Monday 25 October 2010

On a Quest For a Pumpkin

I'll be spending Halloween weekend at my parents' house, and so the obvious Soup Sunday choice of pumpkin soup will not be. Pumpkin soup was therefore brought forward by one week, and so, this weekend, the search for our pumpkin ensued!

For weeks I'd been admiring the organic pumpkins in my local wholefoods shop, but when I arrived on Saturday afternoon, the owner (who holds about him an air of irony or something similar) informed me that they had all sold out - typical! I really didn't want to spend a single second of my Sunday in a supermarket, and the obvious solution to this popped into my head as I opened the curtains to glorious sunshine the next morning - we would cycle to a farm shop (yipppeeee!), enjoy the sunshine, enjoy the farm shop, and lug a pumpkin back with us in our (or rather, Daniel's) backpacks!

After phoning ahead to make sure that our 20-mile round trip would not leave us pumpkinless, we set out into the morning with an empty backpack. The weather was superb but it was so so cold; it seems that the climate has skipped autumn and broken head-first into winter!


We arrived tired and chilly after an unfortuante detour to pumpkins! Pumpkins everywhere!! I selected a small one and headed into the shop - I love farm shops!


We were tempted by just about everything - good job we could only face carrying one exciting member of the gourd family back, as I'd have happily taken a collection!


Then, we headed back home with some treats for our lunch - a gourmet sausage roll for the omnivore, and a cheese scone for the veggie :-)

We cooked up the pumpkin with some leftover butternut squash and sweet potato, and spiced it with some cinnamon, cloves, cumin, chilli and ginger. Served with some homemade caraway sultana bread (because I have literally spent the whole weekend cooking and baking) it went down a treat, though we'll be eating pumpkin-based meals for the forseeable future! Still, a pumpkin-based adventure is always a worthwhile one :-)

5 comments:

  1. That looks like a fantastic farm shop and your little pumpkin is VERY cute.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Home-made soup and bread is a combination that CANNOT be beaten. The farm shop expedition is brilliant too. Sounds like a dream of a weekend!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cake, soup and bread. You were v v busy!
    Lisa x

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love that picture of all the pumpkins et al in the basket! So autumnal. And homemade soup and bread is the perfect Sunday treat! :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Caraway sultana bread? Ooooh that sounds delicious! Hope you're well. I was in York on Tuesday - and was half expecting to see you cycling or jogging by at some point! Hope you're well and that you're still enjoying the job ;-)

    ReplyDelete