Lunch on a Saturday

Since my sister has been super busy with life, I thought I make a guest post here today.  Lest you decide you would like to try either of these recipes, I feel it is my obligation to give you my honest opinion:

Butternut Squash Soup with Apple and Bacon

Banana Muffins with Brown Sugar Topping

First, the soup.  I've been searching for good butternut squash soup recipe ever since I had it for lunch at a friend's house last Fall.  She served it with bacon and these fabulous cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice croutons.  This recipe was not the same and, I didn't have any bread to make the croutons..  It's a wonderful recipe if you like bacon.  Also, I don't particularly like sage so I used onion in the recipe.  Okay, so I didn't follow the recipe exactly.  Like I said, I didn't use sage, I added onion and I used a braeburn apple instead of a granny smith.  Also, after pureeing the soup, I added another can of chicken broth.  The puree was a little too thick for me.  Overall, I give this recipe 3.5 stars.  Believe it or not, it was a bit too bacon-y.  Maybe I should go out and get some bread and make the croutons.  It will probably cut the bacon flavor.  If that doesn't work, I'm going to have to get the recipe from my friend.

Moving on to the muffins...WONDERFUL!!!  They were easy to put together.  Despite the fact that I'm not very good at cutting butter and sugar together and I only had two bananas (instead of 3 as the recipe called for).  Oh, and I didn't have allspice so I used a 1/4 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice.  Maybe next time I will do 1/4 t. of pumpkin pie spice and a 1/4 t. cinnamon.  I loved these muffins and will make them again.   They were perfect for my cold Saturday afternoon.