Pumpkin soup

YUM! Even in this sweltering heat I still can't pass up on soup, and besides I had to do something with all that pumpkin! So simple yet so delicious:

Heat up a pot with a smidge of oil in the base. Add some cardomon seeds, mustard seeds, garam masala and garlic. Wait for the seeds to start popping and once they have finished popping or look like they are going to burn add some red lentils (~1 cup). Give them a quick stir, they don't need long! And then once the pot is nice and dry and the lentils have warmed up a bit drop in some vegetable stock. It's a good idea to have another pot with stock going on another burner and simply transfer liquid as required. Add some brown rice and simmer this mixture for about an hour, or until the lentils are starting to dissolve a bit. Continue topping up the mixture with stock and add some chopped pumpkin and carrot (even a pear if you have one) and cook all those vegies until they are soft. Once everything is cooked grab a stick mixer or transfer portion at a time to a blender and whiz it into a nice soupy paste! Add salt to taste and enjoy!

St Kilda Festival

Last weekend we went to the St. Kilda festival. On the way to the festival we designed our 'St Kilda festival coolness scale'. We also saw my parents on the tram in a shock case of coincidence, but that's another story. Here is the scale from least to most cool:

Least cool.

• Don't know what St Kilda is.
• Know of St. Kilda but don't know where it is.
• Know where St. Kilda is.
• Live in St Kilda but went away the weekend of the festival (ultra lame points here!).
• Don't know what the St. Kilda festival is.
• Know of the St. Kilda festival but don't know when it is.
• Know when the St Kilda festival was but still didn't go.
• Didn't know when the St Kilda festival was on, but when you found out you dropped everything to go!
• Went to the St Kilda festival. (This is us, so cool!!)
  
• Live in St Kilda and went to the festival.
• Manned a stall at the St. Kilda festival.
• Played music at the St Kilda festival.
• Sold Thai fisherman pants at the St. Kilda festival.
• Played bongo drums or didgeridoo at the St Kilda festival.

Most cool.

Tomorrow we are vegetarian

Our visit to the sustainable living festival on Sunday at Federation Square (Melbourne) was the final nail in the coffin for us to go vegetarian. A friend of Kath's went vegetarian this time a few years back and we thought that tomorrow (Pancake Tuesday) might be a good time for us to go vegetarian as well. The plan is to initially try it for 40 days and after that period assess whether we can continue indefinitely. Hopefully over the next 40 days we can be diligent enough to post up some thoughts about the whole process and maybe even post some tasty recipes.

Welcome

Welcome to our new blog! Kath doesn't actually know that we have this blog yet. I guess I should tell her tonight... Stay tuned for our rants, odd stories, recipes and travels.