Adventures in cooking: The Pumpkin

November 9, 2011 at 2:19 pm (A day in the life of..., blah blah, chatter)

Before

In a last ditch attempt to drop a few pounds before gaining an obscene amount of weight during the holidays, I purchased a vegetarian cookbook. Now, I do realize that vegetarianism isn’t necessarily a diet, but seeing as my meals have consisted fairly steadily of fried schnitzel and bratwurst since moving to Germany, I can honestly say that learning how to cook vegetables in an interesting, and hopefully palatable, fashion will without a doubt in my mind, do wonders for the figure. That is, if I can manage to delete the word ‘chocolate’ from my vocabulary.

Coincidentally, I found a cooking pumpkin in my kitchen last week(see: strange things I find after a kids Halloween party). So pumpkin it is.

First recipe: Soup

The recipe calls for an onion, a couple potatoes, noodles and garlic and 3 litres of vegetable broth. First step: Saute onions and garlic in olive oil and butter before adding the rest… Honestly, I was a little surprised, mostly for its lack of cinnamon and spice. I think I always imagined pumpkin soup like a liquid version of pumpkin pie.

In a typical me move, I wasn’t thinking at all about what I was actually doing-making soup-and added the noodles too early, and wound up having to decide between chunky pumpkin soup, or pumpkin/noodle puree -_-

I went for the chunks.

After

It smelled fantastic while simmering, but the ultimate test was the world’s two pickiest eaters, and – VICTORY! The oldest damn near drooled when I lifted the pot lid, and the youngest only ate the pumpkin-of course, she still refuses to believe they aren’t carrots. Will definitely be doing this one again.

I still have half a pumpkin-I’m thinking pumpkin cheesecake.

That’s low-cal, right?