As I sit here on my chair next to the window and feeling the cool air flow in to the apartment. I’m dreaming about going to the fridge and heating up a nice bowl of pumpkin soup that I made last night, but I won’t, because I can’t.

I did however enjoy it during lunch today and it was amazing! So did my training partner Lauren and she said it was amazing as well. 🙂

Yesterday, right after I made my kiddos their cookies, I continued on with the pumpkin craze. We’ve had cool fall weather and some rain the past couple of days and I thought a pumpkin soup would be the perfect carbs to accompany my paprika chicken.

I’ve made many different versions of pumpkin soup before and most of them used some kind of cream. I’ve even used silken tofu as a cream substitute but for this one, because of restrictions of prep as well, I kept it pretty simple and pure. I must say, you don’t miss the cream at all!

Pumpkin Soup

1 whole bulb of garlic

1 small to medium size sweet potato (peeled and cubed)

1 medium red onion (cut into sections)

1 small pumpkin (peeled and cubed)

5-8 fresh sage leaves

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 tsp of coconut oil

1/2 tbsp of smoked paprika

1/2 tbsp of cayenne pepper

1-2 cups of no sodium, no fat vegetable stock (make your own if you can or you can even do with just water if in a pinch. The roasted vegetables are so flavorful that water will do)

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Place pumpkin, sweet potato, onion and sage in a baking dish. Lightly spray with coconut oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast in the oven for 35-45 minutes or until vegetables are very soft.

Cut the top of garlic bulb, wrap in aluminum foil and place in a ramekin. Smear a little bit of coconut oil on top and sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Place in the oven and let it roast for about 30 minutes.

Warning, the combination of garlic and the pumpkin with sage roasting in the oven will fill your house with the most amazing aroma!

Once the vegetables are done roasting, pick out the sage leaves except for 2-3 of them and set aside for garnish later. Transfer the vegetables to a dutch oven (or any pot you have) along with the roasted garlic (out of the skin of course).

Over medium heat and with an immersion blender, start mashing the veggies and adding the vegetable stock 1/2 a cup at a time.  I know it doesn’t look delicious in the picture but that’s what it looks like when you’re mashing veggies in a puree!

Keep adding the liquid and blending the mixture until you’ve reached desired consistency. I prefer my soup to be a bit creamier rather than thin, so I stopped at 2 cups of liquid. Again, this will depend on the size of vegetables that you started out with. Once I’ve reached the consistency that I want, I added the paprika and cayenne pepper and black pepper.

See the splatter on the side of my pot? Yeah it wasn’t easy taking a picture and blending at the same time! If you don’t have an immersion blender, you can do this in a blender or food processor as well although a food processor won’t give you “body” (air) that you would get with a blender to help thicken the soup. You may have to do this in batches with way as well.

I did save some of the pumpkin seeds and roasted them with some paprika and cayenne pepper. They made a great garnish along with the roasted garlic and sage leaves.

The hardest thing for me was that I couldn’t eat this right away! I had to wait til the next day and had to limit myself at 4 oz! It was delish! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.