100-Ft. Diet Challenge--Meal #2

This is week 2 of the 100-ft. diet challenge and meal #2 was Pumpkin-Kale Soup with Mushrooms. I usually hesitate to make soup because, whether I follow a recipe or totally wing it, I never seem to get it right. But for the next few weeks, I'm going to be depending heavily on my reserve of homegrown pumpkins, and pumpkin soup seemed like an obvious thing to try. I looked through a lot of pumpkin soup recipes, but in the end I decided to adlib it. It came out with a rich, thick (but not too thick) broth that was really delicious. Here's the recipe:

Pumpkin-Kale Soup with Mushrooms

Homegrown ingredients:
1 small pumpkin (approx. 2 lbs.), peeled, seed and cut in chunks.
1 1/2 cups chopped kale
4 small cloves garlic, minced

Purchased ingredients:
Butter
White wine (local)
1 c. crimini mushrooms, chopped (organic)
Olive oil (local)
1/2 small yellow onion, chopped (organic)
2 14.4-oz. cans chicken broth
1/4 tsp. thyme
sea salt
ground pepper

Melt butter in large saucepan, add chopped mushrooms and a splash of wine and saute a few minutes. Remove mushrooms and set aside. Add olive oil and saute onion and garlic. Add chopped kale and saute a couple minutes more. Add broth and bring to a boil. Add pumpkin and cook until tender. Add seasonings, then puree. Return to pan and add mushrooms and any liquid from the mushrooms. Simmer a couple more minutes and serve.

Read about last week's meal here.