Pumpkin Soup Yumminess

I made this soup yesterday as part of my plans to cook something with pumpkin every week this fall.  While my husband and I were eating dinner together he made the following declarations about this soup:

"If they served food on Mt. Olympus, this would be it."
"I've never tasted anything this good before."
"I'm so glad you are good at the art of homemaking."
"I could eat this every day."
"I'm tingling because this is so good."

First, here is the original recipe for Velvety Pumpkin Soup with Bacon and Blue Cheese.  This recipe was my inspriation, but in the course of making the soup I realized that I made enough substitutions to warrent a writing out what I did in the form of a new recipe.  I recommend looking at what ingredients are available to you and making substitutions based on that.  For example, I substituted the garlic and onion because I didn't have a shallot.  Others probably don't have raw, dark wildflower honey or country bacon and would prefer looking at the original recipe.  I got most of my ingredients at our local farmer's market, but you could easily get most of these ingredients at any grocery store.

Ingredients
2 pumpkins, pureed using this method or method of choice* (see notes below before pureeing)
1 quart chicken broth (low sodium variety)
1 cup half-and-half
1 onion, sliced in half-inch slices
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup raw, dark, wildflower, local honey
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon cinnimon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 lb. local country bacon
crumbled blue cheese to taste

1. Put pumpkin puree, chicken broth, half-and-half, onion, garlic, honey, butter, bacon, and spices in a large crockpot
2. Cook on high for about 2 hours. Remove the bacon, cut off the fat part of the bacon and return to crockpot. Slice the meaty part of the bacon into 1cm cubes and return to crockpot.
3. Cook on low for about three hours. Remove the fat part of the bacon.
4. Serve in bowls and with blue cheese sprinkled on top as desired, garnish with parsley or wrinkled crinkled cress from the garden

* I like to remove the seeds and stringy parts before I put my pumpkin in the oven.  I also separate out the seeds and roast them in the oven when I'm done making the puree.  Pumpkin seeds are my favorite snack.  To roast the pumpkin seeds, set your oven to 385 degrees, put seeds on a cookie sheet and sprinkle with salt or seasonings of your choice (I like to mix a little bit of ground mustard, sage, and Toney's Chachere's Cajun seasoning.).  Bake in oven for 5 minutes.  Eat pumpkin seeds in the same way you would eat sunflower seeds.  You can also use this method to roast acorn or butternut squash seeds, which taste slightly different than pumpkin seeds but are also delicious. 

* When I make pumpkin puree, I always set aside some of the puree for my daughter.  This is enough puree to fill a large baby food jar.  Therefore I used a little less than two pumpkins worth of puree in this recipe.  I like being able to give Felicity the same food we are eating, and she really likes pumpkin.  If you have a baby eating semi-solid foods, I recommend saving some of the puree for him or her.

--Photo by Muffet