Curried Pumpkin Soup

For the last two years, I've heard about a supposed "pumpkin shortage."  So when I see pumpkin for cheap at the grocery store, I snatch it up to add to my stockpile.  $1 a can?  Don't mind if I do.

The only problem is, I now have a ton of pumpkin and my family (okay, my kids) tends to get tired of me doing all the baking in pumpkin flavors.  ("Yay! Mom made cookies!  Oh.  They're...pumpkin.  Nevermind.  Got any chocolate?")  I needed to find another way to use some of it.

My other inspiration for this recipe comes from me being cold and wanting soup for lunch today.  We typically have soup or chili or stew on the menu about once a week around here during the cold months.  I love it when we have homemade leftover soup for lunch.  Alas...I have not gone grocery shopping this week and our only leftovers to be had were the slices of fundraiser frozen pizza.  Nummay.  (Actually, not so much.  Fundraiser pizza is pretty gross and not worth the price or calories.  The things we do for our kids and their school's PTO.)

I was a tad nervous about trying a savory pumpkin recipe since I'm used to sweet pumpkin recipes.  I turned to my good friend Internet and looked up a few different recipes that sounded good.  I liked parts of some recipes, and ingredients in others.  Some batches made way too much soup and others were too high in calories.  So I took what I liked from the recipes and cobbled together my own:

Curried Pumpkin Soup

You will need: 

Not pictured?  The ginger or garlic, because I took the picture before I got them out of the fridge.  Also missing? Water.  But you know what that looks like.

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 medium onion (white or yellow), chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced or chopped
• 1 (14.5 oz.) can of chicken broth (can substitute veggie broth if you want a vegetarian soup)
• 1 (15 oz.) can of canned pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
• 1 cup water
• 1 tsp minced ginger (if you don't keep ginger on hand - I don't - get thee a jar of pre-minced ginger to keep in the fridge.  It's way better than ground ginger from the spice aisle but it's super convenient.)
• 1.5 tsp curry powder
• 1/4 tsp cumin
• a pinch of coriander (about 1/8 tsp, actually.  I just don't have a 1/8 teaspoon and eyeballed half of my 1/4 teaspoon.)
• a pinch of cayenne (same as the coriander - about 1/8 tsp)
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 tbsp half and half
• parsley (fresh or dried) for garnish

Heat your olive oil in a big saucepan over medium heat.  Add your chopped onions and garlic.  Saute until onions are tender and translucent.  Add the chicken broth, water, pumpkin, ginger, curry powder, cumin, coriander, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper.  Stir to combine well.  

Heat until soup comes to a low simmer.  You might want to taste it at this point and adjust spices accordingly, according to your preferences.  (If you don't like hot-spicy, I'd recommend not adding the full amount of cayenne in the beginning and adjust at this point.  At the amounts listed in the recipe, I don't think it's too spicy-hot, it's just right, but then again, I like spicy food.)  Once you've adjusted your spices and reached your low simmer, it's time to transfer the whole soup to a blender or food processor.  Behold, The Ninja:

Proof that I'm not a good blogger - a splotch of soup on my counter top.  Oh heavens!

I bought The Ninja Master Prep Pro a few weeks ago after that unfortunate hummus incident at the beginning of the month.  We love this thing.  The kids think it's awesome when I use it to make shaved ice for snow cones.  My husband uses it a couple of times a week for smoothies for breakfast.  I've used it for hummus twice and haven't killed it.  Not even close.  It's the best blender we've ever had.  I think it's less of a blender and more of a blender/food processor hybrid, but whatever.  It's awesome.  Anyhow...

Blend your soup until smooth.  There will probably be a few visible flecks of garlic or onion, but you just want an overall nice, even consistency.  (If pressed for time or clean blender - I've been there, believe me - you could skip this step altogether.  You'll just have onion chunks to contend with.) Pour your soup back into the original pan.  Add your half-and-half and stir to combine.

