You have heard me talk about how hard it is for me to throw away any food. It is even harder to discard any vegetables that we’ve grown ourselves.

I have to stop by the plants in our small homemade greenhouse before I leave for work each morning, and have to check on the vegetables as soon as I walk in the house after work. These are typically grown from seed sprouted at home and watered with rainwater we collect ourselves during winter.

Most people carry around pictures of their children; my phone’s memory is full of pictures of my vegetables taken from various angles and reflecting their various moods. It is easy for me to see the terror on people’s faces as I wax eloquent about my okra or Manganji peppers or my oddly shaped carrots and start reaching for my phone, but that has never stopped me.

So you can see why it might be hard for me to throw away anything that has grown in our garden. But given the limited space in our freezer and my refusal to can vegetables, we can get a bit harried sometimes as vegetables come at us faster than we and our friends can eat.

Compounding our challenge, we can’t even get rid of  the volunteer plants our  dedicated composting produces. We have been getting volunteer pumpkins in our garden every year, and this year we got some amazingly large pumpkins in our garden. I have been stretching my creativity and, among my various creations, came up with this easy and delicious pumpkin soup hat even uses the carrot greens that I never knew could taste so good.

So here you go: the recipe for my totally yummy
Roasted Pumpkin Soup with Carrot Greens Pesto

Ingredients:
– 3 ½ to 4 cups of peeled, seeded pumpkin or butternut squash or acorn squash cut into 1 inch cubes
– 1/2 white onion cut into quarters separated
– 1 large yellow/orange/red bell pepper (or 3-4 sweet peppers) seeded and cut into ¼ inch pieces (Use yellow, read or orange, rather than green, to preserve the integrity of the color of the soup)
– 2-3 cloves garlic roughly chopped
– ¼ cup light olive oil
– 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
– Salt to taste
– Sugar to taste
– 2 cups milk (vegan substitutions okay)

– Carrot greens pesto
– Heavy cream (vegan substitutions okay)
– Carrot leaves for garnish

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 375F degrees.
2. Toss the pumpkin cubes, onion, bell pepper, and garlic in olive oil and spread on an oiled baking tray. Bake for 25-35 minutes or until the squash starts getting soft and just lightly brown and caramelized on the edges.
3. Take the tray out of the oven and cover with foil and let sit so the cubes continue to cook in the steam under the cover. Let cool till easy enough to handle. (Can be prepared in advance.)
4. Blend squash with the roasted pumpkin mixture in a blender (or food processor) until smooth and no lumps remain. Return to soup pot.
5. Add 2 cups of milk. Mix well and heat on medium heat. Add salt to taste (Flavor will come from the pesto and the soup should not be too salty). You may need to add some sugar depending on how ripe the pumpkin/sugar is.
6. Serve in individual bowls. Gently add 1 TBS of carrot greens pesto (see below) followed by 2 TBS heavy cream in the center of each bowl and garnish with the tops of carrot greens.

 

Carrot Greens Pesto
(A delicious and healthy use of those carrot greens).

Ingredients:

2 cups roughly chopped carrot greens with the thicker stalks removed
½ cup basil leaves
1 large clove garlic
2 TBS pine nuts and/or walnut pieces
2 TBS lemon juice
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper
¼ tsp red chili flakes (or skip if a milder pesto is preferred)

Preparation:
Blend together until smooth.

If you plan to use this pesto with pasta, you can add 2 TBS Parmesan cheese while blending.