Damerow - The Perfect Pumpkin: Growing Cooking Carving

GAIL DAMEROW

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publishing practical information that encourages
personal independence in harmony with the environment.

Edited by Gwen Steege and Deborah Burns
Cover and text design by Cindy McFarland
Cover photographs by Gary Hall (front) and W. Atlee Burpee (back)
Text production by Susan Bernier and Erin Lincourt
Line drawings by Susan Berry Langsten
Indexed by Susan Olason, Indexes & Knowledge Maps

1997 by Gail Damerow

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Printed in the United States by Versa Press
10 9 8 7 6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Damerow, Gail.

The perfect pumpkin / Gail Damerow.
p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-88266-993-9 (pb : alk. paper)

1. Pumpkin. 2. PumpkinUtilization. 3. Cookery (Pumpkin). I. Title.

SB347.D36 1997
635.62dc21

97-12562
CIP

Heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped gather information for this book, then waited patiently for its arrival, especially: Brent Loy of University of New Hampshire for information on naked seed varieties; Wayne Hackney of New Milford, Connecticut, for details on growing giant pumpkins; Robert J. Rouse of University of Maryland for data on pumpkin pests and diseases; my mother Dixie, chief recipe tester, and husband Allan, chief pumpkin eater; and all those who contributed delicious recipes. My special thanks go to heirloom seed saver Glenn Drowns of Calamus, Iowa, and to the king of giant pumpkins Howard Dill and his son Danny of Windsor, Nova Scotia, for reading my manuscript and helping fill in the gaps pertaining to their respective areas of expertise.

Gail Damerow

If you grow pumpkins, you will be happy when you pick them. Savor what you feel, in addition to what you taste. Enjoy the blossoms if pumpkins were rare, gardeners would pamper them in greenhouses just for their extraordinary flowers.

J. L. Hudson, Seedsman
Redwood City, California, 1995

WHEN SOMEONE MENTIONS PUMPKINS, you probably think of jagged-toothed jack-o-lanterns or Thanksgiving pies. But versatile pumpkins have far more to offer than these traditional uses. Even before a pumpkin forms, the vines tender young leaves can become tasty steamed or boiled greens, and the edible blossoms make an attractive garnish or a delicious stuffed-and-fried side dish. The immature fruits add a pleasant crunch to salads or stir-fries, mature pumpkins yield both multipurpose meat and nutritious seeds, and the cheerful orange shells are easily hollowed out to make containers that double as serving bowls or cooking pots.

Besides their many culinary offerings, pumpkins are indispensable mood setters for autumn festivities. And they have become objects of intense competition: Who can grow the biggest pumpkin, who can carve the most imaginative jack-o-lantern, who can throw one the farthest? And when all else is said and done, pumpkins are relished as a time-honored winter feed by goats, cattle, pigs, and poultry.

Pumpkins have something to offer the dedicated enthusiast year-round: spring planting, summer cultivation, fall fun, winter storage. Adding further to its appeal, this best-known member of the squash family comes in a multitude of varieties, with shells ranging in color from orange to yellow, white, green, and even blue; flesh ranging in texture from mealy to meaty; and sizes ranging from gourmet miniatures that nestle in the palm of your hand to mammoth record setters big enough to carve into a childs playhouse.

Besides all this, pumpkins are incredibly easy to raise. The lush, fast-growing, prolific vine is an ideal first-garden confidence builder for a child or novice adult. But even if youre an expert, theres something decidedly magical about spotting those glowing orange globes peeping out from a sea of sprawling green vines.

In short, pumpkins speak to our elemental need to reap abundance from the land. No wonder people of all ages are intrigued by the pumpkin.

Pumpkins are an American call to irrationality and excess, a tribute to the bounty of our hemisphere.

Linden Staciokas
Harrowsmith Country Life, 1993

UNKNOWN IN EUROPE BEFORE the time of Columbus, the pumpkin is unique to the Americas. It evolved from a gourdlike vegetable with bitter flesh but edible seeds. Remains of these seeds, dating as far back as 7000 to 5000 B.C., have been found in burial caves among Mexicos Tamaulipas Mountains. Pieces of stems, seeds, and shell have also been discovered in the ruins of ancient cliff dwellers of the southwestern United States.

The Native North Americans introduced early European settlers to the pumpkin. When half the Pilgrims died during their first arduous winter in the New World, the Patuxet Squanto showed the survivors how to reap an abundance of food by planting prolific pumpkin vines among corn, using herring as fertilizer.

In October 1621 the Pilgrims had cause for their first big celebration, and the pumpkin was featured as part of the feast. It was probably boiled, although before long the settlers learned to make a simple pumpkin pie by removing the top, scooping out seeds and fibers, filling the cavity with milk, and roasting the pumpkin whole until the milk was absorbed.

The year 1622 offered no occasion for renewed celebration the harvest was poor and the supply ships brought few provisions. To avert starvation, Governor William Bradford ordered the Pilgrims to grow more pumpkins.

Apparently, the plan worked: In 1623 the settlers held their second celebration. That off-again, on-again event eventually evolved into Thanksgiving Day, which today wouldnt be complete without pumpkin pie.

Pumpkins keep well in storage to provide sustenance throughout winter, adding to their importance as an early staple. They were such a common food during Americas infancy that the Port of Boston was known as Pumpkinshire, and a Plymouth Colony poet wrote:

If fresh meat be wanting to fill up our dish
We have carrots and pumpkins and turnips and fish;
We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon;