oooooh spicy!

I've been spending the morning trying to get motivated to replant my sage, rosemary and parsley plants out of my herb garden and into pots. It's not cold outside right now. In fact it's nice and bright and sunny and the temperatures are reasonable. But we've been having nightly frosts and if I want to continue to have the luxury of fresh herbs this is something I must do. I know this. I'm good with this.

The motivation trouble comes in when I look at my nice enormous parsley plant (or is it a parsley bush?) and then I think about what happens to plants that are in pots around my house...

Oh the horror!

It's like I'm a cold hard killer of plants.

So yeah now I just have to go to WalMart and get pots big enough to plant a rosemary bush, a sage bush, and a parsley bush. I don't like to support Walmart, but it's all we have in town and I don't feel like driving to another county. So I decided it was time for lunch. Lunch is always a great distracter.

When I first moved here and I was looking for work, I interviewed with Nestle. Nestle is the parent company of Libby's pumpkin. I happen to love pumpkin and all things squash. (It's a superfood you know. It helps protect your skin. yay!) So I didn't get the job, but I did get a little pamphlet for different uses of Libby's pumpkin puree. I made a soup loosely based on the soup in that little pamphlet.

The Brain's parents, who travel extensively, brought us back a bottle of pumpkin seed oil from Austria and I drizzled that on top. Wow. I'm totally impressed with myself. I wasn't sure the peanut butter was all that important to the soup as I'm not a giant fan of peanut butter, but with the pumpkin seed oil it's super yummy! I think it might also do something for the consistency.

Thai - Style Pumpkin Soup

very loosely based off this recipe from Libby's

2 cups chicken broth

1 can (15oz) Libby's 100% Pure Pumpkin

2 cups apple juice

3/4 tsp ground ginger

3 cloves garlic finely chopped

1/2 tsp crushed red pepper

1/4 cup creamy peanut butter

2 Tbsp rice vinegar

1 finely chopped green onion

2 Tbsp chopped cilantro

pumpkin seed oil for drizzling

Combine broth, pumpkin, juice, bouillon, ginger, garlic and crushed red pepper in large saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring occaisionally. Reduce heat to low. Stir in peanut butter, vinegar, green onion and cilantro. Cook, stirring occaisionally, for 5 to 8 minutes or until soup returns to a boil. Drizzle with pumpkin seed oil.