At the start

Dinner.

I'm always looking for new ideas for dinner. I have to cook low calorie (more on that another time), balanced and interesting meals that my whole family will eat. It's a challenge with my 2 picky eaters. I read a lot of cookbooks and spend lots of time online trying to be inspired. So tonight I made soup. Delicious butternut tomato soup with onion biscuits on the side. Three of the four of us ate it, which are good odds in my house.

We try to have at least 2 meatless dinners per week. One is almost always soup. The more I read about health, food and the food industry the more I want to eat more vegetarian meals.

Butternut Tomato Soup (adapted from Double Delicious):
1 small onion
2 stalks of celery
olive oil
one peeled and diced butternut
4 cups low or no sodium vegetable broth (I love Epicure's broths, low sodium and delicious)
1 can diced tomatoes (low sodium if you can find it - Eden brand is good, homemade is better)
1/2t sea salt
1/2t pepper

I started by roasting my squash in the oven for about 1/2 hour till soft. Then I softened the onions and celery in the oil in a stock pot. I added the squash to the stock pot, as well as the broth, tomatoes, salt and pepper. I cooked it at a medium heat for about 10 minutes. Then I put the soup into the food processor and blended till smooth-ish. I garnished with a little Parmesan cheese. Makes about 6 servings at under 100 calories per serving. Delicious.

Onion biscuits (these are an Epicure recipe and I love them):
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 Tbsp baking powder
2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp pepper
1/2 cup cold butter, cubed
1 1/2 cups cold milk
2 Tbsp onion seasoning (Epicure's 3 onion dip mix is great)
2Tbsp melted butter (optional)

Mix the dry ingredients. Crumble the butter in by hand until mixture is course crumbs. Mix milk and onion seasoning together. Add to the dry ingredients and mix until clumpy. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead until dough holds together. Shape into an 8"square and cut into 16 squares. Put onto a parchment lined baking sheet (brush with melted butter if you want to). Bake for 15-18 minutes or until golden brown at 425 degrees.

**full disclosure - I forgot to take a picture of dinner so the soup in the picture is not mine, but it's pretty don't you think?