*Photography by Elisa Watson, Styling by Kate Bradley for Nourish Magazine May/June 2014.*

Melbourne is officially heading into the wintery weather. The mornings are cold, the days are overcast and rainy and the nights are even colder than the mornings. This weather for me means one thing, soup.

I find soups are perfect for winter. They are warming, they are nourishing and pack in a whole heap of vegetables. They are also nice and light for the evenings. Winter is the season that we tend to over indulge and hence a nice nourishing, nutrient packed soup at night will keep us from pigging out on stodgy foods and will instead keep us feeling good! So here is a delicious recipe for a Roasted Pumpkin & Sweet Potato Soup - always a go to on cold wintery nights.

This is another recipe in my 'Good Food for Busy People' recipe spread for May/June 2014 issue of Nourish Magazine. For the full spread check out Nourish Magazine in Coles, Woolworths and news agencies across Australia!

Serves 4

Ingredients
1 brown onion
3 cloves garlic
1/2 kent pumpkin
1 large sweet potato
3/4L vegetable stock
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cracked black pepper

1 tbsp olive oil

To serve
2 spring onions
1 tbsp chilli flakes
1/2 tsp cracked black pepper
1 tsp olive oil

Method
Roughly chop pumpkin and sweet potato to large pieces. Leave the skins on. Roll in olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Slow cook in oven until flesh soft.

While pumpkin and sweet potato are cooking, slowly cook onion in olive oil until light caramel colour, add garlic and cook 5 mins.

Remove skin from pumpkin and sweet potato. Discard the skins. Place in blender (I use my Vitamix blender as it gets the soup extremely smooth!) with the onion, garlic and veggie stock and blend until smooth.

To serve, sprinkle with chopped spring onions, chilli, pepper to taste and a drizzle of olive oil.