Pumpkin soup!

It's officially fall! So I wanted pumpkin soup. I used to make this all winter long with whatever winter squash I had when I was eating strictly seasonal, and I've missed it. So when it was my turn to cook dinner, I knew I wanted this and only this. 

Here's how I made it:

1. Mince up and sautée one onion until as soft as it'll go. Caramelizarion is good.

2. Mince and add some cloves of garlic.

3. Peel, mince and add one carrot and one sweet potato. It might've gone faster if I'd nuked the sweet potato first; those suckers take forever to boil soft!

4. Sautée all of that. Caramelize it some.

5. Seed, peel, and chop up a pumpkin. This one was a wee tiny pie pumpkin, about the size of my face. Only a few ponds. Throw those chunks in the sautée.

6. Add broth. I had a can of chicken and some dried broth base, so I used both; you could easily make it vegetarian by using veggie broth here. 

7. Season! I used salt, pepper, two shakes of cinnamon, sesame seeds, and bay leaves. Pumpkin goes good with savory and sweet spices, and cinnamon goes great with garlic and onions--it makes sort of a really simple curry-type seasonal flavor.

8. Boil the crap out of it! The pumpkin will break down first, and will be almost natural purée by the time the sweet potatoes are mushy-soft. 

9. Smooth out the purée. If you have an immersion blender, this is a great time for that. I don't have one (I want one so bad!), so I mushed it through a sieve until I got it about 75% smooth.

10. Finish with milk and butter until it's smooth! Eat warm and delicious! Use butter and unflavored nutmilk if doing veggie. I bet this would be delicious with almond milk.

I topped it with the pepitas, made so:

1. Remove all the pulp from the seeds. You can throw that into the soup, too, but it's stringy; you'll have to cook it longer and blend it better.

2. Rinse them real well.

3. Put them on a cookie sheet with a little oil of choice and salt. You can do seasonings, too, but I like the pure pumpkin seed flavor, and salt doesn't burn like seasonings can.

4. Cook at 400, stirring it every now and again, until they're toasty and crispy when you bite into them. 

Go forth and make Fall!