I always have half-and-half on hand because I like it in my coffee.  If you don't have half-and-half, you could use whole milk.  Coconut milk would be good too if you want the soup to be vegan or you avoid dairy.  Basically you want to add a touch of creaminess to the soup - it compliments the pumpkin and the spices nicely.  Heat the soup through if the milk-product-of-choice has cooled it significantly.  Ladle into bowls, garnish with parsley:

This recipe makes about 5.5 cups of soup.  I plugged the recipe into Livestrong to figure out calories and such - a 1 and 3/8 cup serving (about 1/4 of the recipe) clocks in at 102 calories.  I had about 1.5 cups in that bowl, which was 111 calories.  It's a little bit higher in fat than I would like (5 grams per serving), which would be a good reason to substitute a lower-fat option for the half-and-half if you're looking to reduce your fat intake.  I worked with what I had on hand, though.  Obviously, 100 calories of soup isn't going to keep you full for very long (though I did get filled up on this one bowl of soup, but I also tend to eat small lunches), so if you're making this for lunch, you might want to add in a small sandwich or salad.  As a starter course, this soup would be great.  

Overall - a warm, spicy soup perfect for fall.  I'll be making it again.

Pumpkin-Carrot Cookies

If you've spent any time on Pinterest, chances are you've seen this pin before:

The premise: mix a can of pumpkin and a box of cake mix and voila - easy pumpkin cake or muffins that are Weight Watcher friendly because they don't use extra oil or eggs so it keeps the calorie and fat count down.  I've made this recipe a number of times because it's just so easy and the results are satisfying, but friendly to those of us who are eating healthy.  My personal favorite is to mix the pumpkin with spice cake mix, but I've also done it with yellow cake mix.  I've made it into a cake with an apple cider glaze, I've made it into muffins, and I've made it into cookies.  

Yesterday at the grocery store, both pumpkin and carrot cake mix were on sale for cheap, so I knew I'd be making something along the pumpkin+cake mix lines.  I was also slightly hungry for something called "health food cake."  It's not really health food, but rather a concoction very similar to carrot cake but it has applesauce, raisins and nuts in it.  And then it's slathered in cream cheese frosting.  But I'm guessing that the fine ladies who started crafting these cakes for pot-lucks were like "Applesauce?  Healthy.  Raisins?  Healthy?  Nuts?  Healthy."  And it's super tasty, but all the non-healthy in the recipe sort of cancels out the healthy, you know?  

So a sale at the grocery store and a hankering for a non-healthy health food cake were the inspiration behind today's recipe:

You will need: 

* One box of carrot cake mix

* One can of canned pumpkin

* 1/2 cup raisins

* 1/2 cup walnuts (though judging from my picture, it looks like I'm adding a 1/2 cup of English.  I started quoting the movie "Witness" in my head when I noticed that. You be careful out among them English.)

(Also, you'll notice I'm not above buying generic ingredients, much to my tween's chagrin. Ugh.  Why can't you ever buy the name brand granola bars, pop-tarts, and canned pumpkin?  Wait.  Maybe he doesn't complain about the generic pumpkin.  *thinking*  Nope, he just complains because it's pumpkin.)

Mix carrot cake mix and pumpkin in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment.  Beat on medium speed for about 3 minutes until everything is well combined, scraping down sides and bottom of the bowl halfway through.  

Whee!

Fold in the nuts and raisins by hand.  Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto cookie sheet lined with parchment (or sprayed with cooking spray - that's fine too).  Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes or until cookies are set and just browning around the edges.  Allow to cool on cookie sheet for a few minutes, then remove to wire rack.

You'll end up with moist, cake-like cookies that are about 175 calories for 2 cookies.  I made 32 large-ish cookies though (very generous teaspoonfuls).  You could easily make these cookies smaller to increase your yield and drop the per-cookie calorie count.  You could also use this same mix to make muffins (divide into papered muffin tins) or a snack cake (spread into 9x13 pan coated with cooking spray).  Adjust cooking times accordingly.

The verdict: They're not terrible by any means.  They're satisfying.  They satisfy the cake craving I've had going on for the last few days.  But they'd really benefit from a dollop of cream cheese frosting on top, darnit.

