Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Confessions of a pumpkin hoarder

I'm so happy you found time to stop by today. Maybe this means you're not responsible for the entire Thanksgiving feast tomorrow? If you are, my thoughts and prayers are with you. I will be heading down to the neighbor's with a few loaves of artisan bread and my latest greatest soup.

I found the soup recipe on Tasty Kitchen last winter, and it is so easy, delicious, comforting, elegant ... ok I'll stop now... because I could go on and on and on about how wonderful this soup is. Here's the link to the recipe. It's called Velvet Pumpkin Soup. I won't bore you with step-by-step pictures and instructions. Basically, you sauté some onions in a pot, add a few spices, dump in some chicken stock, canned pumpkin, and evaporated milk, and you're done. The key to the soup, as far as I'm concerned anyway, is the velvety texture. The recipe says you can puree it in a blender in batches, or not. I've tried it pureed and I've tried it chunky – pureed is the definitely the way to go, except for the getting-the-blender dirty part, when you have to clean the blender and all the vessels and utensils you've dirtied transferring the soup from the pot to the blender and back again. Anyway, I made this soup so often last winter that I decided it was high time to buy one of these:

An immersion blender. I am normally not a gadget person, but this thing has become more of a necessity in my kitchen than a gadget. I may never use my regular blender again. Why disassemble, clean, and reassemble a blender when you can just eject the end of this thing and rinse it off?

I haven't used it to blend margaritas, only because I never thought of it until just now, but I'll bet it would do the trick. It might even mash potatoes. Heck, you could probably stir paint with it if you washed it off real good.

But getting back to the soup recipe... I learned a very important lesson last winter once I started making it, and I learned it the hard way. Grocery stores do not stock the main ingredient (canned pumpkin) year round. It is only available from about October through January. After that, you cannot find it on the shelves - at least in New Mexico, you can't. So if you do make this soup and fall in love with it (and I'm betting you will), start stocking up now.

A girl can never have too much land or too much pumpkin in her pantry. And you can quote me on that.

24 comments:

  1. Ha ... love the cans of pumpkin lined up! I guess you can't have too much pumpkin in your pantry!!

    The soup sounds wonderful and we're pumpkin lovers here, so will have to give it a try, and we're lucky in that pumpkin is sold around here year round.

    ReplyDelete
  2. i hope by "spices" you include ginger. that's the best way to season pumpkin soup.

    in germany, canned pumpkin is not available at ANY time of the year. if you want pumpkin, you have to buy one and start cutting (what i learned to do this year, i was craving pumpkin soup so badly).

    did you have to include a picture of all your libby cans?! mean!

    ReplyDelete
  3. i am a gadget kind of girl and can tell you that stick blender wont do well in ice...a magic bullet will however LOL!~
    i keep pumpkin around too but for a much sweeter reason... pumpkin cake that a friend taught me to make ... oh my...
    and yes i have to cook it all... but thats ok i am very organised and with a little cheesecake baking and cornbread baking today ... tomorrow will be a breeze...thank you rotesserie and crock pots! :) yeah i love gadgets!
    Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours~

    ReplyDelete
  4. Soup sounds wonderful.

    For once, I'm not responsible for the whole feast either. I will show up with pies and a fantastic sweet and savory potato casserole. It has bacon in it, which according to Emeril (who calls immersion blenders boat motors) would taste good on the bumper of a bus.

    I actually cooked a pumpkin several weeks ago, so my pies will be totally from scratch. That's my day today.

    Happy Thanksgiving!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sounds like a delicious soup. I just made some pumpkin cheese cake for tomorrow. So I'm stocked up on the Libby's pumpkin in a can. I don't recall seeing it around here either after the holidays. Enjoy your meal tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Those blenders are great, what would you do without em?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hello, my name is Justina and I'm a pumpkin hoarder. :)

    Your soup was DE-LISH! We can't wait to make it now that we have the recipe.

