Pumpkin Soup

Yes, another food post ... The old lady came to visit today and dropped off a small butternut pumpkin and a small pressure cooker. After growing some pumpkins myself last year I went off pumpkins a bit, and about the only thing I could think of was pumpkin soup, and it also gave an opportunity to try out the pressure cooker.

Fried up the pumpkin, some potato, onion, garlic, chillies, some keens curry powder and oil in a separate pot since this one was too small, and then threw it into the cooker. I grabbed some frozen stock from the fridge melted those in the microwave and added another chicken stock cube and poured that all in.

Cooked it for 10 minutes under pressure - once I worked out the rate of heat to charge it up. Blended it up with a little milk and pepper, and it was done. Turns out that one of the frozen stock blocks wasn't chicken after-all but some crab stock I made from the remains of some chilly crab I couldn't let go to waste. Glad I did, it really added something quite special.

And perhaps some desert? I bought some pears to widen my diet but they were so sweet and the texture so soggy I found them unpalatable. This cake (whose recipe is suspiciously like a nice apple cake recipe I have) looks the part but it's still cooling and seems a little fragile so far.