Edited to add: I'd forgotten that these are the type of cookies/baked good that taste even better the second day.  Today I'm not even missing the fact that they don't have cream cheese frosting.

Kitten paws

When you raise a child, you become keenly aware of the passage of time as you watch them move through stages of growing and changing and becoming.  Sometimes these stages come charging at you like a buffalo snorting and pawing at the ground (hello, teenage years!  ugh.).  And sometimes those stages whisper in on kitten paws and catch you unaware.

My Middle Child has always been my cautious child.  She's the one who indirectly taught us that a word like masklophobia exists because we needed to put a name to her fear of mascots and people in masks or costumes.  She's always been careful about her own personal safety, always been the one afraid of kidnappers and bad guys.  She has always wanted me to be with her at the bus stop in the mornings and so I would go, shivering and stomping my feet, clutching a cup of coffee like a lifeline.  She just didn't want to be alone (she's the only kid who gets on at her stop), and she was afraid that if she was alone, someone could snatch her.

She started 4th grade this fall and our routine of going to the bus stop together continued.  Until a couple of weeks ago, when she told me that she would go to the bus stop on her own from now on.  She told me that she was the only kid on her bus route that had a parent accompany them to the bus stop.  She felt like she was old enough to handle it on her own now.

Kitten paws.

Just like that - she was older.  She wasn't my super-cautious child anymore.  She was older, and she was taking on her world.  Alone.  Without me.

I can see her bus stop from our living room window, so I watched her that first morning (and every morning since) as she took off on her own.  There was no tentativeness to her journey.  Indeed, what struck me was that she was so sure of each footstep.  She seemed...brave.  Not afraid of the world as she might have been a year or even a week before.

I was so proud of her.

And yet, it was bittersweet.  Because it's hard to let go and let them negotiate the world.  Just when you feel like the world is a safe enough place to send your children out, you read about a kidnapping, or a child being hurt.  The news story about the girl that gets kidnapped on her way to school reminds you of your child that you send to school each day, trusting that the hand of God will protect her and that her fellow humans will not harm her.  Hoping that all she learned from safety drills will come to her in a moment of danger.  Wondering if she'll find her voice and her strength in a moment of crisis.  Will she - my most compassionate child - help a sketchy guy find a lost puppy?  Will she be able to summon the years of tae kwon do training and be able to defend herself against a bully?  If the bus crashes, will she be able to find her way out of the wreck?

Ugh.  It's hard, this parenting thing, this raising of little babes that turn into children that turn into people.  I worry every day that I'm doing it wrong, that a comment or a deed (done or undone) will change the course of their lives from its original trajectory and I will screw them up irreparably.  If I insist upon going to the bus stop with her, I will be able protect her, but will I keep her from growing?  Will it shelter her too much?  Or, if I stay home and let her go on her own, will she be hurt in some way?

In the end, I let her go on her own.  Like I said, I watch from the window, still clutching a cup of coffee like a lifeline, though I'm much warmer indoors.

I watch as she strolls to the corner and waits at her stop.

I watch as she jumps around trying to see the bus as it approaches.

I watch as the bus opens its doors and swallows her up.

Off she goes, into her day and her world.

The World's Smallest (and snarkiest) Waitress

We're playing "Restaurant" this morning, the Little One and I.  We had Domino's last night for dinner (don't judge - it's not all home-cookin' and made from scratch here), and she loves taking the menus off the pizza box and pretending to be a waitress.  She certainly has a ways to go on her people skills before she starts earning a decent tip, though.

LO: Hello.  I will be your waitress today.  What can I get for you?

Me (perusing the menu):  Hmm.  I'd like a thin crust ham and pineapple, some chicken wings, Diet Coke, and a couple of those chocolate lava cakes, please.

LO (giving me the side-eye): You don't really need all that much.  You're getting a pepperoni pizza and that's it.


And then later:

LO: Hello, I'm your waitress.  What would you like?

Me: I think I'd like a pepperoni pizza, some cheese sticks, and a Diet Coke.

LO:  What about for your little girl?

Me:  Oh, I will share my food with her, but she would like a Sprite to drink.

LO:  We're out of Sprite.  Your little girl will have a Coke. She'll just have to deal with it.

