Sweet Potato-Pumpkin-Chipotle Soup

Like many Americans, I found myself over-run with leftovers this past weekend. Instead of boring turkey-stuffing-cranberry sauce sandwiches, I whipped up this gem instead.

This one had some pre-planning involved and (as with all good soups) some serendipity.

Brian was making sweet potatoes complete with pecan-marshmallow topping as a side, but all the potatoes didn't fit in my casserole dish. I saved about a cup and half of the delicious sweet potato-butter-cream-brown sugar mix.

Brian was also making pumpkin gelato (clearly Brian should also have his own food blog). Due to some random pumpkin shortage in Georgia, we could only find a giant can of pumpkin so there was plenty left over for me, probably another cup and a half.

I had the foresight to keep the turkey carcass and turned it into delicious turkey stock. This was my first attempt at making stock and I'm not sure why I don't do it more often. I took the turkey carcass, some celery, two onions, a few cloves of garlic, a sprig of rosemary, and some thyme. Covered it all with water and simmered it for four hours. You'll need a big stock pot for this and, if you want to make your life easy, one of those fantastic multi-pot inserts useful for draining pasta. This will make a ton of stock so make sure you have freezer space for it, or want to use it all within a week.

Now for the soup: In a large pot (I used an 8 quart), mix together the pumpkin and sweet potato. I like food spicy and had some leftover chipotles in adobo in my fridge so I added three chipotles and some of the adobo sauce and a pinch of cumin. Stir this up a bit. Add in as much stock as you'd like. I added about 4 cups since I didn't want the soup terribly thin. I added a pinch of salt, but if you're using canned stock this might be unnecessary. To get the chipotles chopped up and worked into the soup, I used a hand blender. No hand blender? You could either chop up the chipotles before adding them to the soup or use your blender to mix it up. If you're using the blender, make sure you let the soup cool a bit first and only fill the blender about half way, unless you like to clean up messes. Simmer until its heated through and enjoy!