Creamy Soup Surprise 
Remember that easy butternut squash chili recipe? It was so GOOD! I made it again the other day, but this time I tried cooking it in the slow cooker. I don't know what I was thinkin'! It's already a quick and easy recipe. The slow cooker was too much. The flavors were still intense and delicious, the texture was too mushy. I thought, "It would be better pureed." (Light bulb above my head)
Overcooked veggies, "Say hello to my little friend!"
I used my new favorite kitchen toy to blend my over cooked chili into a smooth, creamy soup. That's right, I wrote T-O-Y.
It made a world of difference and I was able to enjoy it a whole different way. It took adding a little chicken stock to give it a soupy consistency. Topping it with crumbled goat cheese and pepper flakes really helped it along.
The point of all this is to say, consider pureeing (sp?) your veggies into soups to help save a meal or turn leftover roasted veggies into creamy soups. You don't have to have a immersion blender to do it. A traditional blender will work just fine.
Do you have an immersion hand blender ? What recipes do you make just so you can use it?
I DO have one; I gave it to myself for Christmas. But I haven’t used it yet. I’ve been looking for recipes. Now, I see that a happy accident like yours should have me looking ‘out of the box’ to find recipes to puree!
I used it to puree the onions & garlic in the Creamy Penne Pasta and Chicken recipe, and I’ve made mayonnaise (that was fun!)
The only complaint I have about it; it does the job too fast and efficiently.
After 20-30 seconds of blending something to perfection, it’s over.
I start looking around the kitchen trying to find something else to blend.
Making smoothies are next on the experiments list.