Butternut Chicken Soup

Good morning!

I am actually writing this in the morning, so forgive me, I had a late evening, 4.5 hours of sleep and only one cup of coffee, my brain  and eyes are not working yet!

How was your Christmas?  Mine was great!  I am probably one of the only woman out there that was happy that she a hot pink hand mixer and a crockpot that does it all!  I also got a new camera.  I haven’t had a chance to play around with it, but I am hoping that I will be able to take better pictures.  My Husband even got me a little tripod to go with it!  So cute!  It’s a Cannon Power Shot!  With a new camera, you would of thought I would of gotten a bunch of pictures, but I didn’t!  But here are a few from my morning that I did get.  Nothing fancy going on here!

So today, I am officially hanging up my sugar apron and pulling out my salad maker!  The holidays are over, no reason to start fresh in January, why not do it now?  After my weight gain, I decided, no really, I decided to start being healthy now!  Today, I am going to clean my kitchen cupboards, pack away the sugar drawer, throw out BAD food, prep my vegetables for the week and be excited for new healthy creations.  No more cookie baking for me, unless it’s really healthy!  I still need a treat, so today I will probably make no bake cookie dough balls, made of oats, dates, peanut butter and other healthy goodies.   If they come out good I’ll post the recipes!

I am really, really excited for this! I am lucky that I love fruits and vegetables, so this shouldn’t be hard, I did this once before and stuck to it for over two years.  I also gave up soda three years ago and I if I can do that and stuck with it, I can do anything!   I went months without cookies, I can go without sugar.  The only sugar I want is from natural food!  You with me?   I have no excuses at all!!  Yah, Pumping my self up here!!!  This will be a piece of cake easy!

So today, I will share with you a soup that I made a few weeks ago.  The pictures aren’t great, but my battery was going dead on my camera so I took my pictures really fast!

This is a Butternut Chicken Soup.  I whipped this together pretty fast and the flavors were unbelievable.   I used my hand mixer to puree the chicken and squash, I was surprised on how the hand mixer shredded my chicken, it was perfect!  May not be the prettiest looking soup, but it’s thick and hearty and healthy too!  I used Greek Yogurt for my little design in the soup.

Target sells Butternut Squash in the frozen section, and it makes for a great soup.  It doesn’t take that long to roast because you don’t get the firmness that you would normally get from using fresh butternut squash.  If your looking for quick butternut puree, buy the frozen Archer Farms Squash, all natural, nothing added just a bag of squash!

Butternut Chicken Soup

Ingredients:

3 Cups Butternut Squash

1/3 Cup Onion- Diced

1 tsp Olive Oil – divided

1/4 tsp Black Pepper

1/4 tsp Salt

1/4 tsp Cinnamon

1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper

8oz Chicken Breast- Cut up into bite size pieces

Dash Salt

Dash Pepper

4 Cups Low Sodium Chicken Broth

1/4 tsp. Nutmeg

Directions:

Preheat oven 400

On baking pan add the Butternut Squash, Onion, 1/2 tsp. Olive Oil, Black Pepper, Salt, Cinnamon & Cayenne Pepper. Mix it all together (I used my hands so the squash and onions are covered) Bake for 30 minutes, flipping half way through. Once squash is fork tender add to a large pot.

In a skillet add chicken, 1/2 tsp. olive oil and a dash of salt and pepper. Cook until chicken is cooked through, about 10 minutes.

Add chicken to pot with squash, add chicken broth and nutmeg. Turn heat to medium and cook until it reaches a boil. Turn off heat, taste, add additional salt & pepper if needed.

Using an hand blender, process until creamy or you can carefully add the mixture in batches to a blender and process until smooth, just be-careful because it is hot!  Personally I wouldn’t do that because I am to clumsy.  You can even use a potato masher to mash it up, the chicken will just be chunkier, but the squash will be smooth.

Serving Size: 6 – 1 cup servings

Calories per serving:  101,  Fat: 1.5,  Cholesterol:  21,  Sodium:  76,  Potassium:  304,  Carbs:  12,  Fiber:  3.2,   Sugar:  0,  Protein:  11

I made this soup for just me, and it made for great lunches throughout the week!

Let me apologize to you for my sloppy blog today.  I have been writing this for to long and I am still not functioning.  I just can’t think!  I really need to eat breakfast and get some more coffee, so thanks for listening to my gibberish!  But before I go, I wanted to tell you today is going to be a good day for you and me!  Think positive!  Be excited! Remember you can do anything you set your mind to!