13th May 2008

It’s pumpkin soup weather here now, although on a sunny day still warm and beautiful. It’s a fantastic time of the year for double digging, and also for putting on lime. If your pH is down below 6.5 put lime on now and again on spring and just watch the Brix readings rise with no other inputs at all. A great time to tidy up your compost heaps, collect seaweed for next seasons liquid or the compost, and rake up all those autumn leaves.

My mission this autumn has been learning to grow nutrient dense food. It’s very exciting, especially when you see the Brix going up, and I’ve almost finished writing, with the help of Grant from Environmental Fertilisers, a step by step “How to grow nutrient dense food” which will be featured in the next Institute catalogue. Getting to grips with that has felt like a big step forward for me. For those of you who may be interested we have organized a day near the end of June when I’m going to be up at Koanga to have a workshop with Grant and myself around growing nutrient dense food. It will be a fairly informal discussion group, with koha for Grants petrol the only cost. Winter is the time to get your head around things like so you are ready to go for it when spring comes.

I’m constantly aware now, that everything we eat needs to be nutrient dense for our own health and so this is my latest version of pumpkin soup. It is the traditional fats you include that make the many of the vitamins and minerals available to us so it is critical to use either coconut or palm oil, or olive oil, or lard of some sort, and also preferably bone broth as well.

Pumpkin Soup

2 Tbspn lard

4 cloves garlic Takahue, NZ purple or Rocombole peeled and chopped fine, or any strong garlic

3 Welsh bunching onions or 1 brown onion chopped fine

2 hot chili peppers to taste, chopped fine (alternatively chili oil or hot chili sauce)

2 small or 1 large eggplant cubed (optional, they will be abundant right now in some areas)

1kg Crown pumpkin

Sauté all the ingredients except the pumpkin

Boil large pieces of Crown pumpkin in 2-3 cups of broth (duck, goose, pork, mutton, beef all work well)

When the pumpkin is cooked leave to cool a little then peel off the very thin layer of tough skin off the back of each piece of pumpkin. Mash the pumpkin into the broth, add water to give required consistency

Add sauted mixture to pumpkin liquid, simmer 30 minutes, season with sea salt, black pepper

Add cubes of panir* if you wish and simmer 5 more minutes

Serve with finely chopped Dalmatian parsley or coriander on top

Serve with sourdough rye or wholewheat bread and cultured butter!

An extremely nourishing and satisfying meal after which you will not feel like anything sweet!