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Honour the pumpkin

Posted on October 31, 2014 | 7 comments

18,000 tonnes of edible pumpkin are thrown away every Halloween in the UK; that’s the equivalent of 1,500 double decker buses, according to the Independent.

Time to join the tweetathon using #pumpkinrescue hashtag.

The Ecologist reports on the #pumpkinrescue manifesto.

Here are a few points from the manifesto.

All supermarkets to make publicly available the amount of food waste they create and detail what happens to it.
All supermarkets to ensure safe and healthy surplus food is redistributed to those on low incomes.
Government to increase their investment in the Love Food Hate Waste campaign.

I am pleased with my organic pumpkin’s potential as a lantern. It has a flat bottom so won’t roll around and it is fresh with a long stem making it easier to lift off the lid.

I am even more pleased with my pumpkin’s nutritional qualities: gentle, soluble fibre, immune-boosting vitamins and minerals, as well as carbohydrates, providing sustainable, slow-release (yet low-fat) energy.

(Above para from a book I co-wrote, Make More of Squashes).

I want to honour the pumpkin as food.

The easiest way to prepare a pumpkin is to bake it. That way you only need to slice it in two, and scoop out the innards (put the inner ligaments in the compost bin and and bake the seeds for 5 minutes in a hot oven with soya sauce, or fry them).

Here’s a great blog on how to bake a pumpkin in ten steps, including cutting tips.

If you are making a lantern, then there is no escape: you have to make the effort of scooping out the flesh. So you might as well make the most of your hard work and not discard the goodness.

Use the pumpkin flesh in a soup with coconut milk/stock/water, and spices, or cubed in a stew.

What is your favourite pumpkin recipe?

Pan-fried pumpkin flesh atop a bed of curried coconut lentils

7 Comments

Posted in eating well on a budget, food, health, recipe idea, supermarkets, sustainable

Tagged food, pumpkin, rescue, supermarket, waste

Haricot beans and pumpkin

Posted on March 18, 2008 | 3 comments

A pan on stove with beans and cut up pumpkin and sweet potato

As a cook, I’d say my forte is ‘gunge’. OK, it’s never going to win a beauty contest but the concoction is reliable and balanced. What more do you want from a lifetime companion?

I had covered the dried organic haricots beans with water, soaking them overnight. The next day, I struck a light under their pan’s bottom and let the beans simmer away in bubbling hot water for a good hour and a half.

I fried a whole onion (sliced) in olive oil and added a dried chili, finely sliced. Wait. Chili is important. I did not discover it until mid-life. If it passed me by, could it have passed you by too? If so, I beg you to experiment with the fiery creature. Let me know how you get on.

I then attacked the half of a butternut pumpkin loitering in a forgotten corner of the fridge and after peeling and de-seeding it, then cutting it in cubes, I hurled it into the frying onions. After that, I felt calmer. After adding more olive oil, I let it slowly braise with the onions (with Neil Basilo’s tips for unctuousness ringing in my ears), stirring it occasionally to stop the mixture sticking.

Typically, I then lost my focus and did something else. Not good for a dish. It feels neglected and doesn’t give its all. Realising the pumpkin had gone too soft, I quickly peeled, cubed and boiled a sweet potato in another pan. This flirtation with another veg produced fresh bright orangeness (although I felt a bit disloyal to the overcooked pumpkin). Then I assembled them all with the drained beans (see above).

When the time came to serve, I heated it all up again extremely hot with brown rice from the night before (always blast cooked-again food with bug-obliterating heat).

Having morphed into a kind of risotto and topped with some fresh organic leaves, the dish didn’t look half bad (see below) and tasted even better.

Voilà – a classic gunge. Everyday fare. Might not get a fanfare. But treats you fair.