First-Day-of-School-Snow-Shutdown-Inspired-Roasted-Pumpkin Soup
January 16, 2024 |
| Never thought I would enjoy pumpkin soup like I did tonight |
Good evening beautiful people,
So the first day of my last semester here got to a 'false start' - but had an amazing finish...think roasted pumpkin soup amazing. Before you say it, I, too, never thought I would enjoy pumpkins enough to say they are amazing but I think I got the secret ingredient - school getting shut thanks to snow (if you read my last snow post re: migraines and seizures, this is a lighter read).
The story of this recipe starts last night when it started snowing and we got emails from school saying that we will have a delayed start today (which happens to be the first day of the semester). For my Kenyan peeps, on snow days, school has a delayed start to give people time to slowly and safely get to their places of work/school. Delayed start simply means that class start time is pushed down and duration shortened.
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| Snow build up from last evening to this morning |
I had a 9am and a 10am class. The 9am ended up being cancelled and the 10am pushed to 11am. My plan was to catch the 10am bus, get the books I'd borrowed via interlibrary then locate my class (and 'book' my spot for the semester - The unwritten rule: where you sit on the first day of class, becomes your spot for the whole semester). I did not check my phone while on the bus so missed the notification when the 'higher-ups' decided to close school for the day, since it was still snowing.
Me, who hates the cold, got dressed (in almost all my clothes - my idea of layering is wearing as much as possible, until my snow boots and winter coat say that is all the room we have), got on a bus, only to get to school and see a notification that school had been cancelled for the day.
First of all, who cancels school 30 minutes before scheduled classes? Why wasn't this in last night's email? Also why is the library closed? I need to pick my books....these were some of my frustrations.
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| Top Pics: Downtown Lancaster and School Bus-Stop. Bottom Pics: Look how deserted school looks |
Frustrations that kept somersaulting in my mind as I waited for the next bus...I also started thinking about the things I would bake when I got back to my apartment - I needed something to warm me up and to warm the air in my apartment. As I was debating on either to bake 'my world famous' banana bread for the 100th time, I remembered that I had gotten a squash/pumpkin/butternut (not sure which is which) last week that I could experiment with. I ended up making a bowl of roasted pumpkin soup...find the steps in the captions.
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| Started by dividing the squash/pumpkin/butternut? into three, removed all the seeds, coated it with olive oil, salt and black pepper, roasted skin side up for 50 minutes at 400 degrees. |
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| After roasting, I fried onions, green peppers, garlic, an array of spices for a couple of minutes then added the roasted squash/pumpkin/butternut? and some milk into the mix. After all the milk had been absorbed, I poured everything into my (fruit) blender, and blended until I had a soft smoothie like texture |
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| Poured it into a bowl, toasted some multigrain bread and BABY!!! BABY!!! BABY!!! this meal was the truth...the trick is in the roasting and the spices…and maybe snow |
This was a water into wine, lemon into lemonade type of day. In Kenya we say 'siku njema huonekana asubuhi' a good day is seen in the morning. Well, a great semester is seen on the first day...and despite the false start, the tastiness of that soup and how the rest of the day turned out is a sign that this semester will be one for the books...and I cannot wait to share all the amazing things I get to learn in my classes, and all the extra-curricular things (like making bowl-licking good pumpkin soup).
Here's to a lovely final semester ahead.
Sending love and light,
Sitawa
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