From scratch

Hopefully to the delight of my team leader in Buenos Aires (hi Vanesa), I write again about food. Wednesday is my cooking day after all, and add to that that it's Census day, I've got a lot of time on my hands.

What is Census day? Census day is when all businesses are closed (including the mall) as all are required to stay home for the Census takers to come to the door to ask the basic questions involving the census. How many times can I include census in one sentence? Sense us taking the census on the day of census. But I digress... What I have most enjoyed so far though is not being woken up by the clippity-clop of horses, or the bustling of motorcycles by our window. Sweet, sweet sleep!

The downside is that the meat store is closed. Then again, I'm always wanting to try new things, and so I've scraped together our vegetables and have begun creating a pumpkin lentil soup! The trick that I must include as well is that we have some stomachs to account for. One stomach does not like mushrooms (for shame!) and another gets really bad heart burn from tomatoes. The past few days has been especially rough on her since tomatoes have been the main ingredient.

I found this recipe and I'm hopeful, but also a little nervous as we don't have all the ingredients. Maybe you read about our lack of ingredients before in the Tonta post, but if not, I'll include a picture of everything.

The top left are the lentils being prepared. On the bottom left are the pumpkin pieces ready to be baked for the major ingredient of pumpkin puree. On the bottom right you see the prepared vegetable stock, as we don't have regular broth readily available. This is why cooking takes longer; you have to prepare the ingredients for the ingredients of the final product. It's kinda fun, as long as you have the time.

Oh my goodness! I just tasted the pumpkin puree and it is scrumptious! I hope that's a good sign for the whole meal!!

Praise the Lord for a puree machine!

Ok.. the time is coming to an end when they are said and done. Looks like the lentils are still a little hard, but it doesn't take away from the wonderful taste! I'm twice as excited because now I can make pumpkin puree from scratch which means I've completed half the battle for making pumpkin pie, or better yet, pumpkin cheesecake!!!

Oh yes, it was quite tasty!