Kale and Roasted Vegetable Soup

This is an excellent winter vegetable stew that is worth passing on! Dee-licious! For those who find vegetarian cooking not very flavorful...here's an exception. I substituted kabocha one time and pumpkin another time for the butternut squash with pretty good results. You might want to even add a couple of drops of honey on the pieces of squash during the roasting to increase the sweetness a little. What makes this soup flavorful is the roasting of the vegetables, so roast well. Don't be afraid of well-browned and even little blackened-looking corners, since that's the good stuff. Be sure not to add too much olive oil, as this will prevent good browning. Another thing, if you don't have an immersion blender, these babies are a must for people who make soup frequently! SO much easier than trying to put things in the blender and much easier to wash after using. My Braun immersion blender is one of my favorite-of-all-times kitchen tools. I put the roasted garlic, onions, and tomatoes in with the vegetable broth and pour some of the broth in the roasting pan to scrape out roasting juices into the soup pot and then use the immersion blender on everthing. I cut the leaves off the kale by holding the kale leaf, stem up, and running the knife down the stem where the leaves connect. Cut the stems up and throw them in to simmer for a while but don't add the leaves until the very end, so they'll stay nice and green.

Happy eating!