Butternut Squash Soup

I am big soup eater! I grew up eating soup as an appetizer for dinner in colder days. Nowadays, I would eat them for lunch and dinner anytime of year! I started feeding soups to my children early on and they are now good soup eaters as well.
The following recipe is an adaptation of a soup my husband's maternal grand-mother used to make with her garden-grown pumpkins...
While pumpkins are ubiquitous around this time of year in the USA, Halloween oblige, it's not easy to find eatable ones! I'll check at the Farmers' market next week, maybe I'll be lucky. In the meantime, I bought butternut squash and while not the same, it makes a delicious soup. I always make more to serve it on another evening. Bon Appétit!

Ingredients
-1 butternut squash, pealed and cut into small pieces
- 1 onion sliced
- 1 small tomato cut in quarters
- Olive oil, salt and fresh black pepper.

• In a large pot , saute the onion in olive oil and salt
  
• Add the butternut pieces and the tomato
  
• Add about 2.5 cups of water
  
• Let simmer on the stove until the butternut pieces are cooked.
  
• Scoop the vegetables out and reserve the cooking water
  
• Blend the vegetables and add the cooking water to appropriate consistency
  
• Add fresh black pepper to taste.
• Serve with crème fraîche, grated cheese, fresh cilantro, toasted bread.
  

My personal comments:

• To peel the butternut, I cut it into small pieces; I take the seeds out and then use a vegetable peeler. It takes a little bit of time and my hands are orange and dry afterward but the soup is worth it!
  
• I use a pressure cooker to cook this soup. With the pressure cooker, the soup cooks in less than 10 minutes.
• I also use an immersion blender when I know there is enough water: it's faster to blend and requires less dish washing than using a stand-alone blender.
  
• If I only cook soup for dinner, I add couscous or pasta to make it more nutritious for my children.