Pumpkin soup

enjoy hot soup in a fun mug

I wanted something light to eat for lunch and for some reason pumpkin soup came to mind. Ive never had pumpkin soup and wasnt sure where to find a recipe. But then another thought enlightened me: look in Elizabeth Davids French Provincial Cooking.

Rural French cooking is much like Montana cooking in that it uses whats available. If you can find something fancy to brighten a dish, grab it and rejoice. But often exotic ingredients just cant be found within arms reach here on the ranch. The IGA in town does its best, but they wont sell anything that isnt widely popular and will simply spoil on the shelf.

Cookbooks by Elizabeth David are fun to read, but the recipes tend to be squashed together, and you wont find lavish mouthwatering photos of any, let alone every, dish.

You will find practical recipes that often use plain ingredients. Although I havent done the research to verify this, I suspect that for any ingredient you have on hand, you can find a recipe in one of her books.

Pumpkin Soup

To make a thick, creamy soup, I simmered a pound of home-grown pumpkin pulp (it was frozen, so I just dumped the chunk into the pot), a chopped celery stalk, a cup and a half of 2 percent milk, and a cup of chicken stock. After half an hour, I pureed it with my hand blender and seasoned it.

Elizabeth David went on to add shrimp, but I stirred in a bit of cooked chicken that was on hand.

The photo shows the soup with freshly ground black pepper and nutmeg sprinkled on top. (Sorry for the blurry photo!)

A tasty lunch, with, Id say, 98 percent of the ingredients (I dont know where the celery came from) produced in Montana.

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Time to deliver cookies

Its that time of year when some of us bake and bake, give other people treats, and hope we get lots in return.

I say that with humor, because this time of year we know well all be getting lots of goodies one way or another, even if we have to hang around the bank lobby until they put out store-bought Lorna Doones.

Yesterday I spent the entire day in the kitchen. There are so many people I wanted to thank for being kind to me, or else to cheer up because they had a rough year.

I didnt get photos of the trays because I was so busy wondering how I would deliver them all on icy roads today, but in the photo above you get an idea. That plate is going to a neighbor who lives alone. Some of the people have 3 and 4 kids, so their gifts were more like Christmas bags.

I also hoped to get more photos of the process, but what with one thing and another . . . My kitchen resembled one of those sitcoms where a budding entrepreneur tries to make enough cupcakes to fill an unexpected order for 5,000 -- inevitably the family starts throwing things at each other, although the order does get filled. I can attest that this is a tiring process, even without throwing things around, so not many photos.

I did finish off a 5-pound bag of flour.

I also enjoyed melting chocolate and peanut-butter chips together and adding chopped peanuts to fill some truly delicious Chocolate Peanut-Butter Snowballs.

I was briefly tempted to eat the stuff right out of the pan. But I remembered my friends and controlled myself. Instead I followed the recipe directions and formed them into balls and wrapped them in shortbread dough. The snowballs were then rolled in powdered sugar and baked. (See upper left corner in top photo.)

I also made Fruitcake Bars, which are really, really tasty, but I would call them Fruit and Nut Bars myself. "Fruitcake" definitely gives you the wrong impression here. These are mostly nuts (your choice), dried apricots, and dates. With only 6 tablespoons of flour, you can use a substitute and make them gluten-free.

A few people who were very, very good this year got homemade English muffins and Amish-made dandelion jelly that I bought at the Eureka farmers market. Its light, delicate flavor is quite nice.

I also made two longtime favorites: Apricot, Orange, Cranberry Bread from Secrets of Jesuit Breadmaking and Sparkling Citrus Triangles (shown in top photo) from a Land OLakes cookbook I picked up at the supermarket years ago. The latter were already in the freezer waiting to be sliced and baked. This is a handy make-ahead tip, by the way: almost any cookie dough can be rolled into a log, frozen for a month, and then sliced and baked.

I feel kind of tuckered out, as my dad used to say after a long day. Still, it was heart-warming to hear the surprised thank-yous. As I keep pointing out, people do a lot of baking around here, but they are just as pleased to be on the receiving end.

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