Tale of a Pumpkin

We have a rather extensive Halloween celebration at our place.  I won't go into it, but it does generally involve pumpkin soup.  We don't have a recipe, we just wing it every year, keeping it pretty savory with chicken stock and canned cream and spices.

We grew some decent winter squashes this year, not a huge number but still nice.  But no pumpkins.  We we bought carving pumpkins early but waited to see if the pie pumpkins would hit a sale.  We waited until right up until the last trip planned into town before Halloween and . . . you guessed it, the place we were at had no pie pumpkins.  Zilch.  Nada.  I wasn't on the excurd so I checked the data bases and located plenty of them at a different store, which also facilitated pizza for that night, which relieved everyone of responsibility except the driver.  Oh well.  A magnificent, huge, decorative pie pumpkin was procurred, and on sale to boot.

We had our pumpkin carving ritual the day before Halloween, so we opened that pie pumpkin up too, and carved enough of its generous flesh out to be the base for the next day's soup.  After the soup was made, it served as the serving bowl.  Because we had socially distanced guests for the festivities, it was served outside, with a caldron of apple cider smoking dry ice.  When all were sated, there was still enough soup for a soup and salad night the next week.  

The rest of the pumpkin went into the stove to "poop" (cook until soft).  The rind was cut off and the rest of the flesh put through the blender, and saved in pie making measures.  It made enough pumpkin to make eleven pies.  Then the chickens finished off the rind.

And that is the tale of the pumpkin.