Photo by Nesster
As we approach Thanksgiving and the end of the harvest season, you may still have uncarved pumpkins hanging around as part of your seasonal decor. Rather than tossing them, consider these frugal 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 when you start to 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.
• Make pumpkin seeds and homemade pumpkin puree. 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.
• Use it as a vase. Carve out the inside and use it to hold mums, daisies, or other seasonal flowers. Or fill it with pinecones, twigs, acorns and other natural insignia of the season of plenty.
• Make a natural planter. Fit a flowerpot into the inside of the pumpkin. You’ll have a festive planter that will last at least a month or so.
• Make a harvest scarecrow. Carve a face for your scarecrow. As it starts to crumple with age, the wrinkled and nubby skin of the pumpkin will give your scarecrow some character.
• Add it to your compost pile. Before your pumpkin starts to rot, 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.
Nadia is a young Army wife and stay-at-home mom to two adorable little kids. She enjoys bargain shopping and finding the hottest and cheapest deals for her readers and blogging about her frugal living adventures as a military mama at A-B-C Frugality. When she’s not blogging or chasing a naked toddler, you can find her working hard to finish up her Bachelor’s degree in Education or reading the latest Twilight book.
Cherity
MSM had a guest post on making pumpkin puree…it was super simple and only took about 40 minutes from pumpkin to freezer!
https://www.moneysavingmom.com/money_saving_mom/2009/10/guest-post-making-your-own-pumpkin-puree.html
Claire at Saving Money Plan
The natural planter idea is really, really cool and I totally like it!!
JDaniel4's Mom
These are great tips. We still have pumpkins in front of your house. I am going to add a beak and some feathers to them for Thanksgiving.
Teresa
Great! I have 2 HUGE pumpkins that my mom brought over. Must use them!
Rebecca
How do you know if a pumpkin is still good? I got one for my soon on October 14th or so and has been sitting inside the house this whole time? Will I know when I open it if it is still good?
Rebecca L.
The quickest way I have EVER found to cook a pumpkin is to bathe your pumpkin really good–make it nice and clean, cut it into either half or fourth it, clean out the pumpkin seeds (can save for roasting), scrape out all the stringy stuff, smooth that baby up,stick it into a pressure cooker with about 4 or 5 inches of water in the bottom and cook it for about 20-25 mins. at about 15 lbs. of pressure. Actually, it’s hard to maintain low pressure on my pressure cooker so I just try to keep an eye on it for about 20mins. After it cooks, then cools, the skin practically slides off and the pumpkin is so soft, I don’t even blend it. Also for Rebecca—I bought 3 pumpkins about the same time as you did and they have stayed outside the whole time (actually, I have already cooked 2 of them and froze them), and my 3rd pumpkin is outside on my back porch, waiting to be cooked when I have a little more freezer room. As long as it stays in a cool dry place, it will be fine for several more weeks.
deb
I feed ours to the chickens after we have enjoyed the seeds and carved funny faces. Or, with the uncarved whole pumpkins, they can be cut into sections and laid it cut side down on foil to roast it in the oven at 350 for about 45 minutes for later use. I have no clean up, as the foil gets thrown away and the skin just peels right off so easily after it cools. I either cube it or mash it and put it into zipper bags for the frrezer to use when I need it. Way easy!!!!!
Allen
Last year I put the complete pumpkins in our cleaned out garden and let nature take its course. By spring time, the seeds started to grow and we had many vines growing across the ground. As you may have heard, it was not a good growing season but we did get decent results. We did the same with watermelons. This fall we are adding cucumbers to the “naturally planting cycle” as well. We live in RI and the snow will cover them and naturally provide moist soil when mother nature “wakes the seeds up” come spring time. One draw back would be animals (in my area, squirrels) that are hungry over the winter time.