Quintessential Fall

One of my favorite signs of fall: pumpkin curry soup. We had little to no success with pumpkins in the garden this year so I purchased some from the local health food coop. This afternoon we "gutted" them by scooping out the seeds. I quartered the pumpkins, put them flesh-side down on cookie sheets and roasted them til they were soft. We scraped out the roasted pumpkin, ran it through the blender and put most of the puree into jars to pressure can. The kids made pumpkin pecan cookies with last year's remaining jar. What puree didn't fit into the canner went into the soup pot. Here are two YUMMY recipes:

Pumpkin Spice Cookies

Cream: 2 cups succanat(or brown sugar)
1 cup butter
2 eggs

Add to mixture:
2 cups pumpkin puree
3 cups freshly milled flour(or a mixture of unbleached flour and wheat germ)
2tsp.baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1tsp. allspice
1tsp cinnamon
1tsp nutmeg
1/2tspcloves
1cup pecans

Bake375 degrees for 15 min or til firm. Have plenty of cold milk or hot coffee handy. Watch them magically disappear!

Curried Pumpkin Soup

Saute chopped up onions and garlic with butter. When onions are tender, add several teaspoons of a good curry powder, and or some cumin. Put cubed pumpkin or canned pumpkin in pot, cover pumpkin with chicken broth or water and simmer. Use a hand held blender or standard blender and CAREFULLY puree. Salt and pepper to taste. Add enough cream, or half and half. yogurt or sour cream to make the soup nice and silky. Sometimes I add an apple with the pumpkin, or even some apple jelly to give a little more flavor. If you want to get really fancy, toast some pecans in a pan with butter and salt. Sprinkle on top of soup. If you want to get even fancier, skip the curry powder, make the soup with sage and fry up fresh sage leaves in butter, and sprinkle those and some pecans and crumbled chevre on top.


Don't forget to toast your pumpkin seeds in the oven! Wash the stringy stuff off them, put on a cookie sheet with plenty of olive oil and sea salt and toast in a hot oven til crispy. I don't know for how long. Just pay attention!

PS It has rained today. I have been happy to see puddles. The pond looks much better. The chickens are a bit scraggly as they scratch in the mud, but I think they like the worms. Philip, Thomas and Maggie took Victor, the daddy goat home today. They did some chores over at his house to barter for his services. We are glad he got to visit and hope to meet the fruit of his labors come March and April. Priscilla, the heifer, is at the farm next door, visiting a bull. She will come home soon. We have missed her playful self. Hopefully next summer she will be a mama cow. The dogs are sleeping in the house these days because it is hunting season. We don't want them to anger the hunting neighbors by barking and scaring off the deer. Will have to report on the rest of the animals later. Better check on that canner full of jars of pumpkin.