pixeldiva makes

Pumpkin Soup

In another time and another life, autumn became more than it had ever been to me. It became a magical time which meant shorter days, longer nights, chilly ears and, often, a sojourn to another country where there Americanisation of Halloween lent its magic to a (mostly) peaceful landscape where I could rest, read and recharge for a few days surrounded by a family that, though not mine, had nonetheless warmly welcomed me.

I wrote that a year ago, almost to the day, in a post on the (somewhat mothballed) previous version of this blog, entitled “Reclaiming Autumn“, where I talked about how I came to love, lose and reclaim Pumpkin Soup as my talisman of Autumn.

I’d forgotten the exact date I wrote that, until I went to look for that post when writing this one, and had a bit of a laugh to myself, because it was exactly a year and one day later that I made Pumpkin Soup again.

This year’s audience was mostly the same as last years (minus a brother-in-law to be) but the soup was extra special, because among it, was the pride of my foray into growing my own veg – a home grown pumpkin.

Of all the veg I grew this year, the pumpkin was special. Yes, fresh salad is nice, home grown strawberries are lovely and eating baby sweetcorn right from the plant is fun, I’d have forgone them all for my pumpkin.

It’s been sitting in the kitchen for a few weeks now, ripening nicely among its larger, shop-bought cousins (a pumpkin a day makes Ann a ridiculously happy girl, especially given their short period of availability) and part of me wanted to keep it, I’d spent so long growing this thing that I had to know if it was actually a real pumpkin inside, so with a wee bit of a lump in my throat, I cut it up, ready to roast, and thence, to become soup.

When I wrote about pumpkin soup last year, a few people asked for a recipe, and at the time I couldn’t provide one, because I hadn’t written down what I’d done, so this year, I paid attention.

I should point out that this is by no means a tested or scientific recipe. I don’t tend to do weights and measures, so your mileage may very well vary.

Pixeldiva’s Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients

Pumpkins (I used 3, around 1kg each)
Shallots (5 medium sized ones)
Garlic (1 bulb)
Stock (I used chicken, but you could use vegetable, if you’re that way inclined)
Herbs de Provence (about 2 teaspoons)
Cumin (about 2 teaspoons)
Cinnamon (about 1 teaspoon)
Salt
Pepper
Butter
Olive Oil
Double cream (for serving)

Method

Cut each pumpkin in quarters, and scoop out the gunk in the middle. Then cut each quarter in half again, so you have eight pumpkin wedges per pumpkin. Lay these out on a baking tray or roasting dish, and scatter about a bulb’s worth of garlic cloves around the pumpkin. Drizzle some olive oil over the tip, scatter some salt, and put in an oven that’s been pre-heated to 200°C for about 30 minutes, or until nicely roasted.

Finely chop the shallots, and gently fry them with a wee bit of butter and olive oil in the bottom of whatever pot you intend to make your soup in.

Peel the skin off the pumpkin (it should come off reasonably well with the aid of a reasonably sharp knife) and put the mushy pumpkin bits in the pot with the shallots. Then grab the roasted garlic cloves and squeeze their innards into the put too.

Throw in some herbs de provence (or mixed herbs), cumin and cinnamon and mush the whole lot up, before adding enough stock to cover the mush, plus about half an inch of water above (sorry, I know that’s not a very exact description).

Let this simmer for a while until it goes even more mushy, and then taste. Season with salt and pepper (and more cumin or herbs) if you feel it needs it. Otherwise, get your hand blender out and try not to cover the kitchen in soup while you get carried away with the joy of blending.

Serve with a dribble of cream and a grind of black pepper, and enjoy.

This makes enough for four people, with enough left over for a large bowl later, when lunch or dinner is a distant memory and handknit slippers and crocheted lap blankets (or your equivalents) aren’t quite enough to keep you warm.

Hand-written Business Cards

A few weeks ago, just before I headed off to Bristol, I decided to go a bit earlier, and catch FOWD Bristol.

Then I realised that I was running out of Moo Cards and had absolutely no time to order any more.

Disaster.

After casting around a bit, I remembered that I have craft supplies and quite the collection of pens, and decided to just make something.

I grabbed my hypotrochoid art set (which I did actually buy from the SFMOMA gift shop (I love a good museum gift shop, oh yes…)), some white cards (I think they were supposed to be place cards for a wedding or somesuch), my round corner cutter and my set of Stabilo Pens.

That was the easy bit.

Deciding what to draw, where, using what colours was the easy bit. I grabbed a bit of scrap paper (back of an envelope I think) and tried out a few patterns until I found the one I liked best. Then I chose the colours. Purple first (because its my favourite colour), granny smith apple green next (because I have developed an inexplicable fondness for this most difficult of colours) and finally, pewter grey (because I like it more than black). Sorted.

I’d decided to make thirty cards, ten in each colour, but hadn’t considered the possibility of cramp from doing so many spirals. My hands and arms started to cramp up by the fourth card. Doing thirty perfect spirals is harder than it looks.

Once the spirals were done, I realised that I needed something more and added the “Hello!” and it was then that I hit upon the idea of using the fold in the card to get around the problem of figuring out which card to give people at these kinds of events, business or personal. I used to carry around two sets of cards, particularly when I worked at RNIB, and was never particularly comfortable with the decision making process of who should get what card when the event wasn’t strictly a work event. It didn’t get any easier when I went freelance either. I have a set of Moo cards that I made when I first set up my business site, but I then changed the branding so I couldn’t use those, and anyway, I’m more than what I do for work.

So, whatever I did needed to work as a business card and a personal card. A me card, if you will. Some people might want to know more about my work, some people might want to know more about me. Some people might go from one to the other. Best to give them the option rather than making that god-awful networking deliberation about how “useful” people might be in terms of giving you work.

It was at that point something went ping in the back of my head, and I remembered having books which could be read from either side. One story started from the front, one from the back. To read either, you just turned the book around and started whichever one you wanted.

So I turned the card around and wrote “Hello!” on the other side. It felt like it needed a bit more, so I added the little arrow.

At this point, I started getting that little buzz of “y’know, this might just work…”

It was decided. You could open the card from either side and get either my work or my personal contact details like one of those start from either end books.

Then I got to the hard bit. The actual words. This probably took the most time of the entire process. Even though my handwriting is terrible (as a result of typing for a living for more years than I care to count), it actually took longer to decide what the words were going to be than it took to write them out twenty times. You’ll notice that number differs from the number of cards above. That’s because it hurt my hand so much that I just couldn’t write any more. So I left the apple green ones and figured I could find a quiet moment to write them up at the conference or whenever, and anyway, I wasn’t likely to hand out more than twenty cards, even taking into account the speed networking session.

Job done, I took a photo and uploaded it to flickr to try and stave off any chance of me deciding, in the cold light of day, that they were crap and should be consigned to the bin.

Happily, they went down quite well, and to my immense surprise, I actually needed the apple green cards. So much so that by the time I came back from Bristol four weeks later I was all out of cards and needed to make some more.

I’m not sure these cards would work in all situations, and I may yet wind up getting “proper” business cards printed up, but for the moment at least, I think I might continue to use these for situations where the lines between business and personal aren’t entirely clear.