A-B-C Frugality

Frighteningly Resourceful: Clever Ways to Use Your Leftover Halloween Pumpkins

The costumes are packed away, the candy’s been demolished and the trick or treaters have all retired with their little tummies full of sweets.  You’ve planned a few awesome recipes for all that leftover Halloween candy and hit the clearance sales for some awesome goods for next year’s frighteningly fun holiday, but what’s a frugal parent to do with those leftover pumpkins?  Carved or intact, there are plenty of uses for those huge orange orbs sitting on your doorstep.

If your pumpkin has not been carved yet, consider one of these ideas:

• Why not let it hang out for a while? While there is a ton of pressure to toss away all memories of the glorious harvest season and hang up stocking while you deck the halls, pumpkins make great decorations for the Thanksgiving table and serve as a great visual reminder of the abundance of the season.  Keep them out, place a few acorn squash or gourds next to them, and enjoy the last few weeks of harvest before the yuletide greetings dominate the air.
• Cut them up and make pumpkin seeds and pureed pumpkin.  Especially with the odd shortage of canned pumpkin this year, its so much cheaper to can your own pureed pumpkin than buy it in-store. If you aren’t up for canning it for later use, cut it into chunks and freeze it to be pureed when you need it for a pie or soup.

If your pumpkins have been already been carved, you still have plenty of options for repurposing:

• If your Jack O’ Lantern is still fairly fresh (carved within the last day or two and free of gnats or other little buggers) chop it up into cubes and use it immediately or freeze for later use).  See below.
• Turn them around to show only the uncarved side, and reuse them as decorations for Thanksgiving.  If the weather is relatively cool in your area and the pumpkins are out of direct sunlight, they should be a-okay to last another 3 weeks or so.
• Use it as a vase to hold Mums, daisies, or other seasonal flowers.  Or fill it with pinecones, twigs, acorns and other natural insignia of the season of plenty.
• Fit a flowerpot into the inside of the pumpkin and place the carved side against a fence or the house; you’ll have a festive planter that will last at least a month or so.
• Use them to make a harvest scarecrow.  As they start to crumple with age, the wrinkled and nubby skin of the pumpkin will give your scarecrow some character.
• Once the Jack O’ Lantern is mushy and less than attractive, let your kids have a blast kicking it around the yard in some old sneakers until it’s broken into a few pieces and then throw it into your compost pile (because you do reuse kitchen scraps by adding them to a compost pile, right?  Confession:  I don’t.  I can’t stand earthworms, they gross me out. We feed our pumpkins to the goats).

Easy Canning Alternative #1: Par-Boil Pumpkin for Freezing

1. Chop the pumpkin into small chunks, and put them in boiling water for five minutes. This process is called blanching.
2. Drain the pumpkin pieces in a strainer, and let them cool.
3. Once they are cool to the touch and dry, you can put them in freezer-proof containers, like the millions of Ziploc bags or cheap Rubbermaid containers we’ve all acquired.

Easy Canning Alternative #2: Baking Pumpkin for Freezing

1. Cut pumpkin into small chunks and place on a baking sheet at 500 degrees Farenheit.
2. Once it’s slightly browned, let the pumpkin cool, and put into freezer-proof containers as described above.  Once you find that perfect pumpkin pie or muffin recipe, all you’ll have to do is pull it out of the freezer, thaw it and puree in a blender, if necessary.

by Nadia