Pumpkin carving is a monstrous waste of food

Don’t get us wrong, we absolutely love carving pumpkins here! It’s one of those wholesome autumn activities that we look forward to all year, the trouble is, when we’re done, most of the actual pumpkin ends up in the food recycling bin. In fact, the UK wastes 18,000 tons of pumpkin every year! That’s 1,500 double decker buses worth of edible pumpkin!

This year we want to make a change, so we trawled though our favourite foodie blogs and found a spooktacular amount of food inspiration to keep our pumpkin waste to a minimum and we wanted to share our top 5 findings with you.

So grab a pumpkin spiced latte and take a look at what you can do with all your leftover pumpkin guts!

1. Creamy pumpkin risotto with bacon and leeks

When the nights draw in we all crave a little comfort food and a nice creamy risotto is right at the top of our list! Add some delicious pumpkin and of course some bacon and ‘My Name is Yeh’, you have our attention!

Blog: My Name is Yeh
Click for Recipe

2. Sausage and pumpkin casserole

More comfort food in the form of a good old fashioned casserole from the guys at ‘Hungry Healthy Happy’. Of course you can put pumpkin in this delightful dish, the more the better!

Blog: Hungry Healthy Happy
Click for Recipe

3. Baked pumpkin with mushroom & leek stuffing

Ok, so what if you’re really bad at carving pumpkins but you still want to play along? How about this little beauty from ‘Greedy Gourmet’?!

Blog: Greedy Gourmet
Click for Recipe

4. Pumpkin Loaf

A quick leaf through ‘Elizabeth’s Kitchen Diary’ turned up this fantastic Pumpkin Loaf recipe. Why not knock one up and enjoy a couple of slices every time you watch a scary movie. Goes great with a cup of tea and a blanket (to hide under)!

Blog: Elizabeth’s Kitchen Diary
Click for Recipe

5. Curried pumpkin and parsnip soup

Now we’re talking! Curried pumpkin soup from ‘A Mummy Too’ in front of a roaring fire whilst watching The Simpsons Treehouse of Terror! Toast up some of those pumpkin seeds for the garnish and you got yourself a delicious and healthy meal!

Blog: A Mummy Too
Click for Recipe

So there we have it, our top 5 pumpkin dishes for you to try this Halloween. We really want to see your carved pumpkins and your pumpkin dishes, so why not join in our #NoPumpkinWaste challenge by tweeting a picture of your Jack-o-lantern and the dish you created with it, to the hashtag #NoPumpkinWaste and we’ll choose our favourite!