    ReplyDelete
  8. YUM! I'm going to give that one a swirl!

    But first, gotta get that mixer thing...

    ReplyDelete
  9. I guess the one good thing about living in WI in winter is that we can get canned pumpkin year around.

    I'd be happy to do emergency shipping to NM if you get desperate!

    Happy Thanksgiving to the entire 7MSN crew!

    ReplyDelete
  10. I'll admit it...I, too, am a pumpkin ho....would love to be a land ho, too!

    ReplyDelete
  11. I posted a blog a while back about the mess I made while making butternut squash soup. A friend told me to get one of those immerssion blenders. Now I've seen two recommendations for it. I'm getting it right after Thanksgiving. I've found pumpkin year round at whole foods. Only place I could find it too. I keep it on hand to mix with my older dogs food. She has issues...pumpkin has fiber ;)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Sounds like pumpkin pie in a bowl. One word of caution re: the cans of pumpkin from one who has made this mistake - make sure you're buying plain pumpkin and not pumpkin pie filling. Biiiig difference.

    Happy Thanksgiving, Linda, to you and your entire herd!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Generally we can get Libby's canned pumpkin year round, but last year because of the bad weather there was a severe shortage and we had to buy the expensive organic canned pumpkin. Not for us - we add it to the dog's food for bulk. Dogs love pumpkin.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I'm wondering just how far it is to the neighbors, since your mailbox is like 3 miles away! :)

    Miss Chef has saved many a clumpy sauce with our stick blender! In fact, I used it just a few weeks ago to save my mint jelly before I canned it. Yours looks like a nicer version than ours; I'll bet you could whip up some burro treats with that.

    Libby, Libby, Libby on the shelf, shelf, shelf. Is there any other brand of pumpkin out there??

    ReplyDelete
  15. Sounds delish! I'm going to try it. The winter farmer's market still has pumpkins, but I've never cooked with fresh ones. The can idea sounds perfect.

    And this is pumpkin related. You've got to see the most wonderful video - Big Cat Halloween on YouTube. Turn up the sound -- great music, too.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcT4paZfflg&feature=related

    Happy Thanksgiving!

    ReplyDelete
  16. I'm a pumpkin hoarder, too. Can't get enough. I have the seasonal pumpkin coffee flavoring frozen in the freezer.

    This soup looks like a must try!

    ReplyDelete
  17. that sounds like a really good recipe and the blender looks like fun. I make my own pumpkin and freeze it so I have it all year round, although Im pretty sure it can be bought all year around here too.

    ReplyDelete
  18. I like the look of that blender - might have to get me one of those....And yes - I'm doing it all. I'm hoping my children will take over one day.... like tomorrow! Happy Thanksgiving Carson.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Our stick blender is an antique - it is the only item we ever bought from an infomercial that actually works. I've tried mashing potatoes with it but in my opinion they turn out like paste. A hand mixer (another gadget!) works better if you want to get out all the lumps.

    ReplyDelete
  20. You are right about the pumpkin - I still remember standing in the middle of the grocery store last year with my mouth hanging open in disbelief when the manager explained that they don't have pumpkin except 'in season'!

    My BFF was just explaining how important her immersion blender is to her. She uses hers just about every day. Hmmmm, Christmas is coming, right?!

    ReplyDelete
  21. of course I'm reading your blog....even if I were responsible for the feast.....

    Happy Thanksgiving to you and the MSN crew....hugs and scratches to all!

    ReplyDelete
  22. I'll have to try this recipe. Hope you have a great Thanksgiving.

    ReplyDelete
  23. I not only learned to make pumpkin soup, but that pumpkin is good for dogs also!

    Happy Thanksgiving to all! It's been 85 degrees here for the past few days, but is supposed to drop about 50 degrees tomorrow....It will be soup weather.

    ReplyDelete
  24. The soup sounds heavenly and margueritas good too.

    Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

    ReplyDelete