Pumpkin-Carrot Soup

October 30th, 1st snow day of the '12-'13 school year.  It feels so wrong to have a snow day before Halloween and while the leaves are still colorful. 

Not that I'm really complaining about having a day off...but still.  It's weird.  

Of course I needed to play in the kitchen to kill some time today.  I have to work at the bakery at 3:30, but other than that my day was wide open.  

I decided to do some surgery on my jack-o-lantern and make pumpkin soup.  

Here you can see the difference between a section that had surgery and one that didn't.  I ended up cutting out 2 cups worth of pumpkin chunks.  Could have gotten a lot more but I didn't want to spend all day dissecting the pumpkin.  

PUMPKIN-CARROT SOUP

2 heaping cups of chopped pumpkin

3 large carrots, chopped

1/3 onion, chopped

3 large stalks of celery, chopped

4 radishes, chopped

1 tbsp bacon grease

olive oil

1 tbsp mustard powder

8 cloves garlic, minced

1 inch ginger root, minced

2 1/2 c water

1 c chicken broth

salt

1/2 c quinoa

Steam the pumpkin and carrots with the bacon grease, some olive oil, and a dash of salt.   When the pumpkin/carrots starts to cook down and stick to the pot, add the chicken broth, mustard powder, ginger, and garlic. When the veggies get really soft, mash them with a potato masher.  Cook some more, then remove from heat and put the mixture in a food processor, then return to the pot and heat.

Cook the onions in some olive oil in a separate pan. When the onions have browned nicely, add the celery and radishes to the pan with some more olive oil.  Let cook for awhile.  When the celery is soft, add to the pumpkin/carrot pot along with 1 c water.  Cook for awhile, add the rest of the water, and add the quinoa.  Cook til the quinoa is done.  

Tuna-Cucumber-Gouda Melt & Pumpkin-Carrot Soup