Orange Soup for Orange Days

I am lucky enough to work in an office where most of our artwork is hired from an art collection and every few months the artwork changes. It means that just as we are beginning to stop seeing the pictures, they change. At the moment I have a gorgeous bright orange piece of art beside my office door. And every time I wear in my orange cardigan, one of my colleagues comments on how well I complement the picture.

It just shows what a long way I have come from the days when I hated orange with a passion (I even had to be convinced to buy the orange cardigan instead of a purple one!). I say this in introduction to this soup as this is one of my current favourites that I make on a Sunday – or during the week if I can’t get myself organized on a weekend – and then put in my little tubs in the freezer for work lunches. I love the bright orange of this soup which comes from the pumpkin.

It is the sort of soup you can put anything in, although I focus on the orange for this one. Onion, carrot, celery, potatoes and garlic are my base vegetables. Often I put in creamed corn. My tin of creamed corn in the pantry had morphed into a plain old tin of corn kernels on Sunday night which was disappointing but corn is still good and adds to the orange. Cauliflower adds great texture and flavour.

I think I put a bit much salt in this time – a bit of honey might have helped – but the velvety texture of the pureed pumpkin is still lovely. At other time, I put in whatever I have, as the mood takes me, even once putting in a tin of peaches that had sat in the pantry way too long. As in most of my cooking, I generally try and put in lots of vegetables for interest and because variety is the best way of getting a good range of nutrients. This sort of soup is low in fat and helps get more vegetables in my diet!

I made this soup on Sunday night while my pie cooked. It will last me over two weeks of lunches at work. So now you can imagine me in an orange cardigan, near an orange picture with my orange soup!

Orange Soup
(enough for 10 lunches)

1 onion
2 cloves garlic
5 small carrots
3 sticks celery
3 small potatoes
1 kg pumpkin
½ cauliflower
300g tin corn kernels
2 tsp veggie salt (less would be ok, and maybe preferable)
Lots of black pepper

It is really just a matter of chopping up lots of veggies and adding them to the stockpot as I go, which takes most of the time. I start off with about 1 inch of water in the bottom of a large stockpot, and on medium high, cook onion, garlic, carrots and celery about 10 minutes. I keep adding veggies til most of them are in the stockpot and add enough boiling water from the kettle to almost cover the veggies (I like my soups on the thicker side). I think I let it simmer about 10-15 minutes. The I blend with a hand held blender.

On the Stereo:
Vauxhall and I: Morrissey