Butternut Squash Soup

This is perfect for a nice fall dinner.

1 butternut squash
1 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, diced
1/2 cup butter
1 Tablespoon olive oil
4 cups water
1 8oz. cream cheese
1 T. salt
red pepper flakes (just or pinch or two depending on how much of a kick you want)

Peel and remove seeds from squash.  Dice into small pieces.  Put squash, onion, garlic, butter, olive oil, salt, and red pepper flakes in pan and saute for 10 minutes.

Add water and simmer until squash is tender.  Stir in cream cheese until blended and then blend.  I just used my immersion blender, but if you don't have one you can transfer to blender and puree until smooth.

Serve and Enjoy!

Soft Yummy Caramel Corn

I made this the other night for a Girls Night and it so quick and easy.  There are lots of caramel corn recipes, but this is the soft, gooey, sticky kind that we really like.

2 cups brown sugar
1 cup karo syrup
1 cup butter
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla

Mix all ingredients together, except for the vanilla.  Cook until soft ball stage or around 220 degrees.  Add vanilla and mix well.  Pour over three bags of popped microwave popcorn.  I always try to go through the popcorn and remove all the seeds that didn't pop because no one likes chomping down on a hard seed.  This recipe really is so easy and I usually have all these ingredients on hand.

I also used this same recipe for Caramel Apples last night, but just cooked the caramel until it was around 245, medium almost hard ball stage, so the caramel was more firm.  Then we rolled the apples in crushed candy bars and drizzled with chocolate (I took the picture before the chocolate drizzles while they were cooling).