Henry & Tilly went pumpkin carving the other day, and they brought home a couple of extra pumpkins they hadn’t finished - which was a bonus as I could make soup…

• Large pumpkin
• 1 litre chicken or vegetable stock
• large knob of butter
• 4 large carrots
• 2 large onions
• cumin seeds
• ground cinnamon
• ground ginger
• nutmeg

Scoop the inside of the pumpkin with an ice-cream scoop. Keep the seeds to one side and chop the pumpkin flesh. Save the empty pumpkin either for use as a soup tureen or to make a lantern.

Fry the onions gently in the butter for 5 minutes with a few cumin seeds, taking care not to brown the onions. Add the chopped carrots, pumpkin and stock. Add salt, pepper, ground ginger and cinnamon to taste - I used about a quarter of a teaspoon of ginger & cinnamon - a bit more would probably have been even nicer. Simmer on a low heat, lid on for about half an hour. Whizz up with a hand blender or food processor and serve with crusty bread, grating nutmeg on top. Perfect after an autumn walk in the park!

For the seeds… put the oven on a low heat - no more than 125 centigrade. Wash the seeds removing any flesh or stringy bits, pat dry with kitchen roll. Place on a baking tray in the oven until quite dry - took about half an hour. You can then put them in salads, or do what I did - toss them in a little sunflower oil and lots of sea-salt - deeeelishous!

This is adapted from “Super Soups” - a tiny National Trust recipe book I picked up years ago in Northumberland.

- 1 head of celery.
- 1 large carrot.
- 1 large onion.
- 1 and a half pints (900ml) vegetable stock
- 75g grated cheddar cheese
- 100g grated stilton cheese

Trim the celery (optionally leave one or two stalks aside for later). Peel and chop the carrot and onion and place in a saucepan with the stock (I just use a veggie Oxo cube) and season.

Let it come to the boil and then simmer for about an hour.

Give the soup a whirr with a blender. Reheat in the pan and add the grated cheese.

If you decided to save some celery stalks now is the time to chop them into slices. Add them to the bowls when you serve to give the soup a bit of crunch.

Adapted from ‘Stones Spells for Magic Feasts’, a veggie cookbook from a cafe in Avebury, Wiltshire - near the stone circle.

• Fresh tomatoes
• fresh basil and/or dried herbs
• garlic
• onion
• cream
• red wine (optional)
• vegetable stock
• tomato puree

Halve and roast the tomatoes with garlic and onion, scattered with oregano and basil (we used dried mixed herbs and fresh basil). When skins start to blaken, pulp in the Magimix. Put the puree in a pan with some red wine (we skipped that with no ill-effects), stock and tomato puree. Whisk to combine, reheat gently on the stove and then stir in some cream or fromage frais (we used double cream) when it simmers. Just delicious.

I like make a chicken go as far as possible - typically we get a Sunday lunch, sandwiches the next day and a chicken pie out of one bird. Occasionally I make chicken stock but that can tend to get left unused in the freezer, so I tried making soup instead. Worked rather well.

• leftover roast chicken
• onions
• carrots
• celery
• garlic
• drop of white wine or vermouth
• small pasta (such as ditali lisci 58)
• spoon or two of double cream

Get all the meat off your chicken carcass and set aside - make a pie or sandwiches with most of it, but hold some back for your soup.

Make stock out of the carcass - put it in a saucepan, cover with water. Add a chopped onion, carrots, celery etc and a couple of crushed garlic cloves. Simmer for a couple of hours, skimming any scum or excess fat off the top.

When the stock tastes good, strain off the chicken bones and vegetables and discard.

Fry an onion and some garlic in another pan. When they are nice and soft chuck in some white wine or vermouth - I used a capful of Noilly Prat, but will be using rather more next time!

Add the stock and a couple of handfuls of small pasta and simmer to cook the pasta. Skim off any excess fat, but not all of it - I think you want this soup to be a little bit schmaltzy. Add salt and pepper to taste.

For a basic soup you could stop here, but I wanted to give this to one of my children in his packed lunch, so I added some chopped chicken breast and a spoon of double cream at this point, and whizzed it up in the blender. The little pasta pieces were pleasingly untouched by the Magimix blade, but the chicken meat was shredded.

I thought it was delicious and Henry drank every drop for school lunch the next day.