Three Beautiful Things 12-24-2024: Swimming in Pumpkin Soup, My Love Life is Complete!, Gibbs Rises Out of the Dumps

1. It took me all afternoon and into the early evening turn a whole pumpkin into twelve cups of chopped pumpkin, chop a couple of large onions, celery stalks, and carrots, and to put the vegetables into our largest Dutch oven and cook them for a while, first in a cube of melted butter, doing my best to cover all the pieces, and then with the spices and seasonings added. 

Next, I covered the vegetables and pumpkin pieces with twelve cups of vegetable broth and simmered them for about a half an hour.

I took this emerging soup off the heat and, about 30-40 minutes later, I buzzed batch after batch in the blender and, PRESTO!, I was ready to refrigerate my assignment for our December 26th New Zealand Christmas dinner: Mum's Pumpkin Soup. 

The recipe reports that it feeds 4-6. We'll have twice that number of people at dinner so I doubled the recipe.  

I think I have enough soup to have a Pumpkin Soup Feed at the Elks Club. 

I'm thinking the recipe writer meant that it serves 4-6 if the only food being served at a meal is this soup with some bread. 

I'll see if Paul has a vat and a two-wheeled dolly on hand that I can use to wheel all this soup into Paul and Carol's house on Thursday! 

2. For our Christmas Day Clam Chowder Feed at Christy's, Christy assigned me some options and I decided I'd bring a vegetable tray with a dip. I had an experiment in mind for making the dip (it's a secret until I blog tomorrow) and I made that dip this evening. 

I'll reveal one thing: to make it, I needed to use my new electric frying pan and I fell in electric frying pan love again! Why, oh, why did I deny myself SEVEN YEARS of life in the kitchen without this old flame of mine? 

I won't look back.

I won't indulge in regret and heartbreak. 

I'll live in the present. 

I'll simply savor the joy of this glorious reunion and feel the warmth of our joyous future together. 

3. Headline: Huge Gibbs Breakthrough Today. 

Not only has he ended his Where's Debbie? Hunger Strike, today, on two, yes!, two separate occasions, Gibbs climbed up on my lap and relaxed so deeply, so contentedly, that both times he fell asleep.

Gibbs will be ecstatic upon Debbie's return in about ten days, but he's definitely made a transition out of the separation from Debbie dumps into being his lively, animated, bark-y, affectionate dog-self again.