A Kiwi classic; pumpkin soup

There seems to less distinction made here between pumpkins and squash. All these are shown as examples of pumpkins on a NZ vegetable website I visited, although the one I see most often in stores is the whitish one, sitting at approximately 5 o'clock.

My post today is about a staple food here. One of the first foods that the boys were served in day care was pumpkin soup. They accepted it happily then and they love it now. 

Last night, Arram ate three bowls of it. Not long ago at lunch, he asked his mother to measure how fast he could finish a bowl of it. I don't know the results of the timing, but I think the only way he could have done it faster would be if he had been allowed to drink it directly from the bowl and he put off breathing for the duration of the attempt. Such appreciation of a soup is very gratifying to his Grammy who is happily producing yet another batch as I write this. (and Amiri ate 4 bowls, I'm reminded)  

I am not a huge fan. It's okay, but that's about as complimentary as my taste buds will allow me to be. Admittedly, my sixty plus years of considering steaks, ribs, and hot sauces haute cuisine have probably jaded me. I agree that it's hearty, healthy, filling, nutritious and even beautiful.  But it's the plain jane of soups. Now, the chili we had the other night, that's another story. Don't get me started. I could go on for hours.




I took a few photos while Jeanne prepared some today.

Remembering my recent post about eating like a Kiwi, I thought I'd try to keep you thinking along those lines with this addition to your recipe book.  

We like to buy chicken bones at Aussie Butcher to form a base for the soup.  You could use a whole chicken or any sort of chicken meat, but you don't want much meat, just chicken flavor.

Here are the ingredients and the proportions Jeanne used. They can vary. Pumpkin soup seems to be a 'fly by the seat of your pants' soup. 

Chop up the celery and the leek coarsely. Add some Lawry's salt and black pepper. Saute until they start to brown in butter. Don't substitute onions for the leek.  It won't be as good. 
(It doesn't have to be Lawry's. That is not a Kiwi seasoning. Regular salt is fine.)

Peel the pumpkin or squash and chop it up a bit. Pull the chicken bones out of the broth. If there is meat on them, pull it off and put it back in again. 

Put the squash into the pot and give it a good boil till the squash is done, then turn it way down and let it simmer low and slow. 

Use whatever you have to blend the soup until it's very smooth. Adjust salt and pepper. 

This picture doesn't look as yellow as the soup actually appears to me. I've had thick soup and thin soup. There is no rule about that. Your preference.
Jeanne made some ham and cheese toasties to go with a mug of this the other day.
Croutons are a good idea, or a basket of garlic bread.
Give it a shot. If you make too much, freeze it.   -djf

High tide at Bethell's Beach

I told you that I'd get back to see how this crack in the headland would splash at high tide. It's not exactly high tide right now, but close enough. 

Here we are back at the 'headland cracks'. Ever since we both crossed the Waitakere River, this girl has been striding along the beach as if she had a purpose. I found that she did. She was coming to check out the 'hole in the wall.'  She's impressed with the display too. Note that from this angle, and even at this distance, we can see right through the headland to the water on the other side.

She watched for a while, but then moved on. Here are both, quiet for the moment.

Okay, are you ready? Wait for it...

Whuu...

It's interesting that the water billows out from the bottom first. You can see water higher up, back in the recesses of the crack, and the whole thing is just about to burst up and out.

...uummmppp! 

 Like that!

And then it all splashes around for a moment or two and disappears. And this has been going on 24/7 for how long?  Wow.

"Wait a minute," you say. "What's all this about crossing the Waitakere River?"  What Waitakere River?  

If you look back to my first post about the spurting crack, and click again on the google maps link, you'll see the river shown. (maybe you noticed it then) It's best on the 'earth' setting. It's even labeled.  And you'll see how it passes the caves and flows into the Tasman.  

This first picture is of Allie and the boys walking along it back in '12. They're walking upriver. The caves I showed you recently are downriver from this point.  

Personally, the term 'river' makes the Waitakere sound bigger than it is. If Amiri  were to turn and walk across it here, the water would come to about his mid-thighs, at most. 

From this angle, you can see that this 'river' is more of a creek, brook, steam or at most, a rivulet. 

Whatever you call it, at it's 'mouth' it flows down over the beach and it needs to be crossed to get to the north side of Bethell's Beach where the 'cracks' are. It's very easy to cross. The sandy beach gives a very comfortable streambed to splash across.  

At high tide something interesting happens.

Every now and then, one of the larger of the high tide waves will 'run' up the river. Because the river water is moving downstream, and the high tide wave is trying to go upstream, there is a continuous 'rolling' of the wave and it travels up the river quite slowly. (slowly when compared to its speed coming on to the beach that is)   

1. Here we are at the 'mouth' of the Waitakere River. Downstream water on the far right meets upstream wave from, sort of, the left.  

2. This is about 25 yards upstream from the previous picture.  Here comes the wave. You can see that the wave is also moving across the higher beach area (left side of photo).
Makes me think of the Japanese tsunami videos. Bethell's  next to the river is very flat and the water from high tide waves comes in a long ways. I'll show you in a minute.

3.  Okay, here comes the wave moving toward us in the river. I wish now that I had timed how fast it moved upstream. About two yards per second I'd guess.   

4. And there it goes upstream from us. It slowly diminishes, but not until it is well up the river.

You can see in picture 3 especially, that the wave adds significant water to the river. When one of these high tide waves comes in, you do not want to be crossing the Waitakere. You will be thoroughly wet from water splashing you from two sides at the same time. 

That's not to say it's really dangerous then, just that if you were trying to get across with rolled up pant's legs, you won't make it while remaining dry.

These surfers are about to start across the river as such a high tide wave is coming in. In another 15 feet or so, they'll be in the 'river' channel and about another foot deeper in the water.  

This trio was surfing on O'Neil's where there are no rocks on the beach and where the surf is higher, due, I'm guessing, to the curved shape of the beach. 

Look how far away from the beach we are here.  This last wave just kept coming and coming, finding it's way inland.  No wonder the Japanese tsunami was so devastating. 
I just heard that Japanese scientists are predicting another significant earthquake there soon.  Pray that it doesn't spawn another tsunami. -djf