Butternut, carrot, parsnip soup

So, tonight was kind of clean out the fridge and freezer night. We all have them once in a while. So, we had soup, yet again. I find I have been obsessed lately with making soup. Ever since the purchase of my hand-held blender we have been eating soup 3-4 nights a week. Good thing I purchased my immersion blender in the winter instead of the summer!
Anyway, here goes the recipe...
4 Tbsp coconut Oil
10 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 med. onions, chopped
6 parsnips (small to med.) peeled and chopped
4-6 cups chopped butternut squash
1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and chopped
1 patty pan squash or yellow squash chopped with skin
enough stock for the consistency you desire, about 32-64 oz.
1/2-1 cup chicken giblet gravy
salt and pepper to taste

In an 8 quart stock pot, place 4 tbsp coconut oil, add in the carrots, parsnips, onions, squash, and butternut. Saute for about 30 minutes over med. high heat. Add in the chopped ginger and saute until fragrant. Add in enough stock to cover the veggies and let simmer until all are soft. Blend with your hand-held blender, and add more liquid as needed and the optional giblet gravy, salt and pepper.

We added some chicken I had left over from making stock...and had the millet biscuits. Very good, filling dinner on a cold snowy night. It had a pleasant sweetness to it with the parsnips and ginger! You could always tops with some fresh grated nutmeg or cinnamon or both!

Millet Drop Biscuits

We just had these tonight with our soup, and N and J both thought they passed the test....okay, well n chowed down on 2 huge biscuits and wanted a third. J thought they were a good substitute! I will make one note. I used store purchased millet flour for these, simply b/c I had it and didn't feel like grinding my own, and I have to say I thought the taste of the flour wasn't nearly as satisfying. I highly, highly recommend grinding your own millet!

So here it is. Thank you to Nourishing Gourmet for the start to this process:
2 cups millet flour
3 tsp homemade baking powder
1 tbsp sucanant (optional)
1 tsp salt (or 1/2 tsp if using salted butter)
8 Tbsp butter cut into small cubes (salted or not, I used salted)
3/4 cup buttermilk or yogurt (used yogurt, they rose beautifully, and held their texture)
2 eggs beaten into the yogurt or butter milk

Start by grinding your own millet in a blender if need be. For this you would simply place 2 cups of millet in a blender and turn it on liquefy for about a 1/2 hour, or until a fine flour consistency.

Take the 2 cups of millet and mix them thoroughly with the baking powder and salt. When well combined cut in butter. I used a pastry cutter, Nourishing Gourmet says you can use your fingers....or you could used a fork and a knife. A pastry cutter isn't too expense and it is a great purchase for baking. When the batter looks like course crumbles stir in your dairy/egg blend. The mixture will be a little wetter than traditional biscuit dough, but still firm enough to drop by the spoonful onto a greased baking sheet or a sil-pat.

Place in a 425 degree oven for 10-15 minutes. Remove from the pan promptly and place on a cooling rack or eat them! :) I didn't have any problems with them breaking or being crumbly, but Nourishing Gourmet warns about that as a problem. She also used buttermilk...

Mercury and High Fructose Corn Syrup

This is breaking all over the place, I read about this several days ago via my natural news newsletter, but I wanted to wait for some confirmation from other sources, now I know it is indeed true. Mercury has been found in a third of the 55 major manufacturer's samples of High Fructose Corn Syrup.

I will list below the manufactures who have been listed with their products with Mercury counts in the Parts per Trillion.

1. Quaker Oatmeal to Go (350 ppt mercury)
2. Jack Daniel's Barbecue Sauce (Heinz) (300 ppt)
3. Hershey's Chocolate Syrup (257 ppt)
4. Kraft Original Barbecue Sauce (200 ppt)
5. Nutri-Grain Strawberry Cereal Bars (180 ppt)
6. Manwich Bold Sloppy Joe (150 ppt)
7. Market Pantry Grape Jelly (130 ppt)
8. Smucker's Strawberry Jelly (100 ppt)
8. Pop-Tarts Frosted Blueberry (100 ppt)
10. Hunt's Tomato Ketchup (87 ppt)
11. Wish-Bone Western Sweet & Smooth (72 ppt)
12. Coca-Cola Classic (62 ppt)
13. Yoplait Strawberry Yogurt (60 ppt)
14. Minute Maid Berry Punch (40 ppt)
15. Yoo-hoo Chocolate Drink (30 ppt)
15. Nesquik Chocolate Milk (30 ppt)
15. Kemps Fat Free Chocolate Milk (30 ppt)

The article in the Washington post can be found here.

If you are interested in what other foodie bloggers had to say, you can read a summary here.

There is no better way to describe this circumstance other than sad.