I took no care of myself at all over the summer, and mostly comfort-ate at my dad’s bedside. I went to one wedding at the start of August and another at the end, and assumed I (my mother) had managed to shrink my favourite dress between the two; it was actually down to a month-long feast of brioche and Minstrels and buckets of milky coffee and not a single piece of fresh fruit or veg. 

As the season turns (or doesn’t, as it happens - it’s still too warm for me to wear tights, goddammit) I’m drawn to autumn vegetables: squashes, etc. I want to *cook* dumpling stews, but my overheated body doesn’t want to eat them. So here’s a nice meal with those flavours, but still (relatively) light (on a scale of Nigella to Hugh F-W, it’s somewhere in the middle).

Pumpkin Soup (serves 6-8, or use leftovers as a pasta sauce)

Olive oil

1 onion, diced

1 large carrot, peeled and chopped

1 pumpkin (approx the size of a human head), peeled, deseeded and chopped into chunks the size of half a human thumb

Salt & pepper

4 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped a bit

2 tsp paprika

2 tsp cumin

1 tbsp red wine vinegar

1 can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

1 and ½ litres of tap water

150ml double cream (half a small tub - you’ll use the other half for dessert)

A good sourdough loaf

Over a gentle heat, cook the onion for a couple of minutes, then add the carrots and pumpkin and cook for 5-10 minutes, until they are all softening and mashing at the edges. Add a large pinch of salt and a couple of twists of pepper (or however you want to measure it), garlic, paprika and cumin and stir over a medium heat for another 5 minutes. 

Add the red wine vinegar, beans and water, bring to a boil, then cover and leave to simmer on a gentle heat again for 25 minutes. Once all the veg is soft soft soft, add the cream and blitz with a stick blender/food processor until smooth. Eat with a hunk of sourdough loaf, or a slice of white Hovis for all I care. It’s all good. 

Passion fruit Fool (serves 4) 

150ml double cream (aka the rest of that small tub)

6 tbsp yoghurt 

4 passion fruits 

DISCLAIMER 1: I wouldn’t normally bandy about with something as exotic as passion fruit, if only because I only ever see them when I’m slinking into Waitrose for a free coffee and I hear my other half’s voice in my head saying, ‘Think how many family apples you could get for that price.’ But I happened to be walking through the market today (#procrastination) and I got 4 for 50p. Joys. 

DISCLAIMER 2: I found three pots of yoghurt in the fridge, two of which had gone entirely brown-grey, and one of which had only started to at the top. Long-handled spoons are your friend, people. 

Beat the cream until starting to stiffen. Add the yoghurt, and the passion fruit seeds. Mix. Spoon into bowls, and if you’re serving infants, see how quickly they’ll switch from revolted suspicion to giddy wolfing when they find out it’s called a Fool.

Bien manger.