Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Pumpkin soup

We bought a couple of large pumpkins for a pumpkin carving party a few weeks ago, but I'm not actually a fan of carving pumpkins (I'm more at risk of carving myself up than any fruit) so I decided that I would turn ours into food. Since I bought the pumpkin at $.59/pound, I think it's a pretty good deal.
I spent a decent amount of time Sunday morning carving and roasting it. (And by a decent amount of time I mean it spread over hours, but the actual time involved was minimal because once it was in the oven I could go do other things.) For weeks, Shane has been hoping to make a pumpkin spice beer of his own. As a wedding gift, one of our friends (who knows how much Shane has enjoyed making beer) gave us a gift certificate to the local supply store so Shane got the other ingredients pretty much for free. The recipe called for 6-10 pounds of pumpkin, but the one I'd bought was roughly 25 pounds so that was easy enough. We spent several hours together working on this, and even I (who doesn't like the taste of beer) am looking forward to tasting this in a few weeks.
I also roasted the seeds that night. I wanted something sweeter rather than the usual spice (especially since we didn't have a lot of the spices on hand!) so I just mixed in some butter, honey, nutmeg, and cinnamon. I burnt them a little, but it was my first time ever roasting pumpkin seeds so I cut myself some slack.
The rest of the flesh went two places: either into the freezer for future use (like cream cheese pumpkin bread!) and some of it went directly into the pot for last night's dinner. (And today's lunch! Yum.) I've never tried pumpkin soup before, but I really like the recipe I found. In addition to the good taste, it was super easy, making it a keeper. I didn't use a sugar pumpkin, substituted whole milk for cream, and thyme for sage (we're out, darn it!) but it was overall a great recipe. The only other change I made was to add one whole onion. Shane can't stand the texture of pureed soups ("It's like eating baby food!"), so I sweated some onions while I was blending the rest (the only reason I used the stand blender instead of an immersion blender) so that it would have some nice chunks in it. Shane said that it helped. Lastly, don't scrimp on the sour cream. It really adds a lot.
Trying to get in shape again after being sick for so long (my cough is finally starting to go away after four weeks!) sucks, by the way. I'm sore everywhere.

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