Light up the sky

and a recipe for kale, bean and squash soup made for cozy days

Welcome! I’m Elizabeth, writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch. It‘s a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

keep the lights on

idiom

to make sure that a business, system, etc. continues to operate, even if it does not make much progress:

The company is just trying to keep the lights on until sales go up again.

He stayed late most nights to keep the lights on for the rest of the team during the transition.

Have you been keeping the lights on or trying to light up the sky?

It’s a question that’s been humming around my mind, and as is usually the case, it’s one fed by a conversation, a discovery, an idea, or a problem I’m trying to solve. As things percolate, the random threads start to weave into a whole until I can see a pattern—and a eureka moment emerges.

Like so many things I write about here, the germ of the theme is not an original one, nor can I lay the inspiration at the feet of one particular moment. But like all important ideas, there’s a kernel of truth at its heart that starts shining like a beacon, too insistent to be ignored.

Seeds of inspiration

It was at that time that Mrs. Hoggett began to worry about her husband. But Farmer Hoggett knew that little ideas that tickled and nagged and refused to go away should never be ignored. For in them lie the seeds of destiny.

— Babe (1995)

Photo: Getty Images

Before we can light up the sky, we have to notice what’s taking root and ease out of the patterns we fall into by habit.

This may be a time to listen to our own tiny voices. Not your big bossy inner voice. We all know that one too well. You know, the one that doesn’t like your hair today, or thinks that was a really stupid thing to say, or is worried about what other people think. Give her the day off too.

Shhh…

There is an even tinier voice inside. It’s very polite. It doesn’t shout or stamp its feet to get attention. In fact, it often doesn’t speak at all. It’s a busy gardener, sowing miniature seeds of inspiration, protecting them from too much criticism or not enough attention.

But it’s also a little sneaky, a little mischievous. Those little sprouts are not going to be so obvious at first. Be careful not to mistake them for weeds and yank them out too quickly. Because that’s where the real beginnings take root.

Those tiny seeds become the ideas that let you light up the sky.

A glorious sunrise over the Indian Ocean

If you enjoy these missives—and I hope you do—tap the heart, share, or comment to help new readers find their way here

To explore some of the inspiration around these ideas, check out:

Rebecca Blackwell and her post about when we should just pick up the matches and light the fire of transformation.

Let's just burn it to the ground

Elizabeth Kleinfeld’s simple and profound idea to extract the seeds from your own musings with intention.

Barbara Ellen McMahon’s beautiful post about the joyful challenge of listening deeply enough to let another person’s words change your mind.

Humility and Looking

And a special shout-out to my friend Angela Carmichael, who first talked about lighting up the sky instead of just keeping the lights on; someone I can talk to for hours about everything and nothing, savouring every morsel and emerging all the richer for it 💕

Kale, bean and squash minestrone

Farm to Chef, Lynn Crawford

serves 6 to 8

Cooking requires different levels of concentration. Make a meringue, a roux, or turn sugar into caramel, and the slightest distraction can take you from fluffy peaks, a perfectly blond roux, or a rich caramel to disaster in an instant.

But soup, glorious soup, is both a deeply satisfying endeavor and a daydreaming kind of exercise. You can be dicing onions, cubing squash, trimming kale, grating cheese without exactitude. A bit more or less, slightly different sizes and shapes, an errant stem—none make an appreciable difference to the end result.

And even if you’re fussier than I am about the uniformity of things, it all ends up in one bountiful pot, bubbling merrily away and all that matters in the end is that dinner’s ready for tonight and in the freezer for some time in the future.

In the meantime, I can be watering the sprouts of my thoughts, transplanting them, giving them room to reach their full potential. They may not all survive, but I know they’ll be fodder for even more new ideas and inspiration some day soon.

Note:

• This soup is plenty hearty; you can give it even more heft with the addition of cooked grains.

• Honeynut squash is a small, sweet winter squash, with a rich sweet taste creamy texture, and edible skin. It is often described as a miniature version of the butternut, but with a richer, sweeter taste and deeper orange flesh that is less stringy than butternut

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 cups chopped leeks, white and light green parts only

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 garlic clove, minced

3 cups diced peeled honeynut or butternut squash (see note)

4 cups packed stemmed and chopped kale

2 big sprigs rosemary

6 cups chicken or vegetable stock

1 can (19 ounces/540 mL) white kidney beans, drained and rinsed

2 cups cooked quinoa or farro (optional—see note)

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley

1. In a large saucepan over medium heat, heat oil. Add leeks and salt and cook until translucent, about 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Add garlic and cook for 1 minute more.

2. Add squash, kale, rosemary and stock and bring to a boil. Lower to simmer and cook until the squash is tender, about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

3. Remove rosemary sprigs. Add beans and continue to simmer until beans are heated through. If using grains, add them here.

4. Ladle soup into bowls. Sprinkle with Parmesan and parsley and serve.