The Pumpkin

It's a wet Sunday morning and I'm pootling through the internet.

I started with "A Small Stone" and then got led off down various alleyways until I found "A Half-Remembered Life" and lingered to read about cauliflower soup, saunas, rabies vaccinations, Sweden and moose.

I'm supposed to be looking for recipes for pumpkin (not cauliflower) soup and pumpkin pie.

Tod went to see Monsieur M. who supplied us with our wood last winter. We need another load and at the end of a discussion that included visiting the pile of wood we are buying, Monsieur M. gave Tod a 16 kilo pumpkin. It sat on the table on the veranda for several days as I'd no idea what to do with it, but I've now decided it's the right weather for eating it.......

..... continuing on a wet and windy Monday afternoon

We attacked the pumpkin last night. The soup (including mild curry) was delicious. We used one segment of the pumpkin and that gave us enough for three helpings each. That left another nine segments to go. So today I've made my first ever, pumpkin pie, based on about four different recipes from the internet (the joys of broadband).

My pie-making needs a bit of fine-tuning. I should have puréed the pumpkin more thoroughly. The pie crust would be better baked blind first and perhaps a tad more sugar and ginger?

Still, there are another eight segments to practice on and several long-suffering friends on whom I can inflict the results. One of the pies will be for Monsieur M.