Me: I still get my Diet Coke, right?

LO (again with the side-eye and a sigh): No.  We're out of Diet Coke, too.  You get a Coke.  You'll have to deal with it.  Now pay me.  Real dollars please, not imaginary.


Yeah.  Real money.  Nice try, kid.

The One Where She Kills the Blender...

Remember how every episode of the TV show Friends was titled with "The One Where...?" Like "The One Where Where Chandler Can't Cry" or "The One with the Embryos" (which features the Ross-created game that pits Monica and Rachel against Joey and Chandler - classic). Yeah, if my life was a Friends show, yesterday would have been titled "The One Where She Kills the Blender."

 It all started because I wanted hummus. I've been on a hummus kick for the last few days. And when I get on a kick, that's all I want to eat. I'd call it a craving, but cravings come and go, you know? A kick lasts longer...days, weeks (or until "that time of the month" ends, just sayin'). So on Monday, when the hummus kick hit, I was grocery shopping and picked up some Sabra-brand hummus. Deeeee-lish. It was gone in less than 48 hours. However, it's also a bit on the pricey side (thought I noticed Target sells it for $3 less than our grocery store). So I said to myself, we can make this stuff. It'll be cheaper and potentially healthier too. 

Problem: I've never made hummus before in my life.

Solution: Turn to a couple of friends - my friend A, who is something of a kindred spirit in the cooking/food department, and my other good friend, The Internet. I knew A would probably have a recipe for hummus, and she did. But in searching on the internet, I also found a few ideas and suggestions that I incorporated.

A's recipe comes from Dave Lieberman of the Food Network and can be found here.  One of the big things I appreciated about this recipe on first glace was that it doesn't use tahini which, let's be honest, can be hard to find in middle-of-nowhere midwestern towns like the one I live in.  It's not like Whole Foods or Trader Joe's is just down the block.  I can usually cobble together pretty decent international fare by visiting the two major grocery stores in town along with a trip to the Walmart Supercenter (which is decidedly not super) or Target.  But traipsing to 4 different stores with the Little One in tow just looking for tahini?  No thanks.  This recipe uses sesame oil instead of tahini and sesame oil is much easier to get your hands on around here.

Now, in reading about hummus on the internet, two tips stuck out at me.  One was to take the skins off your chickpeas if you want a super creamy hummus (I did.)  The other was to use a blender as opposed to a food processor - again, if you want to have a creamier hummus.  Taking skins off of chickpeas isn't as putzy as some people online complained about it being.  I thought it was more like Popping Bubblewrap: Kitchen Edition.  There was something a bit satisfying about squeezing each chickpea between my fingers and having the skins pop off.  But it does take a decent amount of time to skin 2 cans of chickpeas.  Tip: rinsing them under cold water helps.  If it starts to get difficult to skin them, rinse under cold water again.  Bottom line: if you want creamy hummus, skin your beans.  If you don't care, don't worry about it.

I would also recommend adding the lemon juice, cumin, and garlic in their recommended quantities at first and increasing depending upon your tastes.  Like A said to me, lemons vary in their juiciness and acidity.  One half of one lemon might be plenty.  One half of another lemon might not be enough. Sample your hummus before you're finished with it and up your lemon, cumin or garlic accordingly. I ended up using an entire small lemon and adding a few extra dashes of cumin.

So, chickpeas were skinned, other ingredients were assembled, I was ready to go.  Put my chickpeas and oil in the blender only to see my olive oil oozing out the bottom of the machine.  Well that's not good, says I.  I dumped the chickpeas and oil into a bowl to investigate the seals and whatnot, tightened the band at the bottom, and figured we were good to go.  To be on the safe side, I measured out the rest of my ingredients into the bowl that I put the chickpeas into and added a little extra oil to make up for what leaked out previously.  Then I put the whole shebang into the blender and started blending.  I would recommend blending until the desired creaminess/smoothness is obtained.  Depending on your blender and your tastes, this could be anywhere from a couple of minutes to 10 minutes.

