Sunday, July 6, 2008

Winter warmers....Pumpkin Soup

Soups are such hearty, nourishing meals - meals where you can add many good, healthy ingredients that children won't baulk at because they just can't taste them! I made a big batch of pumpkin soup:

Pumpkin Soup

2 large onions, diced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
curry powder to taste
sea salt
1 whole Jap pumpkin, diced
2 large potatoes, diced
500grams sour cream
4 large comfrey leaves, finely diced
2 handfuls of dried stinging nettle
homemade chicken stock

I just fried onion, garlic and diced comfrey in butter and mixed in curry powder, then throw in pumpkin, potatoes and stinging nettle, salt - pour in chicken stock to desired level. Close to the end, once everything is soft, I add the sour cream. Pour soup through the blender and all done.

This has been another fabulous way to get valuable, medicinal herbs into the whole family, once the soup is blended, the greens look like the finest seasoning throughout and cannot be tasted.

We have been GREATLY blessed to be able to buy day old, sour dough bread from the Sol Breads Bakery and for those who buy sour dough, it doesn't really make much difference to taste and texture with this wholesome bread. In my photo I have a loaf of Kamut and Spelt Megagrain - they make lovely, buttery crutons in the soup!

More winter warmers to come!

7 comments:

ken said...

Sounds great, do you think this could be served cold as well?

Sweetness and Light said...

Oh we are big pumpkin soup fans here, YUM!! It's so funny to think about winter warmers when it's so hot here for summer. Blessings to you sweet down under lady :))

molly said...

Ahhhhh I have to save this one for the fall, it is to hot to enjoy this soup right now. Soon fall will be here and we will love mixing up this yummy sounding soup.

Tell me, why do you add stinging nettle?

Anne (aussieannie) said...

I add stinging nettle as it is a very special herb, just great for general health and wellbeing, it is a 'survival food' - in WWII refugees would collect this growing on the side of the road in order to keep well and nourished. In dried form it is just like adding dried parsley and so we treat it like that and throw it into as many things as possible - there is a link to info on stinging nettle, it is great, informative reading - stinging nettle is a powerful blood purifer.

I am sure you could have soup cold but not something that appeals to me - hot and hearty is the way I like it!

Marilyn said...

Yum yum yum - I am in the midst of making meal plans and menus - and I was trying to figure out a way to add pumkin to our meals - this is great! I started making sourdough last year - it was very therapeutic and we loved it - but then I got ill and have never got back to it - you are so lucky to be able to buy it locally.

Where do you buy your stinging nettle from? I have heard it is very good for allergies and skin ailments.

Anne (aussieannie) said...

Once again we are very fortunate to buy this at an organic supermarket, they sell it in the bulk bins with other herbal teas, so we can buy it very cheaply, when we had our chickens we would give to them each day quite liberally. If you have a big health shop/supermarket where you live, it is worth checking out if they have it.

Anne (aussieannie) said...

Here's a link I've found - a US supplier of the dried nettle herb (in this link's sidebar)

http://www.theherbprof.com/hrbNettle.htm