Pumpkin

I don’t find pumpkins difficult to carve. I just use the ordinary kitchen knife I use for chopping veg, draw the features on with a biro, bingo.
Admittedly I don’t go for very artistic designs, though - just bog standard eyes, nose mouth.

Ours is always turned into Thai style pumpkin soup the next day (waste not want not) - chicken stock, chilli, ginger and garlic, and a can of coconut milk - delish!

My mil used to use a needle or pin to mark out spots for the pattern on the pumpkin lantern, some can be quite intricate and look great. Then put black dots on the holes so that you know where you are going.

And THEN use the knife to cut.

Easier that way, especially if you are doing a more ambitious pattern, as once you've cut it, you can't go back as it were. Kind of measure twice cut once type thing

Many thanks for all your replies. It seems I should have left it on the plant, but it was not in a very convenient position and it grew and ripened so fast and seemed to stop growing. So, I will use it for a spicy soup while it should still be relatively easy to cut/saw up. Might have another go next year.

We used to make Pumpkin soup for our village fireworks night,
You do use curry spices in it and it tasted good, but it was very hard to slice through and I havent bothered to make the effort again.

I'd leave the pumpkin in the ground for a couple of weeks longer. I grew a large gourd years ago from some parrot seeds and the plant was enormous---leaves the size of an umbrella and I remember my GS being excited come Halloween but it took every bit of my strength to cut through it. A chainsaw would have done the job

I'd planted them in my D's garden in the May and you could practically see it growing. By October it was ready---huge and pear-shaped as some gourds are.

A friend in Oz made the best pumpkin soup I ever tasted. She did give me the recipe but Lord knows what I've done with it. There was the faintest hint of curry, I remember that much and as smooth as a good lentil soup. She made sure that the soup was made when I was there in Autumn.

That and the delicious salad wraps which were a mixture of grated carrot, coconut and sultanas mixed with a seasoned mayo. I had the recipe for that too. Lovely and moist as wraps can be dry and cardboardy.

I made pumpkin soup once, awful, never again.

I make lots of different soups, but avoid pumpkins now.

My pumpkins have ripened really early this year too. I think its the weather we've had, its happened to other people too. I wonder if there'll be extra big ones or a shortage this year? I've picked one to eat (yum soup) & left the others to see how big they grow. I think the skins do toughen up a bit once they're picked & left

The ones that are left in the fields end up going soggy after a while.

It should have been safely left on the plant until Halloween.

You can buy a knife from garden centres for carving pumpkins, they are hard to cut through .

But does the skin get tougher the longer it's kept?

Pumpkins are always difficult to carve.