Roasted Pumpkin Soup

Pumpkin slaughtering. That was our Monday night. Did you know you can buy a pretty big pumpkin at Key Foods for under $5. I know, right? We gutted this pumpkin, roasted the seeds, knifed it into sections, peeled the outside skin, chopped those into bits. Roasted the bits. I sort of felt like we were hunters tearing apart our prey. I liked it.

For those non-New York City readers, yesterday was cold. That morning as I was getting ready for work I heard a hissing sound I could not identify and it began to drive me crazy. Eventually I realized it was the building's heat being turned on for the first time this season. I decidedI should probably take out the air conditioner.

This is how we look when we have food in our mouths.

You are encouraged to mimic our Autumn harvest. It was pretty awesome. We drank pumpkin special beers. We snacked on roasted pumpkin seeds, crackers with homemade baba ganoush, pesto with hazelnuts (recipes below), and St. Andre cheese.

Then the soup was ready. New soup record with the sheer amount of soup we made. A big pumpkin goes far. And Alayna and I like to cook as if we had 10 sons coming home from war.
Whatever, I was pumped to have a full pickle jar of pumpkin soup to schelp 30 blocks home with me. So many lunches!

P.S. This soup was under $10, and it made what? 20 servings? Souper cheap, souper tasty.

Roasted Pumpkin Soup!

• take one medium-sized pumpkin (as in, not more than 5-6 pounds, because that's a lot of pumpkin! like, enough for 6-8 people), wash the outside, take out the seeds and set them aside in a colander.
• OPTIONAL: Rinse off the seeds and put them on a cookie sheet with some olive oil, salt and pepper... cook at about 350 and take out before they burn (we burned ours, so I don't have a time estimate)... you can snack on these or just put them on your soup
• Peel the pumpkin with a vegetable peeler (we found peeling it in pieces easier) and cube, placing pieces in a brownie pan with a little olive oil, salt and pepper. Cover with tinfoil and pop into the oven for about 30 minutes at 400 degrees (should be easy to fork through when they're done)

• Saute garlic, raw ginger, half a white onion, a handful of fresh sage leafs and 3-4 large carrots until carrots are getting soft. Add the pumpkin and some vegetable broth
• Blend and serve!

Pretty Pesto!

• buy a bunch of fresh basil for no reason other than it's pretty
• toast about two handfuls of hazelnuts (or walnuts) in a frying pan with no oil on low heat, stirring occasionally
• almost fill your food processor with basil leaves, then add 3-4 cloves of garlic, about half a cup of parmesean cheese (or just the amount you had left), the toasted nuts, some salt and pepper and a generous pouring of olive oil
• taste and adjust... for more saucy pesto add more olive oil, if serving as a dip, maybe a little less
• serve with crackers or use as a marinade, in soup, etc etc... keeps for a while in a well sealed container and can be frozen!