Guest Blog: Beta Carotene Curry

****iheartkale note: In the spirit of Thanksgiving, our old co-op buddies Honor and Sarah have offered a guest post-enjoy!****

The first time I lived alone in Manhattan I bought onions. I diced five of them before I realized that I no longer lived with Hannah. It took a while to get out of the habit of cooking in bulk, and I thought I was alone with this problem of overcooking, until I mentioned it to Sarah. When Sarah lived in Germany she was only cooking for herself. Every night, she asked her roommate what she was having for dinner (usually canned peas) and incorporated that into her meal, just so she should cook for someone other than herself. We both have made scrambled tofu for our carnivorous parents. We both have a strong association with the smell of ground cumin and tonight we're reliving our past as cooking partners in Somerville, MA.

Now we're both together in Somerville and Sarah has acquired a large canvas bag of root vegetables and is slowly converting them into vegetable soup, all the way pressing things under my nose to inhale -freshly minced ginger, ground nutmeg, freshly cut squash, C. Moore's Northampton honey, chamomile & mint tea and most recently, curry powder (don't breathe in too deeply). Now that she's headed home tomorrow for Thanksgiving, she's decided to convert this pile of orange veg into...... Beta Carotene Curry.

The recipe is as follows:

2 onions
5 cloves of minced garlic
6 sweet potatoes in a 1/2" dice
1 5lb bag of carrots
1 butternut squash
1.5 tablespoons of minced garlic
4 bay leaves
Turmeric
Curry Powder
Cumin
Nutmeg

Cover the bottom of the pan with generous drizzlings of olive oil and add the onions, garlic, ginger, salt and pepper and heat on low until the onions are glassy. Then, add the chopped carrots first, then the sweet potato and squash (anything Orange!) and cover with your
favorite stock and bring to a boil. Now add your spices and wait until the vegetables are soft and blendable (don't forget to take out those pesky bay leaves!). Blend with the stick blender and enjoy with good company and possibly a dollop of plain yogurt or sour cream...