And when my hummus was about 2 minutes away from my desired texture, my blender died.  No warning, not a sputter or a wheeze - she just up and quit.  I'm not qualified in kitchen forensics, so I don't know if the blender dying had anything to do with the leaky jar, but either way, the blender was dead.  Ugh.  At least the hummus was pretty well close to being done, so I scraped it into a container, garnished it with fresh parsley from my garden and some paprika (I kind of overdid it on the paprika, but the red against the yellow and green was just so pretty).

The Rubbermaid storage container is quite attractive, right?  Food stylist I am not.

 I sampled what was left inside the blender.  Tasty.  Quite tasty.  Lick-the-blender-clean tasty.  In fact, it was difficult not to sit down with the container of hummus and a bag of pita chips and just eat that for dinner.

And, because this blog is all about honesty in triumphs as well as failures, you should see the mess left behind by my hummus-making, blender-killing adventure:

From left to right: blender carcass, spices, olive oil, more blender carcass,  crockpot with  the night's supper in it.   Professional food blogger I am not.

Later on last night, I had some hummus and pita chips while watching TV with my husband.

"How do you like it?" I asked.

"Pretty good," He said.

"It was much cheaper to make this than buying the store-bought," I said.

Him: How do you figure?

Me: Chickpeas were 65 cents a can.  I had everything else in stock.

Him:  You're forgetting the replacement costs of the blender.

Me:  Oh...right...the blender.

End result: good hummus.  Cheaper than store-bought.  Unless you kill a blender.

Pumpkin Smoothie (Concrete Mixer Substitute)

One of my favorite, favorite things about fall is all the pumpkin flavored stuff.  Pumpkin Spice Latte at Starbucks, pumpkin donuts, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie...all good.  And one of my favorite pumpkin flavored things is the Pumpkin Pecan Concrete Mixers that Culver's features on their menu this time of year.  If you're not lucky enough to have a Culver's restaurant near you, a concrete mixer is basically the frozen custard equivalent of a Dairy Queen blizzard: lots and lots of frozen custard blended with flavorings, candy, cookies, etc.  Each fall they trot out the Pumpkin Pecan concrete mixer, and I will usually treat myself to one or two before they disappear around Christmas time. (Which is about the time they trot out the Peppermint Stick mixers.  Oy.)

However, over the past year, I've lost 75 pounds by taking up running and cutting down on calories (I'll write more about this in another blog post).  I knew that this year, a Pumpkin Pecan concrete mixer was going to be a no-no.  A simple look-up of Culver's nutritional information confirms this: the smallest size pumpkin pecan mixer (a "mini") is 603 calories and 43 grams of fat.  Yikes.

So the other day I decided to create a substitute.  Now, if you're expecting a super-rich, creamy dessert, you might come away from this disappointed.  But for me, this substitute satisfies my craving for a pumpkin pecan mixer with all the taste, but many fewer calories and almost no fat.  This recipe clocks in at 223 calories, even less if you split it as Little One and I did.

It's based on the Pumpkin Smoothie recipe listed on Skinnytaste and also utilizes her recipe for pumpkin butter (which I totally recommend that you try). I just altered her recipe a bit to suit my tastes and nutritional needs.

You will need:

4 oz. frozen pumpkin butter*
1/4 cup 0% fat, plain Greek yogurt
1/2 cup skim milk

*(I used this recipe and froze my pumpkin butter into 4 oz. portions to use in various recipes.)

Put everything in a blender. If your pumpkin butter doesn't want to leave the container you froze it in, run the closed container under some warm water to soften it just a touch. If it still won't slide out, you can use a spoon to scoop it out.

Blend till smooth.  It'll have the consistency of an Wendy's Frosty when done.

Using the frozen pumpkin butter is key - it eliminates having to add ice, which keeps the pumpkin taste more concentrated, less watered down.  You could also easily add extras if you'd like (extra sweetener, chia seeds, some chocolate chips, a banana) but keep in mind extras will alter the end result AND the nutritional info and calorie count.

Voila - the finished product:

Smooth, creamy, and pumpkin-y, and at a fraction of the fat and calories of a frozen custard concoction.