Did you know that it is estimated that 22 million pumpkins are wasted at Halloween in the UK? This is a staggering amount of perfectly edible food being thrown away. So we are challenging you lovely people of Aldbourne to do things a bit differently this year.

To give you a helping hand, we asked our amazing supporters to send in their favourite pumpkin recipes to inspire you to keep your pumpkins out of landfill this year.

Pumpkin Pasta with (Goat’s) Cheese and Sage Butter

800g pumpkin, peeled, deseeded and cut into 2cm cubes
2tbsp olive oil
300g tagliatelle or penne pasta
85g butter
4 tbsp chopped sage plus extra leaves to serve
25g pine nuts
175g goat’s cheese (or any cheese!)

Heat the oven to 200C/fan 180C. Place the pumpkin on an oven tray, toss in the
olive oil and season well. Roast for 30 mins until tender.

Meanwhile cook the pasta according to pack instructions until al dente. Drain,
reserving a cupful of the pasta water, and return to the pan with enough of the
reserved water to prevent it drying out.

When the pumpkin is cooked, stir into the pasta. Then heat the butter in a
frying pan and add the chopped sage, pine nuts and sage leaves.

Cook over a medium heat until the butter and nuts are starting to brown and the sage goes
crisp. Lift out the whole sage leaves with a slotted spoon.

Pour the mixture into the pasta and crumble over the cheese.

Toss thoroughly until the cheese starts to melt.

Divide into bowls, season with more black pepper and top with the crisp whole sage leaves.

Roasted pumpkin seeds

Pumpkin seeds
Salt
Olive oil

Place the pumpkin seeds in a sieve and rinse to separate the seeds from everything else.

Boil the pumpkin seeds in salted water for 10 minutes.

Drain the seeds and place them on a baking sheet.

Drizzle over olive oil and toss the seeds to coat them in oil.

Bake the seeds in the over at 200C for 10 – 20 minutes (this will depend on the size of the seeds).

Take the seeds out of the oven when they are lightly browned.

Cool before eating.

For those of you with a sweet tooth

This Halloween Pumpkin Cake from BBC Good Food comes highly recommended.

Or, this recipe for Pumpkin Muffins offers a healthier alternative.

Don’t fancy eating it straight away?

If you are sick of the sight of pumpkin after all those hours spent carving you can still save it from ending up in the bin.

Just cut it into chunks and then roast it. Once roasted you can either freeze the chunks to make into soup at a later date or you can puree it and add it to smoothies.

Leaving pumpkins out for wildlife

If you can resist the recipes above, and your pumpkin is still looking good after Halloween, you could spare a thought for wildlife instead. Pumpkin makes a great snack for birds and squirrels. But please don’t just leave them on the ground. Pumpkin can be harmful to certain animals including hedgehogs. If you do leave out your pumpkins make sure you put them off the ground (on bird tables where possible) out of reach of hedgehogs and remove them as soon as they start to rot.