Waste Not

 

 

 

Wait! Don’t throw that Halloween pumpkin in the trash! There are any number of ways to keep that pumpkin out of a landfill and instead put it to good use. Before putting it to good use, however, it’s a good idea to clean up any wax or decorative bits from the pumpkin, restoring it to a state of pumpkin grace in nature, the way it had grown peacefully in some farmer’s field all summer before it became a holiday symbol for a few brief autumn days.

Happy tidyman

Compost your pumpkin! If you can’t compost it yourself, give it to someone who can. If your pumpkin is still wholesomely edible, you can of course eat it, or give it to some person or creature who will. An animal sanctuary operating on a skimpy budget dependent on the kindness of members of the community will almost certainly welcome the donation of edible pumpkins, free of any toxic byproducts, as a treat for the animals under their guardianship. Don’t forget to save the seeds when hollowing out a pumpkin prior to using it as a decoration: either eat the seeds yourself, or set them out for the birds (don’t salt the seeds if they’re meant for the birds).

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A pair of Golden Guernsey goats eating a pumpkin in November 2011. Photo by Flickr user Rebecca. If these goats could talk, they might bleat a “Thank you!”

 

You will do a good deed by turning a symbol of the fall harvest, which has unfortunately also become a symbol of enormous food waste, into a positive boon for someone or some creature in some way, at least for a few days. Better than putting it in a landfill, where it will help no one. In two months it will be time to consider how to keep Christmas trees out of the landfill, and that will be a little trickier because hardly anyone wants to eat them, although goats might nibble the more tender parts.
— Izzy

 

O Great Pumpkin

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Pumpkin vines in flower.
Photo by H. Zell.

Few fruits or vegetables have as much lore associated with them as the pumpkin. To begin with, is it a fruit or a vegetable? Botanically it is a fruit, because the part we use and eat develops from a flower and contains seeds. Vegetables come from the leaves, stems, buds, and roots of plants. For cooks and the eaters who enjoy the fruits of their labors, however, a pumpkin is to all practical purposes a vegetable.

The nursery rhyme “Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater,” like many nursery rhymes seems nonsensical at first, and perhaps to young ears and minds it is best left that way because upon delving into its meaning there is darkness at the core, which may or may not yield life lessons, depending on individual interpretation. Charles Schulz’s It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, is more enjoyable for young and old alike, with more accessible life lessons. The 1966 TV special is, at 50, still a favorite for holiday viewing and is a masterwork of the animator Bill Melendez.


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Pumpkin flower with bees. Photo by H. Zell.

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Ripe pumpkin on the vine. Photo by H. Zell.

Jack O’Lanterns started in Ireland with the carving of turnips, potatoes, and beets long before people there were aware of pumpkins. Pumpkins are native to the Western Hemisphere, as are potatoes, but the introduction of potatoes to Ireland made a much bigger impression because of their culinary usefulness and ease of growth and storage. The subsequent ubiquity of the potato in Irish fields would have devastating consequences when a blight affected the crop for several years in the mid-nineteenth century, giving rise to the Potato Famine. Using pumpkins for Jack O’Lanterns did not catch on until the wave of Irish immigrants fleeing the Potato Famine came to the United States and found the pumpkin most suitable to the purpose.

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A display of pumpkins for sale at Halloween.

John Quidor - The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane - Google Art Project
The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane, a painting by John Quidor.

The variety of pumpkin most often grown for decorative carving is the ‘Howden’, developed by Massachusetts farmer John Howden in the 1960s. The pumpkin filling sold in cans for making pumpkin pie is often made from squash varieties which, while belonging to the same genus as pumpkin, Cucurbita, are not from the species we recognize as pumpkin.

One more bit of lore has given us this common image of the pumpkin, and especially its association with spooky autumn nights, and it comes from Washington Irving’s short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” The original story is a bit unclear on whether the Headless Horseman carries around his own head or a pumpkin as a sort of substitute head, but at any rate the version most people are familiar with today and are probably most comfortable with comes from the 1949 Walt Disney short film. As with the Walt Disney version of Cinderella (where a pumpkin also makes an appearance, as Cinderella’s stagecoach), which was taken from a rather dark fairy tale by The Brothers Grimm, story events become more pleasant and less threatening than in the original. Put another way, the treats are nicer and the tricks less scary, or scarry, if you will.
– Izzy