Apple struper is like a thick puree of cooked sour apples, sugar, honey and spices. You boil it then jar it like jam.

I don't know what apple struper is and googling has left me none the wiser!

I make apple struper: is that the same as apple butter?

Its lovely under the almond bit of apricot tarts.

On toast, on scones, on peanut butter sandwiches, stirred into rice pudding or porridge. Other things I'm sure, they're just we did with this.

Will be making jars n jars of apple butter with our foraged apples soon. Mmmmm.

I discovered fruit butters while living in the US.

But how do you eat pumpkin butter ?

Pumpkin butter!

I made butternut squash butter the other day, was lovely!!

Tonight I am going to make pumpkin gnocchi. You can do it by making your own orange-coloured gnocchi with roasted dried out pumpkin flesh, but I don't have an oven so am microwaving it in chunks and adding it to normal potato gnocchi in a bacon, sage and garlic cream sauce.

lol at the pumpkin on a wheelbarrow: don't you need the barrow to shift the sodding things when they're full grown? I can barely lift some of ours! (haven't tried yet but they are BIG [boast emoticon]

(but probably not very tasty)

Riven I am very of your pumpkins. We moved this year and bever got any planted - I have sweetcorn coming out my ears instead!

I normally start my pumpkins off inside in a pot with a plastic food bag at a little 'hat' over the top then leave on the window sill. It acts like a little green house, once they are too big for the pot I leave them outside for a few days in the pot and then plant out. A bit of work but well worth it for the pumkins/butternut.

Heated if you don't have the bed - we grew ours in a wheelbarrow one year, they trailed down the sides and looked fab and as long as they are kept watered they will go mad.

I start them off inside and plant out after the last frost - they like warmth. We are much farther north, though.