo instead.

Being back in the kitchen since my Nine Months of Nausea has been good for me. Even though my diet may seem limited with all of this non-dairy stuff, I am still eating a better variety of foods now than I did when I was pregnant. This week I kind of lost my cooking mojo, though. I really screwed up two of our meals, and since we do leftovers in this house, that’s four nights.

The first was Garlicky Greens and Pasta. After I finished making it I thought it tasted kind of bland. Instead of sautéing more garlic, I just sprinkled in some garlic powder. I also added a little more balsamic vinegar. Not good. I pushed the threshold from too bland to too much. Let’s just say there were no worries about the other Bela in this house during the week. The second meal I kind of screwed up was Cashew Crusted Fish. I whizzed the nuts in the food processor and they were supposed to make a “cashew powder” that I could use for the fish breading. Instead of powder, I got gunk. I’m pretty sure I was on my way to making cashew butter. It didn’t stick to the fish at all. I wound up pan frying the gunk along with the fish and sprinkled it on top. It was OK.

Needless to say after a week like that I was a little worried to be making the main dish for our TKGA meeting today. Luckily I was making minestrone soup — one of my favorite recipes and also hard to screw up. It turned out good, as usual, and I figured my kitchen mojo was back. So, instead of asking T if we could get take out for dinner, I got back in the kitchen tonight and made a quick and easy jambalaya. It was awesome! I think I am going to stay with the kitchen mojo and make some split pea soup tomorrow, without the turkey ham, of course.

…a dairy-free Thanksgiving. Yes, you read that right. Our friends Herb and Jocelyn made the most amazing Thanksgiving dinner and I could eat practically all of it—all except the green bean casserole. They even mashed a separate bowl of potatoes for me using chicken stock instead of milk! Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays and I can’t tell you how happy I was that they went to all that trouble to make sure I could share the meal with everyone. True friends, indeed!

I did my dairy-free part for dessert. I made dairy-free, gluten-free pies: one pumpkin and one apple. See, I’m not the only one with food issues. Sarah can’t have anything with gluten. I have to say the pie experiment was a success. I couldn’t really tell the difference between evaporated cow’s milk and rice milk. The gluten-free dough was a little delicate to handle, though. Rolling it out was a bit of a pain, but once it was in the pie dish it held up well.

I hope everyone had a great holiday!