Pumpkin pastry parcels

I guess this one isn’t so much as recipe as an idea or a suggestion!

We do our very best to reduce waste from our kitchen.

So many ways to make some little changes that help –

We menu plan,
Cook in bulk,
Freeze leftover for work lunches,
Make soup to use up veggies that are past their best
All veggie peelings and scraps go to our worms and so back to the garden,
Do a swap – we give out overload of veggie scraps to friends with chooks (and sometimes get eggs in return!)

One of the other ways to reduce waste is to get a bit creative when you’re down to the last few bits of veg before shopping day!

I had about 1/4 of a butternut pumpkin, a couple of handfuls of spinach, a small handful of left over roast chicken and the dregs of my walnut container left. Together with a few basic pantry staples – that sounds like weekend lunch!

My husband reckons they are better than a bought pie (and his body feels better afterwards) and he says they’re much nicer than the ones he can buy at a cafe in the city – for an obscene price!

We used: Pumpkin, spinach, walnuts, cooked chicken, puff pastry, Italian herbs, salt pepper, olive oil (garlic infused) and coconut aminos.

But use whatever left overs you have and enjoy and get creative!

*If you don’t eat meat – we often us about half a tin of butter beans or cannellini beans instead – just pop them in the oven together with the pumpkin in the last 10 minutes of roasting time.

*If you don’t eat nuts – pumpkin seeds or hemp seeds work really well here too – use them in exactly the same way as the walnuts.

Dice the pumpkin into small pieces.

Then roast the pumpkin with some garlic olive oil, salt, pepper and Italian herbs (about 200C for 35-40 mins).

Place pumpkin in a bowl together with the chopped chicken, walnuts and spinach and then add about 2 tsp of coconut aminos. Mix well so that the pumpkin gets a bit mashed up.

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