Composing a witty title is too taxing for my marshmallow brain.

My sympathy for those suffering from the flu is considerable, but the fact remains: being surrounded by sick people sucks. Today's tasty snack is brought to you in the spirit of cheering up the winter sickie (and making them less annoying) by feeding them tasty things. Feeding people tasty things fixes many problems.

So I present: Steamed Pumpkin (with whatever aromatics you damn well feel like).

Take a pumpkin. Doesn't matter how much. Peel & de-seed said pumpkin, and chop it into bits. Doesn't matter how big. Peel some garlic cloves (generally I use 1 head of garlic per pumpkin, but it depends on how garlic-y you want your end result, so experiment) and slice up some ginger - don't bother peeling. Steam the whole lot until the pumpkin is tender. Take the ginger bits out, but leave the garlic in.

Mash the steamed pumpkin-y goodness; depending on the consistency you're after, go ahead and add some or all of the steaming water (or not).

As a snack on its own, this is pretty tasty. It's also a good way of infusing pumpkin (or whatever) with flavour before you make soup out of it, and there are plenty of other options: it's pretty damn easy to turn into a bunch of other things (i.e. add to a hummus recipe for sweet-tangy chickpea awesome; hold off on the water, drain some salmon & add a beaten egg or two, & make patties... use your imagination).

The flu's been kicking my arse for about a week now. I'm too lazy to actually work under this kind of duress, so in the absence of actual postage I offer unto you a lil ceramic elephant. He's pretty cute, no?

Right, now I'm going back to bed. I will say this for stupid bodyache - it's helping me get a lot of knitting done, now that I've reached my TV limit. Soundtrack for knitting: CANADIANS! (k. d. lang, Neil Young, Our Lady Peace, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Anna & Kate McGarrigle, Barenaked Ladies, The New Pornographers, Raine Maida, Tegan & Sara. It's a strange playlist.)