Rustic Winter Soup

Roasted Delicata squash and potatoes with fried bacon, onion, and garlic. Garnished with microgreens and beet umami.
Served with sour dough bread and goat cheese.

This recipe was made with ingredients from a local farm to table initiative called FarmDrop. They have created a bundle, so you can easily order these ingredients with one click!

Prep time: 10 minutes – Cook time: 30 minutes – Serves: 4-5 people

Please read more about them below in my back story!

INGREDIENTS

• 1,5-2 lbs of Delicata squash (about 2 normal sized ones)
• 1 lbs of red potatoes
• 1 package of bacon
• 1 qt of bone broth
• 3-6 cloves of garlic
• 1 onion – chopped
• Salt and pepper to taste
• For garnishing
• 2-3 TBSP of Beet umami (frozen)
• 1 container of zesty mix of shoots and sprouts
• 1 4 oz container of Vacacou cheese
• 1 Loaf of Country Sourdough

METHOD

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. Wash and cut potatoes into quarters. Half squashes and deseed. Put face down along with potatoes in oven safe dish. When oven is preheated place in oven for about 40-45 minutes.
3. Heat a large (5 qt) dutch oven (or a large pan that can hold over 3 qts) medium-high heat.
4. Chop bacon and onion.
5. Add bacon to hot pan and stir until it starts to release fat and start to brown, then add onions, and continue to stir until bacon browns and onions get translucent.
6. Chop garlic or squeeze and add to bacon and onions. Continue stirring until bacon is just to your liking, a little chewy or crispy, or right in between.
7. Take out bacon-onion-garlic mix and drain fat. (If you wish you can always save these drippings for future use. Store in a heat safe container.)
8. Meanwhile when the squash and potatoes are roasted take out of oven and let it cool down.
9. Put the drained bacon-onion-garlic mix back in to pan on medium-low heat. Cut potatoes smaller and scoop out roasted squash and add to the mix. Add the broth and continue to stir. While heating the broth up and stirring, you will get a very lumpy texture, almost stew like.
10. Salt and pepper to taste.

Garnish with beet umami, because this product is frozen as to retain freshness, I just shaved the amount I wanted on top of the soup. Add a handful of zesty shoots and sprouts mix on top.

Serve with a slice or two of Sourdough bread slathered with Vacacou goat cheese!
A hearty, stewy, chunky, and healthy soup! A perfect meal for after a long walk on a cold day! Enjoy!

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THE BACK STORY

I’m a dreamer. Always have, always will be. A melancholic eternal optimist. Yeah, they exist!

From an early age, I remember always pondering, questioning. Asking why, wanting to know why. How things work and why. Why things didn’t work and why. How things could be better. But at the same time being so timid and insecure, that I would just let things be. I would write about it every now and again but really, who am I and why would I make a difference?

I have this vivid memory, from at least over 10 years ago. We were living in the Netherlands at the time and I was grocery shopping at our neighborhood supermarket.

To give you an idea, supermarkets are often located in city centers and larger neighborhoods. The retail spaces are much smaller than in the US. People often walk, or bike, for a two-bag trip. The closest supermarket for me was a two-minute walk as we lived in the city center. And yes, when I had a long list of groceries, I would take my car. Duh!

Back to the backstory, I remember being in the meat section and looking at all the assortments and availability of meat, completely stocked, and thinking why is it this way? Why do we have a system that has more supply than demand? What happens to everything that doesn’t get sold? Animals sacrificed so that we have the choice to pick last minute what we are eating for dinner that night? So we can stare aimlessly at what type of meat and/or cut we are eating for dinner? People going hungry because they can’t afford it, yet the meat case was overstocked, and if expired gets thrown away? What a waste!

This should be opposite. Why can we not figure out what foods we need first and then be supplied. Why don’t we go back to the farmers? Each town or area, supported by the surrounding farmers? At least for the bulk of it.

Turn the food system around.

Thankfully, I see it happening, slowly.

One of the main reasons I started this website is because I wanted to provide recipes that don’t come out of a box but are still quick and easy, and healthy!

A few days after launching this blog, I was approached by FarmDrop, a local initiative that supplies food directly from the farmer to you. They have direct relations to local and a few remote farms. All the products are on their website, once a week (by noon Monday) you order what you need and it gets delivered to your location of choice, the very next day.

They loved what I was doing and were wondering if I could provide them with a recipe every month, based on their (seasonal) products available. Oh wow!! Yes!! What an honor! And so up my alley!! So here’s the first one.

Message from FarmDrop: FarmDrop is a model of social enterprise that not only drives us all towards a story of hope, where local food economies sustain the fabric of community life, but is also directly empowers small farms to continue to preserve our land’s agricultural heritage. With small-scale farms and food producers at the center of our mission, we can support local non-profits whose mission is aligned with the future food security of our communities. We currently have three market communities in Maine, MDI, Blue Hill and the Greater Portland area. https://farmdrop.us