Permaculture Living

Here’s my rough recipe for pumpkin soup. It’s not quite a pure pumpkin soup as I prefer a slightly deeper flavour and thicker texture.

All quantities are approximate, feel free to change them to suit your own taste.

1/3 of a pumpkin
1/2 a sweet potato
One potato
1/2 an onion
Small knob of ginger
Olive oil

Peel and chop the pumpkin, sweet potato and potato.
Steam all the vegies until very soft.
In a large saucepan, fry half an onion in a small amount of olive oil until transparent.
Add the ginger and fry it gently until you smell the ginger aroma.
Add the steamed vegetables and the water from the bottom of the steamer to the saucepan.
If there’s not enough liquid, add more water.
Simmer the lumpy vegetable mixture until it breaks down to a more soup like texture.
Put in the blender and blend until smooth.
Put it back in the saucepan to stay warm. (Lower the temperature if you do this - it boils like lava at this stage. and can be messy).
Or serve immediately and eat with a dollop of yoghurt on top.

In the end, my fifteen metres of pumpkin vines produced one single, solitary pumpkin. At least it was a beautiful orange colour inside and absolutely delicious as pumpkin soup and roast pumpkin.

I love how the brand new pumpkins look before the flower opens.

Battles with the local possums continue. Not content with eating every tomato, chilli and capsicum plant within reach, they have moved onto the pumpkin vines.

Two of them have been returning to the pumpkin every week or so to test for ripeness. This was their last test - it’s now been fenced off.

I planted three Jap pumpkin vines in the middle of November. They’re six metres long with numerous sideshoots, are escaping up a tree and over the fence, and they finally have fruit. The first is three weeks old and huge already (notwithstanding taste tests by the local possums):

And the second has just appeared: