Halloween is my most favorite holiday (?) / time of year. Despite that, this year’s Halloween festivities have been pretty low-key. Between traveling and anniversaries and work and Life, we barely managed to put up a few of our decades-old dinky old Halloween decorations, and pick up a few more random things from Wal-greens (like a strobe light that emits scary sounds and some skeletons on a string).
We did manage to make some roasted pumpkin + carrot soup (so good) and dress the boys up for Halloween. Rufus decided he wanted to be Spiderman which left poor Max to be the Panda. Pandora – there’s no way she’s getting in a costume of any kind.
Tonight we plan on watching scary movies and handing out candy and wearing one of the many grotesque masks that my dad used to send every single year in a Halloween care package (no ‘official’ costumes again this year)” Even though we aren’t really doing much, I still love this time of year. I love the crisp weather, the changing leaves (still such a novelty), and making pretty much every meal in a crockpot.
Happy Halloween!
ps — I can’t believe today marks our 1 yr anniversary of closing on our house. So strange to think we have been here for a year now! It’s also been just over a year since we adopted our chubby little Rufus.
RECIPE | Roasted pumpkin and carrot soup
Ingredients:
– 1 small sugar pie pumpkin
– 1 small bunch of carrots
– 1 onion
– 2 cloves of garlic, peeled
– 1 carton of organic chicken stock (32oz carton), or 4 cups of homemade stock (more if you like your soups less thick)
– couple sprigs of thyme
– couple sprigs of rosemary
– 1/4 cup of olive oil
– salt and pepper
Directions:
-Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Wash pumpkin and carrots, Cut pumpkin into 2 inch pieces and remove seeds (set seeds aside for roasting). Add pumpkin, carrots, onion, garlic, rosemary, and thyme in a large cooking dish with sides. Pour the olive oil over the veggies, add salt and pepper, and mix all the veggies until everything is evenly coated. Place in the oven on the middle rack. Cook for 30 minutes or until the pumpkin is soft when pierced with a fork. While this is cooking, place the pumpkin seeds on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Season with salt and pepper and place in the oven at the same time while the pumpkins + carrots are roasting. The seeds cook a bit faster than the pumpkins, approximately 20-25 minutes — keep checking to be sure.
-Once the pumpkin is soft, remove the pumpkin mixture from the oven and let cool. Remove the skins from the pumpkin. Put the pumpkin and carrots into a large pot and add 2 cups of chicken broth. Heat over medium heat while using an immersion blender to puree the soup. Gradually add the remaining chicken broth and puree until smooth. Garnish with roasted pumpkin seeds.
(We ate our soup with a side of chicken apple sausage and it was soooo good)
