Pumpkin Soup (I)
Dish: Soup
Taste: 3
Preparation: 5
Recipe: 4
Cost: $$
Repeat? Maybe
http://soup.allrecipes.com/az/BchlrsCrmyPmpkinSp.asp
Taste: Well, as prepared it tasted like … uh … potato. I added pumpkin pie spice and spices and it tasted a little more like pumpkin pie than bad potato soup. The pumpkin wasn’t really noticeable until the extra spices were added. Or, well, not really “not noticeable” … bland. I couldn’t really distinguish the pumpkin and the potato. With the spices it helped. I think that if I redid the recipe with more spices in the prep stage it would work better. Maybe not potato soup for a base, too
Preparation: Fairly simple. Mix cream of potato soup with pumpkin and cream. OK. VERY simple.
Recipe: I left out the croutons, they may have helped the taste. I think with a cream of celery or similiar soup base, the croutons might be good to give body/depth to the soup. It DEFINITELY needs more seasoning and spice. I’m thinking maybe 1.5-2 T of pumpkin pie spice (or similiar) to draw out the taste.
Cost: Cream-of-Soup. Can O’ Pumpkin. Cream. Croutons. Actually, the last two are the only things I didn’t have around the house to begin with 
Cream we actualyl bought cream, croutons we didn’t do (see above). Pumpkin is heavy on sale around the holidays you’re likely to do this, but even otherwise it’s easy to stock it then. The croutons youcould make yourself (allrecipes has a few recipes for some options; might try like a cinnamon crouton if i do this recipe again). Not too bad, but the base recipe only really serves 3. It says 6, but when we made it, we determined that 6 is as an accompaniment dish. Like at a party, instead of Gazpacho or Borscht you serve Pumpkin.
Repeat: I say maybe b/c, while I didn’t like how it turned out, i think with the modifications listed here it might be an OK recipe. We’ve got 3 or 4 other recipes for pumpkin soups that we bookmarked, so we’ll probably try those instead. But if we get through those, I might come back to tweak this one. Or since it is so small, it’d be possible to do a quick batch so i might do that.