I was lucky to get a couple of volunteer pumpkin plants this year so for the next few weeks I’ll be making a lot of my favorite winter soup: curry pumpkin coconut vegetable soup! Easy to make. 10 minutes to cube half a pumpkin then about 1 hour total cook time.

1/2 medium pumkin 1 onion Frozen mixed veggies 1 can chick peas 1 can coconut milk 1 cup macaroni or rice (optional) 1 cup lentils
Salt Garlic Curry Cayenne pepper

I cut a medium pumpkin in half. 1 half goes in fridge for the next pot of soup in a few days. The other half I cut up into cubes, remove the skin, seeds and stringy inside stuff. Raw pumpkins are pretty hard to cut and remove skin, be careful! I probably need a sharper knife.
Put in a pot with enough water to cover the cubes. Boil for 15ish minutes. Mash it with a potato masher in the pot with the water until it’s just a kind of mash. Set it aside.
Sauté one onion with a little oil and water till soft. Add it to the cooked pumpkin mash. Add spices to taste. I usually do about a tbsp of salt, tbsp of garlic powder (or 3-4 cloves, maybe more), 2 tsp of curry, 1 tsp of cayenne pepper. Alter as needed.
A half bag of frozen mixed vegetables… probably about 4-5 cups. Use whatever veggies you like… I like the standard mixed veggies because they’re usually the least expensive. Bring it to a boil, turn it down a bit and let it simmer for 10 minutes.
Add in a cup of elbow macaroni or cooked rice. And let it simmer for 10 minutes. Add in can of chickpeas (or whatever cooked/can beans you want). Add in can of coconut milk. Let it simmer for 10 minutes. Ready to eat when the macaroni is done.
The soup!

I didn’t have a big garden this year but I was lucky to get a volunteer pumpkin plant and harvested 10 pumpkins. Most of them will be made into pumpkin curry coconut soup over the next couple of months.

I’ve harvested pawpaws once from a few trees on the side of a gravel road. Amazing. A soft banana/mango flavor and texture. Planted a few in my forest garden and waiting for them to grow.
How America’s most enigmatic fruit is making a comeback | The Guardian
Growing in the sunny spots around the garden, garlic chives, sweet coneflowers and western ironweed are current favorite feeding spots for bees and butterflies. 😍


A morning task: transplant 3 small hazelnut bushes. Also, enjoy observing a red ant exploring a garlic chive flower cluster.


Volunteer squash in my garden. I think it’s a pumpkin though I have no idea where the seed would have come from.
Solar punk tiny house! Flowers in foreground: Vernonia baldwinii, the western ironweed is the purple flower. Rudbeckia subtomentosa, sweet Coneflower is the yellow.

Built a new spiral garden bed. Not much planted in it yet: Mint, a purple coneflower and a ground cherry.

In the garden today a great spangled fritillary on a daisy and my finger. Also a bumble bee collecting pollen from a daisy.



I'm not growing a lot of food in my garden but I enjoy every little bit I do grow! Most recently, lettuce and strawberries. And plenty of wild daisies which are edible though I've not tried them in my salad yet.


