Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Pumpkin Pie Soup

A while back, Petra and I found a volunteer pumpkin patch on the banks of Antietam creek. One of the fruit made its way to our home. We added it to onion soup. Consumption of the end product required mastery of gag reflexes, a talent acquired in the third world. At Thanksgiving, we were the recipients a pumpkin of blue ribbon fair proportions. Last week fugitive mice were privileged to the following conversation.

Parsimonious Paul: “We need to eat that pumpkin.”
Winsome Wife: “Let’s make it into pumpkin pie.”
Parsimonious Paul: “But I don’t like pie crust.”
Winsome Wife: “That’s ok, pie crust isn’t very healthy anyway. We’ll just make a bunch of filling.”

Plans proceeded accordingly. The pumpkin proved obdurate and Petra was unable to penetrate its tank-like hide. I fetched a saw and reduced it to a heap of mangled chunks. Petra piled these onto every baking dish in the house and the oven kindly stretched itself to accommodate.
Sometime later, after reducing the chunks to three gallons of orange mash, Petra discovered that we lacked several critical ingredients, most notably sugar. Fugitive mice heard something like this:

Winsome Wife: (in deep distress) “We don’t have any sugar, or A, or B, or C, or … X, or Y, or Z.”
Parsimonious Paul: (spoken sadly) “Well, I guess we could go buy some of that.”
Winsome Wife: (Cheerfully) “Nevermind. Sugar doesn’t have nutritional value anyway. And it’s not healthy! Why should we pay for it?”
Parsimonious Paul: (dubiously) ok…

It doesn’t taste like pie, but it’s far better than the onion flavored brew we choked down last month. We only have 1.4 gallons to go…

11 comments:

Jennifer Payne said...

You guys are hilarious!!! :) And I love pumpkin soup! :)

Jan Robert (Robby) Heiberg said...

Paul - you're an awesome story teller :D

Joel said...

What a predicament! Perhaps procuring a few
recipes from Kelsey and Saralyn
would prove profitable for Parsimonious Paul and Peerless Petra. Pumpkin-Cranberry Granola seems to be particularly appropriate for your predicament (and doesn't include much in the way of sweetening, from what I hear), although I'm personally partial to the powerful Mayan Wonder Bars! (Barry can attest to the peculiar potency of said bars!)

Jan Robert (Robby) Heiberg said...

Paul, is that the pumpkin you picked up by the Antietam creek when I was there in October? I certainly hope you didn't eat a bad pumpkin...

Petraglyph said...

Husband, thanks for being an adventurous eater. Well, at least you are most of the time... :-) Maybe we should try those Mayan wonder bars next?

Paul said...

Robby, we did eat the pumpkin from the creek. it was perfectly healthy, but we badly botched the cooking.

Wonder bars sound fine. Petra and I mostly live off charity, so our larder consists of stuff others have tried and found wanting. Someday we may have the funds to buy food and follow recipes, but until then we shall keep on eating pinecones and applesauce.

Kelsey said...

LOL.. the preface to the post on my blog was most enlightening. Got to love creativity.. we have been feasting on a few crustless pumpkin pies ourselves, but they contained a sugar equivalent.

Paul said...

you really ought to try it without sugar. then the true goodness of the pumpkin flavor shines through.

We're down to .5 gallons.

The View from Great Island said...

we have a few more blue ribbon pumpkins you can obtain charitably at christmas so don't despair

Jonathan Gerrans said...

Ha ha! rather humorous, sir. :) I guess I haven't checked back in a while...I see I have missed a couple posts. Ahh well, that's what finals will do to you. Definitely try the Mayan wonder bars, they truly are a wonder! They sustained us quite well on our backpacking trip, as well as pleasing our palates!

Jonas said...

I don't know whether to attribute your prodigous consumptory powers to fine culinary talent, rabid hunger, or possibly both.