I was sad to miss yoga last night because of a late dinner, but it was worth the wait, and almost worth missing yoga.  Ryan decided he wanted to use our uncarved Halloween pumpkin for soup (can you believe we were too busy to carve one this year?!)  He got going late on the soup because we realized that you really shouldn’t use the big carving pumpkins for cooking, you should use the smaller sugar pumpkins.  Luckily they had them at Big Y.  The soup took some preparation and made a lot of dishes, but it was well worth it. It was creamy and smooth.  We served it with store bought crescent rolls.  I’m looking forward to eating it for days to come.

Spicy Pumpkin Soup

Method

1 Melt butter in a 4-quart saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onions and garlic and cook, stirring often, until softened, about 4 minutes. Add spices and stir for a minute more.

2 Add pumpkin and 5 cups of chicken broth; blend well. Bring to a boil and reduce heat, simmer for 10 to 15 minutes.

3 Transfer soup, in batches, to a blender or food processor. Cover tightly and blend until smooth. Return soup to saucepan.

4 With the soup on low heat, add brown sugar and mix. Slowly add milk while stirring to incorporate. Add cream. Adjust seasonings to taste. If a little too spicy, add more cream to cool it down. You might want to add a teaspoon of salt.

Serve in individual bowls. Sprinkle the top of each with toasted pumpkin seeds.

Serves 8.

*To make pumpkin purée, cut a sugar pumpkin in half, scoop out the seeds and stringy stuff, lie face down on a tin-foil lined baking pan. Bake at 350°F until soft, about 45 min to an hour. Cool, scoop out the flesh. Freeze whatever you don’t use for future use.