Sooner or Later…

After reading Anna and her pumpkin fun I was reminded about our families fun with vegetables.  *Note this happened about 10 years ago. 

This wanting to grow my own and be prepared has been a part of my for as long as I can remember.  Perhaps it was all the Little House books.  Perhaps it was my dad’s 70’s subscription to Mother Earth News.  For many years we did not live anywhere we could grow a garden.  Then one day we did.

Our first self sufficiency trial was not a roaring success.  Our 4H group paints pumpkins every year in October.  Kids like their routines and the kids in this group love pumpkin painting.  Since I am the leader any extras come home with me.  What could be better to begin with than a surplus of six large free pumpkins–painted with washable paint, of course.

So armed with directions from Tightwad Gazette and a gardening book we began with the unpainted pumpkins.  We cut the top off, pitched it and began our pumpkin lobotomy.  It was messy cool fun.  Most directions suggest either peeling and boiling OR baking the pumpkin to cook and soften for further use.   The baked pumpkin can be sliced or left whole.

Have you ever tried to peel a pumpkin?

Peeling a pumpkin is about as easy as peeling a sidewalk.  Near impossible without serious bodily harm to the knife welder and serious vocabulary growth for small children in the vicinity.  I, being smarter than a pumpkin, chose to bake at 350F until soft.  Slicing optional.  Those small bits with scattering of peels cook faster than whole ones.

After awhile it was soft and smelled not too bad.  We took them out and drained off the small amount of water in the pan. 

The first thing we tried was to scoop some into a bowl, add butter and sugar then taste.  My throat is constricting as I type.

It was stringy.  Terribly stringy.  Eating a mouth full of fat hair stringy.  Awful.

Well…the books said it might need to be put through a blender or food processor.  So the second thing we did was to food process a generous portion.

It didn’t improve things.  We just had short fat hairs in our mouths.  The gag-abilty factor was still quite high.

Well…baking had softened things up quite a bit, so perhaps if we use it in a recipe the additional baking should finish softening and dissolving those strings.  Right?

No.  Now we had custard coated short fat, kinda pumpkin tasting hairs.  The only thing that was fed was the trash can.  Trash cans don’t mind fat stringy pumpkins–baked or unbaked.

Well…that was aggravating.  People have grown and stored pumpkins since…forever.  The gardening books and magazines sing the praises of growing pumpkins.  They are recommended for beginner gardeners.  What went wrong?

Further reading taught me this–Not all pumpkins are created equal.  Reading catalog descriptions is a must.  See most pumpkins sold at Halloween time are sold for decorations.  They are extra large with large open spaces for candles.  Largeness and open spaces means a need for support, just like in a building.  So those pumpkins have more ’strings’ which are pumpkin support beams. 

Support beams are not tasty.  To make them edible they must be pureed very smoothly so a food mill becomes necessary.  Hand-powered ones with a crank are inexpensive at Walmart.  An elderly friend loaned me a cone-shaped one with an extremely large pestle.  Either takes arm muscle even after the pumpkin is softened.  The Squeezo has a separate screen for pumpkin. (This one from Johnnys is similiar to my Squeezo) If it works as well as the tomato processing one it would be worth the effort.

The Dill’s Atlantic Giant pumpkins are practically inedible.  They are for competition only though animals might find them tasty.

More ready-to-eat pumpkins are know as ‘pie pumpkins’ and are often smaller than decorative pumpkins.  These are often heirloom as good taste is good taste.  Some of the newer releases are aiming for both size and eating.  Johnny’s catalog describes some of those pumpkins types.  Other releases keep the small size but include edible seeds.  I have not had an opportunity to grow these as my crew tries to grow competition size pumpkins through 4H. I did get seeds for small edible and decorative pumpkins but the heat & drought had kicked in by planting time so why waste the seeds?  Next year. (If you are growing for whole pumpkin storage then the planting dates are shifted from spring to a mid-summer date.)

I also learned that squash makes a good substitute for pumpkin and doesn’t have the ’string thing’ going.  Jackie Clay often recommends growing heirloom squash and using in place of pumpkin.  Easier to save seeds that way too. 

So that was the first of our vegetable experiments.  The second involved turnips.  For that I’ve asked Grits to write–read from a parent (me) and child (her) point of view.  Yes it was that memorable.

Some helpful seed sites Johnny’s Seeds, Territorial Seeds, and Southern Exposure. (They may be from the south but they offer a wider variety of heirloom seeds for some vegetables than other catalogs.)