Five things to do with leftover pumpkins #5frugalthings

So Halloween came and went, lots of trick and treating done, the kids actually spoke to the neighbours, everyone ate far too many sweets and hopefully a spookily good time was had by all.

If you made a pumpkin lantern, it is probably still grinning ghoulishly at you. But before you throw it away, consider this. According to the Guardian,  more than eight million pumpkins will be thrown out this week. Eight million! That’s a heck of a lot of food waste.

There are so many ways to use up the flesh from your pumpkin lanterns. It really doesn’t matter if they sat outside all night and have a bit of candle wax in them – it’s as cold as a fridge out there, so bring it in and just scrape any waxy or burnt bits off.

We have used most of our small pumpkins now, but still have two giant ones in the garden, so I think we will be eating pumpkin for some time!

As I did my review of frugal things we achieved in October a few days ago, I thought I would ring the changes with my weekly Five Frugal Things post to try to encourage you to actually eat the pumpkins you purchased for Halloween! Here’s some ideas for things to do with leftover pumpkins.

Five of my favourite things to do with leftover pumpkins

Freeze them

Firstly, if you don’t have a lot of time right now, freeze the pumpkin flesh for later. It can be used in all sorts of recipes.

You can either peel it and cut it into cubes and freeze it as it is or cook and pulp it, then freeze the pulp. It depends what you intend to use it for. It’s a good idea to weigh it and write the weight on the pulp if you freeze it like that.

Pumpkin soup

Soup is the quick and obvious thing to make with leftover pumpkins from your Halloween celebrations. Pumpkin makes a lovely thick and smooth soup and is particularly nice with some added spice.

I have a recipe for roasted pumpkin soup here or there is this one from the BBC Good Food website sounds nice.

Sweet pumpkin pie

This is how the Americans eat their pumpkin! It’s surprisingly nice – and I say that as someone who doesn’t generally like things I consider savoury in sweet recipes.

If you buy the pastry ready prepared, it is also super quick and easy to make, as in this recipe – another one from BBC Good Food.

Rice is nice

You could go for a super sophisticated approach with a delicious creamy and garlicky pumpkin risotto, like this one. This is one of my favourite things to do with leftover pumpkins.  It’s such a cheap and simple dish for something that tastes so nice.

I like this with a green salad or some kind of green vegetables like broccoli or green beans.

Cookie monster

Rather than making a pumpkin cake or muffins, as I often do at this time of the year, I am going to try some little pumpkin cookies this time. This recipe requires pumpkin puree, which is basically cooked pumpkin pushed through a sieve.

If you have children, get them to help you to remind them that pumpkin is actually a type of food. Kids love to cook and it will keep them occupied over half term.

There are actually hundreds of recipes on the internet, so you shouldn’t be short of things to do with leftover pumpkins if you don’t fancy any of my suggestions. Are you planning any interesting pumpkin creations?

As ever, I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Frugal Friday’ linky.