Friday, October 20, 2006

eating halloween: my pumpkin experiment

Last weekend, when SK and I were driving through my little neighborhood on our way for burritos, we noticed that some people were decorating for halloween. We agreed that the decorations were kind of sweet, but SK said the thing about the pumpkins struck her as strange. "It just seems crazy," she said, "that people in this country buy *food* that will never be eaten, and carve it up and set it out on their porches just to rot!"

SK didn't grow up with halloween, so she brings fresh eyes to its traditions. I, however, *love* halloween. Halloween is my favorite holiday and I can hardly bring myself to look critically on any of its traditions, no matter how weird or wasteful. Which it is why it's sometimes good to have SK around.

Anyway, she finished up by saying, "I know the big pumpkins aren't really meant to be eaten, but the little ones are pretty good if you bake them." This lodged in my head and jumped back out again yesterday as I browsed the produce section of Wild Oats. I was drawn to a giant bin of squashes and pumpkins I had only ever thought of as "decorative" until my conversation with SK. For some reason, I couldn't bring myself to imagine cutting up and cooking one of the tiny orange pumpkins like the two I have on my desk right now . . . at least not until halloween is over. It would be like burning the Christmas tree two weeks before Christmas!

So I bought a lumpy looking white pumpkin with green stripes, about this size of a big grapefruit and brought it home to experiment. This morning, I cut the top off, like making a jack-o-lantern, and scooped out all the stuff. For just a moment, I thought cooking it was crazy and, since I'd already gone to the trouble of gutting it, I should carve in a little face and pop in a tea-light and call it good.

I resisted the urge to turn my lunch into another decoration. Instead, I filled the hole with some diced onions and minced garlic, a pat of butter, a little water and half a teaspoon of cinammon. Yum. Then I popped it in the oven and hoped for the best. I almost dropped a little daub of curry paste in, but after my curry last night and the leftovers I'll be eating with SK in a few hours, I didn't want curry overkill, though I think it might be nice to try next time.

Pretty soon the house was full of the savory smell of baking onions and garlic with a nice overlay of cinammon. I checked it a few times and eventually it was done. YUM. I just ate the whole thing and it was soooooo good. I can't believe I never even considered those little guys to be food before! Now I'm schemeing up new ideas for cooking them -- the hole in the middle lends itself well to filling with other yummy stuff for baking. I think even a homemade stuffing might be good baked inside a pumpkin, with mushrooms and celery and breadcrumbs? MMMMM. Who needs a turkey for thanksgiving when you can just stuff a pumpkin?

4 Comments:

Blogger Dharma said...

Quite true what SK said. You can do things like use kasha and such for a filling of the squash of your choice. Or couscous, or quiona. Yum, getting inspired over here. Ha, same day you posted!

4:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My friend told me Whole Foods is selling giant pumpkins for $80 each. Can this possibly be true? Talk about a waste.

10:05 PM  
Blogger reasonably prudent poet said...

Eighty dollar giant pumpkins??? How big would those pumpkins have to be?? And what, filled with pate??? Filled with gold nuggets? That's ridiculous. But, I wouldn't put anything past whole foods.

7:59 PM  
Blogger reasonably prudent poet said...

I googled "giant pumpkin whole foods" and found this article. Enjoy. (Damn thing isn't filled with anything!!)

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/homegarden/4276867.html

8:02 PM  

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