Seasonal Super food: Squash & Pumpkin

The Squash family are a healthy source of vitamins and minerals including fibre, folate, riboflavin, phosphorus and potassium. They can also aid in the processing of fat, carbs and glucose. For ladies, squash aids with the symptoms of PMS as it is full of manganese, which helps reduce mood swings and cramps.

Pumpkins are the most famous of all the winter squashes, and are most associated with Halloween lanterns and thrown away after the event. DON”T, what a shocking waste! Inside the hard orange or yellow skin, the bright orange flesh is sweet and honied, a particularly good source of fibre, and delicious roasted as a veg with meat, roasts, risotto or pasta, in a stew or a sturdy winter soup.

Climbing pumpkin

I have a rampant pumpkin plant climbing a tree in my garden, and will definitely give them more space next year, as well as grow squash, especially the spaghetti variety, which is delicious and a much healthier alternative to pasta.

So when preparing your halloween lantern don’t throw away the pulp, or even the seeds that can be roasted and salted for a snack, or kept for next years crop. And watch out for cheap pumpkins after halloween.

Spaghetti squash

For a pumpkin soup recipe click here (although I would roast the pumpkin first). To find your local farm shop for fresh pumpkin and squash use our local food map, or to buy organic, spaghetti squash, on line, straight from the farmer, click here.

Please feedback any recipes and we will add them to our database with your name. Or do a quick video and add it to our KIS Cookery video library and perhaps be discovered as the next famous chef!