Wherever you look this week, you will find real or real-looking pumpkins. This bright orange, nutritious member of the squash family enjoys its greatest popularity in the month of October. While they have been around for centuries and enjoyed by Native Americans, the art of pumpkin carving has been raised to new levels.
Pumpkins are ever present this week, in any direction that you turn. Grocery stores have fresh whole pumpkins for those not able to go to a pumpkin patch and choose their own right off of the vine. Farm stands have displays of pumpkins large and small, for carving, decorating or eating! Every discount store and craft store has displays of pumpkins, real or not, but all are guaranteed carvable.
Remember when it was enough to just carve 3 triangles (eyes and nose) and either a happy or scary mouth?
Those days are definitely gone. With the advanced carving tools and patterns available today pumpkins have turned into a work of art. The Food Network even had a pumpkin carving ‘Challenge’ with the winner taking home a check for $10,000. Now those carvings were unbelievably intricate. The winning “Medusa” pumpkin had 5 pumpkin carved snakes protruding from her detailed face, with several of them battery powered and moving! What a fantastic display of talented carving!
With all this focus on carving pumpkins their high nutritional value can get lost. Like other brightly colored fruits and vegetables, pumpkins are high in beta-carotene., an important antioxidant. Beta-carotene is converted by our bodies into vitamin A. There have been numerous articles relating foods high in beta-carotene to providing some protection against developing certain types of cancer, and against heart disease. They are low in salt, have zero cholesterol, and lots of fiber and vitamin C.
Pumpkins have also been associated with strange properties, none of which are proved. At one time they were thought to remove freckles, and were once, for some people, a remedy for snakebites!
If you are a Food Network junkie, every major chef has had Autumn or Halloween focused episodes with some acknowledgment of the popularity and importance of the pumpkin. There are pumpkin smoothies, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin soup, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pies, and let’s not forget pumpkin seeds! Yum!
While we are talking about pumpkin pies, according to pumpkinnook.com, the folks in New Bremen, Ohio baked the world’s biggest pumpkin pie. It weighed 3,699 pounds! Where did they find a pan big enough for it? Pumpkinnook also publicized the new world record holder for the biggest pumpkin. Chris Stevens of New Richmond, Wi. won this honor in 2010 by growing a pumpkin that had a recorded weight of 1,810.5 pounds. Now that pumpkin would make a lot of pies!
Whether your preference is to eat them, carve them or grow them, this is the season for the rotund orange pumpkin.
