Image from allaboutpumpkins.com
It’s getting cold. We are nearing the end of Autumn and my eternally icy hands and feet are fearing the colder days to come. I’m not sure what I’m complaining about because, in truth, the winters are fairly mild where I come from. Much to my disappointment, but to the delight of my extremities, we don’t have the opportunity to make snow angels or snowmen. I’m pretty sure if we did I’d be one of those people who would have to put the carrot somewhere other than the snowman’s face…
In truth, it’s just a tad chilly here and I spend most nights with my feet stuffed into giant socks and the covers up around my forehead. We tend to have a nightly debate about how far the covers should come up the bed to avoid giant ice caverns created by my other half. It’s a debate I generally lose, but unbeknown to him I win as I am a master of stealth, i.e. I pull the covers up when he’s out of the room. Sneaky huh?
As a lover of all things food, and particularly anything that can be cooked long and slow, this is a very exciting time of year for me. Soup season! There is nothing quite so soothing and satisfying as a pot of soup bubbling away on the stove. I think half of the satisfaction comes from knowing how many vegetables have been packed into each serving. I guess the other half comes from pulverising the whole thing with my stick mixer, although there is a soup and a place for doing this.
In light of my quest for contentment, I have decided that cooking is something that I will be doing more often, so I have decided to soup up my saucepan. And no, that doesn’t mean affixing a spoiler or go-faster-stripes to the side.
There is something very therapeutic about making soup, or any slow cooked meals for that matter. The act of preparing, stirring, simmering, and of course eating, is difficult to beat. So today I whipped up (literally, with my stick mixer of course) a batch of the old faithful pumpkin soup. I add a little twist to mine with some spices which gives a healthy zing to the taste buds. The end result was a glorious, golden pot of deliciousness which I have to say tasted marvelous, in fact if I was still ten years old I would have been saying “yum, yum, pigs bum”. The best part was not only did my soul get a big, soupy cuddle, my hands got to forget, albeit only for a moment, that winter is on its way.
feeling chipper 