Tuesday, October 24, 2006
A Squash Of The Same Old Color
I just finished reading an op-ed peice in today's New York Times that I found intriguing:
The reason I found this so interesting is because I always wondered growing up what exactly was happening to our Jack O' Lanterns the day afterHalloweenn. My mother would typically make pumpkin pie, which was always a bonus, but I never believed that the entire pumpkin was being put to use for this task. So I surmised that it was simply being thrown out.
But why? Because the pumpkins grown today are mass produced to fit the $5 billion mold they have gotten themselves into, making them bitter, stringy and generally not all that appetizing. This is unfortunate. I have always wanted to cook an entire pumpkin and simply eat it as though it were meat, or any other type of squash. Now I know why I never have, and more importantly, I know how I can.
There are all kinds of websites online, like this one, where one can purchase heirloom pumpkin seeds which are much more kin to the old style pumpkins. There are also accounts like these by people who are much crazier than I am about this whole edible pumpkin thing. But crazy or not, this year I look forward to roasting a whole pumpkin and fulfilling my childhood dreams.
THIS time of the year, the windows of America are beginning to be dotted with carefully carved jack-o-lanterns, but in a week or so, the streets will be splotched with pumpkin guts. Orange gourds will fly from car windows, fall from apartment balconies, career like cannon fire from the arms of pranksters craving the odd satisfaction of that dull thud.McWilliams goes on to discuss the dietary and cultural injustice that is being exacted upon our society, not by youngsters with their squash graffiti, but by modern farmers who have cultivated a strictly for show pumpkin that barely resembles the orange globes of old that were a staple to the diets of our ancestors.
The reason I found this so interesting is because I always wondered growing up what exactly was happening to our Jack O' Lanterns the day afterHalloweenn. My mother would typically make pumpkin pie, which was always a bonus, but I never believed that the entire pumpkin was being put to use for this task. So I surmised that it was simply being thrown out.
But why? Because the pumpkins grown today are mass produced to fit the $5 billion mold they have gotten themselves into, making them bitter, stringy and generally not all that appetizing. This is unfortunate. I have always wanted to cook an entire pumpkin and simply eat it as though it were meat, or any other type of squash. Now I know why I never have, and more importantly, I know how I can.
There are all kinds of websites online, like this one, where one can purchase heirloom pumpkin seeds which are much more kin to the old style pumpkins. There are also accounts like these by people who are much crazier than I am about this whole edible pumpkin thing. But crazy or not, this year I look forward to roasting a whole pumpkin and fulfilling my childhood dreams.
