A Kitchen Explosion

A couple weeks ago at Sobeys I noticed winter squash on sale for $0.99/lb.  Having always wanted to try making butternut squash soup, I brought home a squash, looked up a recipe, and realized that realistically I could create a pot of soup in half an hour or less.

So, I set to work to find out if making delicious butternut squash was as easy as the internet said.  Being an intuitive cook I looked at a few recipes to determine approximate ingredient ratios, and invented the following recipe:

1 butternut squash
6 cups chicken stock
Olive oil
1 Spanish onion (because it was the only onion in the house)
Pepper
Nutmeg
Curry powder
1 cinnamon stick
Powdered ginger
Cream (a few tbsps)

I poked a bunch of holes in the squash and microwaved it for 10 minutes, which made it easy to peel and chop and almost cooked the whole thing all the way through.  I scooped out the seeds, peeled off the skin, and cut the squash in with the chicken stock to simmer.  In the meantime I caramelized the onion in some olive oil, and when it was done I put it into the soup.  I added some pepper, a cinnamon stick, nutmeg, curry powder, and ginger to the stock as well.

When the squash was cooked (5-10 minutes), I put the soup into the blender in small batches (it took about 4 batches) and pureed it until it was smooth.  At the end, I added a splash of cream to the whole batch.

It went well except when I tried to blend it, THIS happened:

(Unfortunately I decided to take these pictures after starting to clean up the multiple explosions so you don't quite get the full effect.)

I don't know why, apparently I forget how to use a blender?  I have made blended soups before and have never had this happen.  Opening the top to let a bit of air out produced the same results, and the only way I could get it to not explode in the end was to hold the top down with all my strength.

So, it made a bit of a mess, but it was so worth it because the soup was AWESOME, and truly as easy as the internet said, with the exception of the blender mishap.