Well it’s that time of year again where people dress up to become witches and monsters, decorations go up and the streets are filled with tasty treats. We don’t normally embrace Halloween as much as we could but this year we feel that there’s a way to enjoy Halloween and throw nature into the mix at the same time.
Halloween is getting bigger in the UK but hasn’t reached the popularity that it has in America. Therefore we could be missing a few tricks of how to enjoy it to its fullest extent. We have therefore spent this week looking at ways to bring nature to the party in the way of how we prepare and use our pumpkins.
We started our approach to this with nature-inspired templates to carve into our pumpkins. There are some species that are so prominent during Autumn that it makes sense to allow them to inspire our designs for Halloween.
In order to carve our pumpkins, we cut out the templates, stuck them where we wanted the image and then used a pin to poke holes around the design. Removing the template then allowed us to see where we needed to go around with a knife. We carefully carved the design into the pumpkin without fully cutting through so we’d get a lovely orange glow once a candle was put in.
We decided to recycle the whole of the pumpkin, which not only prevented waste but also allowed us and our birds in the garden a treat.
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A lot of flesh comes out from each pumpkin when you carve it, so why waste it? There are a multitude of recipes for pumpkins and we chose to make pumpkin pie. In order to do this yourself, you would need:
- Preheat the oven to 180ºc, gas mark 4 or 160ºc for fan ovens
- Roll out the pastry on a floured surface so that it fits into the dish you are cooking it in
- Pinch the edges of the pastry once it’s in the dish so it has an attractive pattern all of the way around
- Place the pastry in the fridge for 15 minutes
- Boil the pumpkin until it’s soft then once it’s cool, blend it until it is smooth
- Put baking paper and baking beans over the pastry then bake for 15 minutes
- Remove the baking paper and beans then bake for a further 10 minutes
- Turn up the oven to 220ºc, gas mark 7 or 200ºc for fan ovens
- Combine the sugar, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon
- Add the eggs, butter, milk then pumpkin to the dry ingredients and stir after each addition
- Pour the mixture into the pastry then cook for 10 minutes
- Reduce the oven temperature to 180ºc, gas mark 4 or 160ºc fan and bake for 35 minutes or longer if required
- Allow to cool then serve
We think food always tastes better outdoors so why not pack up a bit of pumpkin pie and enjoy it during a day out.
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We love watching the birds in the Embrace Nature UK garden and so with Halloween approaching, thought we’d use the seeds from our pumpkins in some home-made bird food.
Larger birds should be able to eat the seeds whole but if you want to invite smaller birds to the party, it’s best to either chop the seeds up or use a blender to do it for you.
We mixed in meal worms, bird seed and our pumpkin seeds with peanut butter to keep the ingredients together. We chose Meridian Smooth Peanut Butter as it contains 100% nuts so we could be sure to avoid feeding salt to the birds. Salt in large quantities can be very harmful so is best avoided where possible.
We put the mixture into a container lined with baking paper so it wouldn’t stick. We added some twine with a loop in so we could hang this up afterwards and then left it in the fridge to set.
Whilst this method worked, we chose in the end to chop the food into smaller squares and place it on the bird table as the weather is unpredictable and we didn’t want the peanut butter to melt and become too gooey for the birds to eat as this could also potentially be harmful.
Our home-made treat has gone down very well in the garden and our host of bird-visitors have worked their way through very quickly!
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Once the inside of the pumpkin has been used and Halloween is over, it’s a shame to waste the lantern. We found a few ways to ensure that it doesn’t needlessly go to waste. The first thing we did was fill one of the pumpkins with seed and see how the birds took to it. You could hang up the pumpkin if you prefer.
Some of our bravest and most boisterous birds, the Starlings, took to the pumpkin very well and would poke their heads in to get the seed. We saw the Robin appear plenty on the bird table with the pumpkin there though it went more for the seed around it. The other birds became more comfortable with the unusual ‘bird-feeder’ after a day or two and we starting finding some confident Collared Doves enjoying the seed direct from the pumpkin too.
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When you’ve put in all of that effort to carving your pumpkins, why not use it for something aesthetically-pleasing once Halloween is over? We found an attractive option was to use the pumpkin as a plant pot.
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When your pumpkin is looking rather worse-for-wear, don’t just throw it out, compost it to gain the nutrients in soil for other plants!
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It’s often said that “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”, which is even true when carving pumpkins. The best way to ensure that your design looks good is to draw out a template first or straight on to the pumpkin.
We want you to be able to carve nature-inspired pumpkins too so have included the templates we’ve used on here for you to print out.
We hope you’ve found these ideas inspiring! Have a very happy Halloween!