In search of the perfect macaroni and cheese: Wedded bliss and pumpkins

Well, you may have noticed that I have been gone for a good long while (since August, wow!). What, you may ask, could possibly be a good enough reason to keep me away from my cooking blog for about two whole months? Well, let me tell you...

I GOT MARRIED!! Woo!! That's right, I am now a married woman! Between planning for the wedding and going on the honeymoon (a cruise to Hawaii, but more on that in later blogs), I haven't had to cook at all for a good couple of months or so. My husband (!!) has wonderfully stepped in and cooked delicious foods at home when we have had to eat at home. However, I did really miss cooking. Even when I was on the cruise ship and eating delicious meals 24/7, I missed my kitchen and my home-cooked meals. Especially now that I have all these new kitchen gadgets to play with from the wedding (are you surprised?). So, I decided to finally have a cooking day yesterday. And what better way to celebrate that than with....

PUMPKINS!

I bought a small little pumpkin at New Leaf's on friday. When I bought it, the check out stand lady asked if I was going to carve it and I said, "Nope, I am going to eat it!" I thought it might be fun to try making pumpkin soup and serve it in itself. I have been craving spicy food lately, so I thought I would make curried pumpkin soup. However, I just couldn't find any recipes at all for curried pumpkin soup served in itself (I am sure there is one out there somewhere). So, I just made it up (with a little help from some other recipes I saw online).
I remember from when I cooked a pumpkin last year that it was kind of a pain in the butt to peel and cook and that using canned pumpkin was just as great. So I decided to use a combo of the both. I cut off both ends of the pumpkin (so it would be flat), and then peeled it with a lovely new Cutco knife that I have from our wedding registry. I then removed the seeds and cut it into slices. I removed the guts on the slices and then cut into 1/2 to 1 inch pieces, which then got steamed for about 15 min or so. And, voila, cooked pumpkin!
I had Scott buy another pumpkin to serve the soup in. Cut the top off, seed and gut it. Rub the inside with butter, salt and cinnamon and bake with the top on in a 375 oven for about an hour until the pumpkin is nice and soft.

Katie's curried pumpkin soup served in itself

Ingredients:

pumpkin (from 1 can and 1 small pumpkin)
small yellow onion
coconut milk (1 can plus about 1/2 carton)
butter
salt
cinnamon/sugar spice grinder
pepper
fiery pepper grinder
hot sauce
nutmeg
curry powder
paprika
allspice
garlic salt

Procedure:

1) Prep the eating pumpkin and the serving pumpkin as noted above.
2) Cook the onion in the butter until soft (I realized in retrospect I should have cooked mine longer as it was still quite crunchy)
3) Add the pumpkin and the coconut milk.
4) Spice it until it is hot/tasty enough to your liking. I wish could give specific amounts, but I just kind of added in stuff until it tasted good. It took me a good ten minutes to get it just right.
5) Use an immersion blender until it is nice and smooth.
6) Serve in the hot pumpkin from the oven

I definitely recommend cooking this soup, however you want to make it. It tasted like spicy delicious pumpkin pie. Plus, serving it in a pumpkin is awesome! I served it with a simple salad and pumpkin ale (of course!)and cooked some bread to serve with it as leftovers (alas, the bread was not ready in time for dinner). Use the seeds to make fiery pumpkin seeds (see last year's Halloween post). And, above all, enjoy!!