Autumnal winter squash and ginger soup

When I found two of my squashes lying rotten on the ground, I decided it was time to harvest.

In terms of storage, I've had to compromise. Not having a cool room to put them in (the shed absolutely boils when it's sunny), I've decided to store them as decorations in the lounge.

I've already eaten a couple of them in soup.  It was tasted of autumn (and would have been vegan if only I'd used a different vegetable stock, but didn't make my husband complain about lack of meat so must have been good.)

Here's the recipe (all amounts are approximate and can be varied), you will need a blender or similar device to blend this, although it's probably pretty nice even without blending:

Autumnal winter squash & ginger soup

Ingredients
2-3 tbsp olive oil
1 bay leaf
2-3 tsp garlic, crushed or chopped (I used frozen)
2-3 tsp ginger, crushed or chopped (I used frozen)
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp dried rosemary
2 medium onions, diced
2 large potatoes, cubed into c. 1 cm cubes (skin left on)
500 g carrots, sliced (skin left on)
1 medium and 1 small sweet dumpling winter squash, deseeded and roasted with the skin still on
1 vegetable stock cube
boiling water, enough to cover veg (probably about a pint)

Method:
0. Roast the squash in advance. See link. NB I roasted mine by halving them, scooping out the seeds, smearing them in olive oil and putting them on a baking tray on the bottom shelf of fan oven for an hour at 190 degrees while I was roasting some beef on the shelf above.
1. Heat oil in a large saucepan on a low heat and add bay leaf, garlic, ginger, cumin, nutmeg and rosemary.
2. Add the chopped onions and fry until soft, stirring occasionally.
3. While the onions are sauteeing, prepare (=wash and cube into 1 cm cubes) the potatoes. Add these as soon as the onions are nice and soft.
4. Keep stirring the veg in the pan occasionally and while doing this prepare (=wash and slice) then add the carrots.
5. Keep stirring the veg in the pan occasionally and while doing this separate the squash from its skin and add the flesh of the squash to the pan of veg. I recommend spooning/scraping the flesh of the squash out with a spoon.
6. Crumble in the stock cube into the pan, then add the boiling water to cover of the vegetables.
7. Bring to a simmer, put the lid on the pan, turn the heat down very low and leave on a low heat for 20 minutes.
8. Allow to cool until cool enough for your liquidising device, remove bay leaf and liquidise in batches. If the soup is too thick for your tastes, add more water.
Serve with crusty bread or any other bread you like eating with soup.

I also decided to harvest the final courgette.

It still feels firm and produces a sound that sounds like it's firm on the insides when I tap it, so I think it's still good. I'm going to make curried marrow soup with it. I'm almost certainly going to adapt the recipe, partly as I have no idea what they mean by the instruction "cut the ends of the marrows", partly because I'm using an outsized courgette instead of a marrow and partly because I habitually adapt recipes to match the ingredients I have in the house.
Update: made the soup, it needed two saucepans to fit all the courgette in. It wasn't as nice (or as pretty) as my squash soup and I had to add extra curry powder for flavour (and also some olive oil for texture).
Update 2: both the courgette soup recipes on my blog in 2017 taste much better than curried marrow soup, especially this one, but also this one.