Chilly Friday Roasted Carrot Soup

I hope you had a good, healthy week. It snowed in my neighborhood last night.  Just a little bit. But it sure is cold out. 

Cold and flu season is upon us.  While it's important all year round, it's especially important right now to take extra care to avoid germs of those around us who are sick.  And if we do get sick (hello, I speak from personal knowledge about that) the focus should be on resting and eating lightly.  Your body needs to work on healing itself rather than digestion.  So many times we eat "because we should."  Think about kids and their appetite when they aren't well... They just don't eat.  Many times when my son was younger that's how I knew he was getting sick; he just didn't want to eat.  Maybe our grandmas were correct -- "Starve a fever" maybe had more truth to it than we want to admit.

Okay.  Enough about being sick because I'm well now.  I even ramped up my exercise later this week.  Monday and Tuesday I took it easy with my cardio but then I decided to get back into my interval training.  I really do enjoy running on the treadmill.  I feel so good after a good sustained 15 to 20 minute run.  Maybe this spring I'll try for a 5k. I guess I'd better do more training, eh?  Related to my ramping up things at the gym, I've also started doing some full-body training, some isometric and some thing where I unknowingly work more than one body part at a time.  Like doing bear crawls.  You work your legs (oh, my!  Yes, you do) and your shoulders and chest at the same time.  Do that back and forth across the basketball court a couple of times and you'll definitely feel it.

I want to share with you a recipe for Roasted Carrot and Squash Soup that I made this past weekend.  It is so yummy and full of flavor.  It's really thick and filling, so if you freeze your soup in individual servings, you might want to use smaller containers for this one.

Recipe:

Just click here.  I know that it takes you to another website/blog, but since I don't have "permission" to post the recipe directly on my blog, I need to link to it.

The instructions seem tedious, but it's basically roasting the veggies and then heating the seasonings on the stove top, adding the broth (I used water due to onion allergy and onions in broth and didn't have any homemade on hand), stirring in veggies, blending and serving.  It's so good. I made a half batch because I was just making it for myself for lunch this week. Here is what my soup looked like when it was ready for the fridge in handy-dandy Mason jars.  I love storing things in jars.  They are easy to transport and reheat liquids in with no risk of PCBs from plastic.

 Before it got to that point, it looked like this:

Fresh carrots & frozen butternut squash, ready for the oven

Roasted & ready to become soup!

In the pan with broth and seasonings

 Here's hoping your weekend is relaxing and warm.  I don't think you can go wrong with a good, comforting soup and a fire in the fireplace accompanied by a good book!  I wish you well and I will see you back here Monday.  Remember, I'm going to share some exciting news about what's been happening at home!