Butternut Squash Sausage Soup

I'm currently obsessed with eating butternut squash, sausage, and kale soup for work lunches (more like a stew than soup). There's a variety of recipe variations on the web, here's an approximation for what I threw together last week based on using ingredients I had on hand.

Butternut Squash, Sausage, and Kale Stew
1 butternut squash, peeled, roasted in some maple syrup/butter, and cubed
1/2 pound Hot Chicken Sausage from New Seasons
3 cloves garlic
Onion powder (would have preferred to use a real onion)
1/4 cup red lentils
1/4 cup quinoa
5 leaves of kale roughly chopped
2 cup vegetable broth
Sprinkling of rosemary (and maybe some sage if I had any)
Salt and pepper to taste

= Peel a butternut squash, cut into cubes, toss in some kind of sweet buttery mixture, and roast until pieces are nice and browned. This will be way more butternut squash than needed -- probably only need about half of it for the stew. Set to the side.

= In a large soup pot, lightly cook some garlic (and if you had onions, do an onion) in olive oil. Add ground sausage to pot and cook through.

- Add 2 cups of vegetable broth, and about another cup of water to the pot. Add lentils and quinoa to the pot. Simmer for 10 minutes or so.

- Add roughly chopped kale to the pot. Add some more water if needed to help cook the lentils and quinoa. Add some spices (rosemary, sage, salt, pepper) to taste. Simmer for another 10 minutes.

- Add a bunch of cubed butternut squash into the pot until the consistency and taste is how you like it.

Zombie Finger Cookies

My new favorite cookie recipe of the year. Everyone at work got a huge laugh out of them, and I managed to scare lots of little kids who were at the company for a trick-or-treat event.

Modifications I made:
1. Dip almonds in melted jelly and place on fingers before baking.
2. Lower cooking temperature to 305 and bake for only about 15 minutes.