Note to self: Read recipes more carefully

So last Friday I wrote about making a butternut squash soup that was way too spicy to eat. In fact, over the weekend we cooked up a bunch more butternut squash and leeks, added in more chicken broth and the soup was still to spicy to eat.

Well, on Tuesday when I was designing the paper and placing my food column on the page, I took a closer look at the recipe I had followed. Now the recipe for the soup was broken down into three parts - one for the soup, one for the toasted spice rub, and one for candied walnuts (which we did not make.) If I had read the recipe more carefully, I would have realized that the soup recipe called for two teaspoons of the toasted spice rub and that the toasted spice rub recipe actually makes one cup to be used for multiple recipes. So think of the amount of pepper, red pepper flakes, chili powder, fennel and coriander seed and more that would be in two teaspoons of a mix versus an entire cup. It's no wonder that soup burned going down.

So I have once again renewed my vow to pay more attention to new recipes before I start making them so I don't skip any steps or use too much of an ingredient that could make it inedible. My discovery just gives me another excuse to make the soup again - minus the excess spice.