Monday 5 October 2009

A Warming Autumn Soup




Spicy Pumpkin Soup!

Ingredients – what we need
  • 1 medium Pumpkin or
  • 1 large butternut squash
  • 1 onion
  • 2 carrots
  • 1 large sweet potato
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • 6cm of root ginger
  • chicken stock cube
  • cream
  • 20g butter
  • salt and ground black pepper
Method - how we make it!


  • Cut your pumpkin into quarters, remove all the soft inside and the pumpkin seeds (you can keep these to eat later or keep them for the birds!). Peel and chop the orange flesh into small cubes, ready for cooking


Prepare your pumpkin very carefully as sharp knives can easily slip on the thick skin

  • Peel and chop the onion,the ginger and the garlic, and fry in a little butter in the bottom of a large saucepan until soft

  • Peel the sweet potato and carrots, chop into small chunks and add to the saucepan together with your prepared pumpkin pieces

  • Add about a litre of chicken stock (enough to cover the vegetables) and bring to the boil. Once boiling, turn down the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes, until all the vegetables are cooked and soft

  • Allow to cool a little and then blend using an electric blender (or a potato masher) until smooth. Season with salt and pepper and swirl in a little cream before serving with warmed crusty bread!

Mmm... This is great on a cold winter nights, especially by the bonfire!!

Friday 2 October 2009

Summer at the Pumpkin Patch



These were some of last years pumpkins and squashes. I've just started to pick some of this years crop of weird and interesting gourds! This week at our weekly classes we'll be making spicy pumpkin soup which was a great hit with the children last year. It's even better served out of a hollowed out pumpkin with lovely crusty bread... Mmmm

We're not called 'The Pumpkin Patch' for nothing!! I simply adore to grow and eat them, though surprisingly I don't like Halloween. For me they simply sum up harvest time, the end of summer and the onset of autumn with warm afternoons - cold evenings and frosty mornings!!





This entry should obviously have come before the Autumn one, but I was eager to get something posted so I started with what I had... my Autumn Newsletter!
A friends cows in the orchard.. the cheapest way to keep the grass down! Now though we have our own little (I do mean little!!) flock of sheep. All three of them!




It wasn't a great summer, but we certainly had some fun at The Pumpkin Patch! Each Tuesday we met up and watered... (not that we needed to really!!) and weeded, and harvested our crops of beans and peas, lettuce, spring onions and radish, to name but a few.



By now we've dug up our delicious salad potatoes - you just can't beat Anya and Pink Fir Apple for taste and texture, they're heavenly just served with butter!They are so good in fact, that next year I've decided to grow even more of them... well, you can't buy them in the shops so I'll have to grow them! If anyone does know where you can get them, please let me know!