weirder and weirder and weirder

The latest Oliver shenanigans? I made toasted pumpkin seeds tonight, and he kept trying to eat them! I had to move the cookie sheet off the table and onto the kitchen counter to persuade him to bugger off!

Why did I make toasted pumpkin seeds, you ask? Well, because I cooked a pumpkin, and made . . .

CURRIED CREAM OF PUMPKIN SOUP

(by the way, I made up this recipe and the amounts are approximate, so bear with me)

1. Sweat one small onion, finely chopped, one small sweet potato, peeled and finely chopped, and 3 or 4 cloves of garlic depending on size, minced, in a good amount of extra virgin olive oil until soft.
2. Add a rounded teaspoonful of vegetable bouillon, a few good shakes each garam masala, curry powder, and ground ginger. Continue cooking for a minute or two to toast the spices.
3. Add about a cup and a half of water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and stir in just over 2 cups of cooked pie pumpkin. Continue simmering for about 15 minutes or so.
4. The soup should be very thick at this point, with bits of onion and sweet potato throughout. Puree the soup in 2 batches in your blender with about 3/4 of a cup of half and half, split between the batches. Salt and pepper to taste, then cool and chill if you aren't serving it right away. Garnish with toasted pumpkin seeds! YUM!

If you don't care for curry powder, omit that and the garam masala, and use pumpkin pie spice instead. The soup would also be good with a bunch of slivered fresh sage sauteed at the beginning with the onion, but the sage would have fought with the curry, so I left sage out. This time.

And I have a bunch of cooked pumpkin left yet, so I plan on making mini pumpkin pies SANS crust sometime soon. (AKA, pumpkin custards.) Perhaps yet tonight. We'll see how ambitious I'm feeling.