This is a really nice, full bodied soup with the flavours of India – cumin, cardamon, coriander, tumeric, mustard seeds, garlic and topped with natural yogurt.
1 kg pumpkin, cubed
800 g carrots, cubed
1/4 cup olive oil
2 brown onions, sliced
salt ( I used approx 11/2 tsp)
2 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon mustard seeds
2 teaspoons coriander
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon tumeric
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamon
1/2 tsp chilli powder (optional)
4 cups vegetable stock.
Natural yogurt to serve
I did mine a different way to the original recipe, full the other option see end of recipe. I made mine in an electric frypan.
Saute the carrot and pumpkin in the olive oil till soft and browned. Add the onions and garlic and continue till they are soft. Add spices and cook a further few minutes. 
Add stock and salt and cook a further 15 minutes. Whiz in the food processor till smooth, return to heat and bring back to boil. Taste for seasoning adding more salt and black pepper if wished.
Pour into bowls and top with yogurt. Serve with crusty bread.
For the optional method of cooking (roasting in oven etc) and origin of recipe see here:
http://shop.countdown.co.nz/Shop/Recipe/793?name=roast-pumpkin-and-carrot-soup
quarteracrelifestyle 
Sounds delicious, Wendy! I’m saving this one for a couple months down the road. ~ Linne
LikeLike
I really liked it, Roger didn’t feel he would so didn’t try it, not keen on the spices…suits me fine 🙂
LikeLike
Ooh I’m saving this for fall when our pumpkins are ready and freezing it for winter. Thank you.
LikeLike
I live on soup and adore it 🙂
LikeLike
So do I. I made another soup very similar to Cathys with lentils, chickpeas and spices, it was beautiful…but meat. Will put it on at some stage.
LikeLike
My son calls soup “foods last chance to be eaten” 😉
LikeLike
Well that’s appropriate isn’t it lol, at least in this household
LikeLike
Here as well…needless to say he didn’t like soup 😉 Funny how he eats lots of it now when his girlfriend cooks it ;). I LOVE pumpkin and have started eating Pumpkin Juk (Korean Pumpkin Porridge) for my breakfast, delish! How are your grains going? Have they produced anything yet?
LikeLike
Pumpkin porridge sounds…. interesting! We eat alot of pumpkin, a very versatile vegetable.
The grains I am not sure about. The very first day I got yogurt and it was really good yogurt. Every day since has just been sour milk and the grains are floating. I have no idea what’s happening to them. ??
LikeLike
The grains are meant to float on top and for a little while they will make sour milk until they get their chemistry back in order. Kefir is a balance between yeasts and bacteria and they need to reach their equilibrium. If you are a bit worried about having too much lactobacillus in your kefir, just add a bit of sugar for a while. After a week or so they should come back into line :). If you want the milk to be thicker leave it a little bit longer or strain it like you would yoghurt to get labnah. Just give them a little bit of time to recover from their forced stasis and then see what they can do :). The pumpkin porridge is lovely. I use date syrup (the leftover date paste in the bottom of the vitamix pureed up with some rainwater) to make it and I add black beans (like the Koreans do) for protein and nutrition/fibre. I find that it doesn’t make me tired like regular porridge does. The Koreans add a little ground rice to thicken it but I just simmered my pumpkin till it was dryish and ate it.
LikeLike
Ah….Ok! Then it appears to be quite normal then 🙂 I had no idea what to expect and after getting yogurt the first day then milk, and they started floating I thought I had killed these precious grains!! Cool, thanks for that.
The porridge sounds very healthy, am not sure I could eat something like that in the morning but I imagine a great way to start the day.
LikeLike
I didn’t think that I could eat it either. I have come a LONG way since January last year when I didn’t eat breakfast or lunch but lived on white bread and butter and steamed potatoes (a form of “diet”). After mum died I stopped dieting cold turkey (truth of the matter is that I was eating a whole lot of “extras” aside from the bread, butter and potatoes because I was feeling deprived). Now I have lost 30kg effortlessly, I can walk around where last year my knee was so painful I couldn’t move much in winter and I have a new lease on life. I now eat breakfast, a bit of lunch (that’s my hardest meal to slot in now) and my evening meal and life is great :). I guess it’s just what you get used to really. I am now “one of those people” that I used to wonder how on EARTH they lived on what they ate…I now know :). The grains will start growing soon and they will start making the milk thicker. Let me know how it all goes. They might be having a bit of an identity crisis as well because for most of the time they got tossed into non-dairy milk. All of that milk has probably made them go hog wild! 😉
LikeLike
Cool, I’ll continue then and see how they go. I like them, they are like little friends in the kitchen making me stuff 🙂
I usually have fruit and yogurt, a smoothie or porridge for breakfast, rarely eat bread. Lunch I often forget leading to raids of dates or nuts etc mid afternoon. I like milk so am hoping the kefir will be a nice healthy addition there.
I am very similar with my fibro, just commented to Roger this evening this is the best winter I have had for pain, fatigue etc and I think it’s probably the cutting out of alot of wheat products.
LikeLike
I guess when we start to get “a certain age” we start to think about our health. I certainly did! Hopefully your kefir will settle down soon and will start delivering the goods you need. You can use the milk in smoothies etc. and as kefir has 40 – 60 strains of probiotic it’s a really healthy thing to be cultivating. I am freezing my excess non-dairy kefir in ice cube trays for adding to my smoothies 🙂
LikeLike
Yep, that certain age….
LikeLike