Food Fail = Win

Today's story: How two food fails turned into a massive win.

Food Fail Story 1: Veggie Stock and Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

I decided to make roasted butternut squash soup this morning, and planned to have it for lunch. Mmm, delicious soup :) I got my squash all chopped up and roasted, onions sauteed, and went to go pour in the stock. Hmm.... stock.... Not in the cupboards... not in the fridge... NO STOCK?! It's true, there was not a drop to be found in the house! Dangit!! What's a girl to do?
I just happened to have a huge baggie full of veggie scraps that I'd been storing in the freezer for just such an occasion. I made my own veggie stock!

What you need: a big pot, a load of veggie scraps, and some water. I also put in about 1/3 of a fresh onion, and a sprig of rosemary for fun. My veggie scraps included the green part of leeks, carrot peels, celery chunks and broccoli stems.
Bring all of the above to a simmer (NOT A BOIL - boiling will cause the stock to taste bitter). Let it sit there for a while, I left it simmering for just over an hour for 4 cups of stock. I added the rosemary only in the last 15-20 minutes or so, and tasted a pretty good rosemary flavour in there with only that much cooking.

Now what?

RECIPE TIME!

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup
- 1 butternut squash, peeled and chopped into small chunks
- about 1/2-3/4tsp each cinnamon and nutmeg, maybe some brown sugar for fun
- drizzle of olive oil, plus another 1T for sauteeing later
- 1 onion
- 3 cups veggie or chicken stock (low sodium preferred)

Toss your butternut squash chunks with the cinnamon, nutmeg, and drizzle of olive oil. Place in a roasting pan and let 'em cook at 425 for about 30 minutes (I flipped mine around after about 15 minutes of cooking).
In a pot, sautee the onion in about 1T of olive oil till they are soft and golden. Add the stock and roasted butternut squash and bring to a boil. Once boiled, reduce the heat and let it simmer for 10-15 minutes until the squash is really soft.
Put the soup into a blender or food processor, and pulverize till smooth. Ta-da! Tasty soup!

Food Fail Story #2:

Since the stock was going to take a while and I was hungry right then and there, I decided instead to have an egg salad sandwich for lunch. I hard-boiled up my 3 eggs, left them to cool and cracked 'em open.

Oh no! They didn't fully cook through!? I ended up somehow with soft-boiled eggs!

I have no idea what happened, I left them in the simmering water for like, 10 minutes!! Crap! What to do? I didn't want to have runny egg yolk in my egg salad, because really, that sounded like a really gross idea. Instead, I went for an egg-white-salad sandwich! And since I was missing the fat from the egg yolk in my sandwich, I decided to slice up some avocado into it.
Um, can we all say "DELICIOUS!!!"? Also pretty ridiculously low point for an egg salad sandwich for those of us following PointsPlus. Using my bread and mayo, I calculated that my whole sandwich was only 7 points, versus the estimated general calculation on the website for an egg salad sandwich at a whopping 12 :)! Hooray! Food win!

Have you ever had a food fail that turned out to be a total win?