The Great Pumpkin!

I know it's fun for most to choose a pumpkin for their door step or to carve but this weekend I chose one so I could roast those seeds and eat that soup!

To roast seeds:

Remove from your pumpkin and pick all the pulp off. DO NOT RINSE! The little bit will bake off and helps the flavor stick.

Rinsing makes them slimey. Yuk. 

You can pat dry with paper towel or let sit out to dry for an hour.

Preheat oven to 275. Low and slow!

In a shallow roasting pan, spread seeds single layer. 

For seasoning:

1/4c butter melted

1tbsp Worchestershire sauce

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp onion powder

1/4 tsp salt

Dash of paprika

Dash of cumin

Pour over seeds and stir 

Roast 20 min and stir/ rotate pan.

Do this for 2 hours and check that they should be crunchy not chewy!

If they are, go extra 20 min until crunchy.

Cool before eating.

For Soup:

Cut up that pumpkin to large bite size pieces without skin (throw that to your squirrels!)

Toss in olive oil, salt and pepper and roast for 45 mi. At 375. 

Hint: you can also just roast it and eat it like that if you're not making soup... It's delicious!

Meanwhile in a large pot, add 3tbsp butter and a drizzle of olive oil and sauté one whole diced onion 2 cloves minced garlic, 1 tsp fresh grated ginger ( or 1/2 tsp ginger powder if you don't have that )and 3 stalks of celery until soft and slightly browning. Add carton of chicken stalk ( about 4 cups) and simmer until pumpkin ready. 

In a blender, carefully pour broth mix into blender and add pumpkin. 

Purée until smooth and return to pot but not back to boil. Add 1/4 c of light cream and stir thoroughly. 

Add salt and pepper to taste 

Serve.

I like to also put a dash of cayenne pepper to spice it up but you can experiment by adding it to just one bowl to taste in case others don't like spicy!