I’m not a photographer, so any time there’s an opportunity for my reflection to be in a utensil, it probably will be. My mom always said crooked teeth give you character, well, I like to think random reflections in food pictures give them character, right?!?! Humor me.

I like to chew food, not drink it. So soup has never really appealed to me because it’s kinda like a hot vegetable smoothie. Mmmm, that sounds delicious?!?!

Ok wait, this is a lie, the whole ‘chewing rather then drinking.’ I LOVE my morning green monster smoothies. So maybe it’s just that I like to chew my HOT food, and cold food, that’s apparently drinkable? I’m confusing. I don’t even understand myself.

Not that I dislike soup, it was just never on my radar . I skim over that section on the menu at restaurants. I ignore recipes involving soup, or stew. If I was craving comfort food, I wanted pasta or bread. If I was craving vegetables, I wanted salad. And then a switched flip. I call her Waverly.

Ever since being pregnant and having a baby my taste buds, cravings, preferences, all of it, they’ve changed. Some things are still the same, sure. Like salad being my favorite food, yep, that still is. But soup, I now LOVE soup. I could eat it everyday. For lunch AND dinner. SOOOOOO weird!!!!

Make a few batches of this and freeze them in single serving portions for a quick lunch or dinner for a later time. In fact, I have pumpkin chili in the freezer I should go take out for dinner tonight…

Pumpkin Soup
Recipe adapted from A Year in Slow Cooking
Serves 4
Time: 6-8 hours

Ingredients
2 cups pumpkin puree (canned or fresh)
6 cups vegetable stock
2 carrots
1/2 white onion (about 1 cup chopped)
2 stalks celery (about 1 cup chopped)
2 tbsp minced garlic (about 2 cloves)
1 tbsp brown sugar (white sugar, agave, maple or honey would work too)
2 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp nutmeg
pepper (to taste)

Garnish
Soup Cream (leave out to make it vegan)
Fresh basil leaves

Directions
Dump the pumpkin puree, vegetable stock, sugar, garlic and spices into your crockpot and stir. Add the chopped vegetables.
*In all honesty, you can just dump everything in the crockpot at once give it a quick stir, and let it cook. It’s soup, not rocket science.

Cover and cook on low for 6 hours.
*My crockpot cooks at a fairly high temperature, even on low, so it only took 6 hours. Yours might take closer to 8 hours. Cooking times vary per crockpot.

Blend the cooked soup in batches. This requires that you have an extra bowl handy to dump the blended soup into while you scoop the chunky soup out of the crockpot.
Add the blended soup back tot he crockpot and keep warm until ready to serve.
*If you want a creamy pumpkin soup, add 1/4 cup heavy cream while blending the soup and serve immediately.