Lazy Vegetarian Recipes #3: Pumpkin Guts Soup

It’s post Halloween. You got a pumpkin. You carved it. You saved the guts (the stringy flesh inside that you scooped out) with the vague sense that you paid £3 for a piece of food and it just feels plain wrong to eat none of it. What do you do?

There’re a million websites trying to tell you to turn the slimy innards into facial scrubs and whatnot, but you bought FOOD. You want to eat it. There are other websites telling you to cut out non-slimy flesh and blend that and turn THAT into soup, but you are lazy, goddammit, and you’ve done enough pumpkin carving for one year.

Here’s how to take your slimy pumpkin guts and turn them into SOUP.

Pumpkin Guts Soup

Makes 3 portions. Add more veg to make it go further.

Takes 70mins~

Estimated cost per serving: £1.30 (this is a guestimate, I used stuff from my allotment and spices I already have, so I’ve estimated rough costs)

You Will Need

The guts of one medium sized pumpkin, hollowed out for Halloween

4 or 5 small potatoes (I used small King Edwards, but any new potatoes would be fine)

1 good sized onion or two small onions

1 large parsnip

2 cloves of garlic

1 stock cube

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ginger

1/2 teaspoon crushed chilli

Some olive oil

200ml~ water

Instructions

Separate the slime from the seeds. Put the seeds to one side – you can dry and eat those later if you like, you can even roast them, but this is about the guts. You’ll note that there are big hard seeds and small soft ones. You can leave the small soft ones in, we’re not being too fussy.

Put a large saucepan on medium heat and add a generous splash of oil – two tablespoons, if you want to measure stuff. Finely chop two small or one large onion. Put it in the oil. Stir occasionally to stop it burning. Crush two cloves of garlic with the flat of your knife, then chop it finely. Add this to the saucepan.

Put another saucepan on medium heat. Boil some water in a kettle to save time. Peel and chop the potatoes – small chunks. Add the water and potatoes to the second saucepan.

Add the pumpkin guts to the first saucepan.

Peel and chop one large parsnip – small chunks. Add this to the saucepan.

Boil 200ml of water in the kettle (I did this by eye, so it’s a rough measurement). Crumble a veggie stock cube into a bowl and pour the water over it. Add this to the first saucepan.

Drain the parsnip and potatoes you boiled and add them to the first saucepan.

Add the nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and chilli.

Stir.

Put a lid on the concoction and turn down to a low heat. Put a timer on if you can, and leave for 45mins.

45mins later… you have soup!

Nutrition

Pumpkin is a great source of vitamins A and C, Calcium and Iron. Potatoes are a very good source of iron and vitamin B6. Parsnips are good for vitamin C, potassium, folate, and manganese.

Overall, this is a pretty good soup in terms of vitamins and minerals, especially for B6 and iron, which vegetarians should be careful to get enough of.

Review: City of the Dead Week 1, by Karl Kessel, Ron Randall, Jeremy Colwell, and Grace Allison

Just a little drop in the Halloween ocean: the most awesome Benjamin Dewey of the wonderfully poignant Tragedy Series Tumblr today linked to City of the Dead Week 1 as a Halloween treat. I’m glad he did.

City of the Dead is a comic created by Thrillbent, a digital comics website, self-described as an ‘experiment in new media publishing’. Web comics are not new in themselves, but I have to admit that City of the Dead is presented in a format that was new to me, at least, and with a slick presentation that went beyond what I have seen both in other web comics and print media. The click-to-navigate feature does not simply load a new page; rather, it progresses the action as seamlessly as though one were viewing a user-controlled moving image. It’s been cleverly designed to create a unique sense of pace and urgency.

In addition to the carefully thought-out layouts and panel progression, the art itself is very well-done and quickly creates a sense of place and character. The female protagonist does seem somewhat awkwardly posed to display her sexual assets to the viewer in places, but considering the Escher Girls industry standard, it could be worse.

Mercy St. Clair is a bounty hunter looking for a shady character called Romero Kirkman, who has recently passed away. Fortunately for her, the reward said ‘dead or alive’, so she’s off to the Necropolis to catch up with his body. With a name like ‘Romero Kirkman’ you can probably guess where this is going, but I leave it to you to discover the details.

It’s not especially long, but as a bite-sized piece of fun on Halloween, it doesn’t have to be. The second part of the story is to follow in two weeks. Check it out!