Soup Weather

Well our long, hot, dry summer appears to be well and truly over. This past week has been wet, wet and wet! The temps are dropping, it was only 19C here today - still not actually cold I know but well cooler that we've been used to for some time. No, we haven't lit the fire yet but I can feel it coming! However the urge to eat hearty warming meals has well and truly taken hold and as I had a huge chunk of pumpkin I figured some soup would go down a treat. Well, with everyone except Miss Fussy Bum, aka Offspring #2. Honestly, that child does my head in. Her brother has always been a fantastic eater - as a wee one the only things he really refused to eat were lettuce (odd, I know) broccoli and cabbage. And since he ate everything else and I totally agreed with him on the cabbage I just counted my blessings and got on with feeding him up. #2 is an entirely different story. She'd happily eat the same things every single day - weetbix for breakfast; banana, sultanas and crackers for morning tea; polony and sauce sandwich for lunch; pear or watermelon for afternoon tea; sausages with tomato sauce and a token smattering of raw chopped carrots, cucumber and cheese for dinner. Unless spaghetti bolognaise is on offer. She'll take that over just about anything. I do try to introduce new foods but she turns up her nose and declares them to be 'ewwwwww' without even trying them. I insist she try one bite, get her to try with something else (for example putting a pea with some mashed potato) and still I get the 'ewww'. Doing. My. Head. In.

Anyway, back to the point of the post. Pumpkin soup. Yummy, creamy, warm, filling pumpkin soup. Delicious.

I'd seen a friends facebook status saying that she had pumpkin soup in the slow cooker and I was a little puzzled. I mean, come on. It's not hard to make and it doesn't take long to cook so why on earth would you put it in the slow cooker? Then I bought a new slow cooker book that I'm just a little bit in love with and it had pumpkin soup in it so I thought I'd give it a go. Look, the soup was delicious but so is my usual recipe. I can't really see the advantage to using the slow cooker to make it - I still had to chop everything up for the pot and then get the stab mixer (bamix, whatever you call it) out to puree it but I can see it might be good on a day that you're busy in the garden or, for us at swimming lessons after school, where you can pop it on, go do what needs to be done and then come back to it some hours later. Anyway, if you're interested in trying it out, here it is. And for the record, Hubby #1 and I loved it and #2 had a peanut butter sandwich because I got sick of arguing with her.

Pumpkin Soup

From Slow Cooker, Easy and delicious recipes for all seasons by Sally Wise

Serves 4

750g dark fleshed pumpkin, such as Jap or Butternut

1 onion

1 1/2 cups stock, or water with 3 teaspoons vegetable stock powder

1/2 cup cream

1/2 cup grated tasty cheese (I forgot to add this, but we didn't miss it)

Peel the pumpkin and cut into 2cm squares. Peel and dice the onion. Place in the slow cooker with the stock. Stir to combine

Place the lit on the cooker and cook for 4 hours on High or 8 hours on Low (I did it on High and it took about 3 hours, I also added more water to thin it out at bit at the end).

At the end of the cooking time, puree and stir through the cream and grated cheese. Add salt and pepper to taste.