Friday, November 04, 2005

Pumpkins.

Now that Halloween is over and everyone on yonder shores has finished cutting holes in, setting alight, and otherwise mutilating pumpkins, tell me, do you actually eat pumpkins throughout the year as a vegetable?

Several years ago, whilst living in England, the only time we saw any of these lovely vegetables was a few little Butternut pumpkins at the end of October. It was definitely not a vegetable considered worth eating, whereas here we eat pumpkin boiled and mashed (or not), and baked, in soup, scones and pies. They are available all year round and most refrigerators would have a piece of pumpkin in the crisper any time you cared to look.

Three cheers for pumpkin.
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19 comments:

Susan Harris said...

Good question, and I'd say Americans never eat pumpkin, only pumpkin pie - yum!

11:10 pm AEDT
sonia a. mascaro said...

Weekly I buy pumpkin and I made it as soup, cooked, as "suflê" and
so on. Pumpkin has low calorie and it's good for lost weight, too.

12:25 am AEDT
sonia a. mascaro said...

Hi Alice, me again. I read on "Amateur Gardening" yours 10 Tools you use regularly. Great, very useful. I paste and file it.

1:33 am AEDT
Sandy said...

Curried pumpkin soup yummy!

2:43 am AEDT
Gina said...

I love pumpkin pie, and do not know of any other pumpkin recipes, but would love to try them. I also have heard that is it very healthy. You can only get pumpkin in the fall. People do eat squash.

2:55 am AEDT
Peggy said...

we eat pumpkin bread, muffins, soups, casserole, pies, cookies, baked, mashed.. anyway we can get them... so some americans do eat pumpkin year more than halloween and thanksgiving.

6:13 am AEDT
Alice said...

Peggy - glad to hear that you also experience the delights and values of the humble pumpkin.

7:22 am AEDT
Missy said...

Alice, I absolutely adore pumpkin. If I can figure out how to work it into a recipe it is more likely than not, going to appear in the meal!

8:17 am AEDT
Maggie Ann said...

I use pumpkin in muffins mostly and I love pumpkin pie which is so fattening, but good. Pumpkins were so cheap this year...$1.50 each at Walmart. However, I prefer mine out of a can...more convenient. When I was a school girl many years ago, my friends and I would buy 3 cent boxes of salty pumpkin seeds for a treat. I haven't thought of that in years. That was around the same year one of my little friends went on vacation and was struck and killed by lightning. We were so stunned. back to pumpkin... I almost forgot our favorite bar recipe is for pumpkin bars!! If you can eat it, cream cheese icing on pumpkin cake or bars is hard to beat!

2:03 pm AEDT
Miss Robyn said...

I visited a friend in New York, a few Christmases ago and promised her I would cook a roast cinner for Christmas haha - the pumpkin I bought was pale, watery and tasteless. However, I persevered and baked it - their reaction? 'you really eat this in Australia?'

8:40 pm AEDT
Suse said...

Pumpkin soup - yum! I often make it with Thai spices (lemongrass, a dash of chilli sauce, etc and use coconut milk instead of ordinary milk or cream).

We also have it baked, or just steamed with dinner. Sometimes I grate it into a savoury muffin mix too.

But my husband is English (as I am, but I came here as a babe, he came as an adult) and he said they never ate pumpkin there. It was the food one fed to the pigs!

Also, I love pumpkin pie (on visits to the US) and have asked 3 Americans for recipes, but each time the recipe says "One can of pumpkin" which astounds me! So I still have not made it myself.

Sorry for long comment, getting carried away here ...

9:11 pm AEDT
Judypatooote said...

Around my house, we just use pumpkins on Halloween, and Thanksgiving.....as decorations, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, and the best darn pumpkin seeds you ever wanted to eat.....clean and boil the seeds in salt water, and then put in oven til golden brown. Warm they are so good, tender and another plus for the pumpkin....

10:01 pm AEDT
Boxwood Cottage said...

I love to make a yummy pumpkin soup in autumn, but that's about it. Oh no I almost forgot the Pumpkin bread that's yummy too!

8:19 pm AEDT
Linda said...

I cannot believe they are not eating roast pumpkin. I cannot believe it!!!!!

10:02 pm AEDT
Susan Tidwell said...

Reading this makes me hungry. Maybe some of you talented cooks/craftsmen/photographers from Australia would like to share recipes for pumpkin? We here in South US substitute sweet potatoes (yams) for the pumpkin in pie. We also eat them baked or just cooked with butter and/or brown sugar.

9:27 pm AEDT
Gina E. said...

Pumpkin is one of the most versatile vegetables on earth! I love pumpkin pie a la USA, but have only made it twice. We always include pumpkin with our roasted veggies (potato, parsnip, onion, etc). Pumpkin scones, fruitcake with mashed pumpkin included in the recipe, mashed parsnip and pumpkin combined...there is so much scope for this wonderful gift of nature!

2:32 am AEDT
Jenn said...

Pumpkin is not typically on the table except as pie and pumpkin bread in the Thanksgiving season. (ocassionally cookies or other sweet treats)

One of the reasons you don't see pumpkin as a table squash is we breed them here for size. Bigger and better to carve up and candle. Which is why you get 'watery and tasteless' when you try cooking one of these. Not raised for flavor, these.

You need to search out the baking pumpkin. They can be found, but again, only in the fall season.

We do have a steady stream of other squashes available at the market: acorn, butternut, speghetti, and more I'm sure. I know of these three because I buy the first two, and the novelty of the third.

And of course there are zuchinni and summer squashe - yellow and green thin- skinned varieties. These are available year 'round, too.

6:43 am AEDT
Marlene Depler said...

Americans love pumpking pie! It is a staple for Thanksgiving dinner. I also make pumpkin bread (with chocolate chips!), muffins, cookies, and cake. One of my favorite recipes in called Fall Harvest Cake. It has pumpkin and chopped apples in it, and then it is frosted with a cream cheese frosting. Yummy! Maybe I will put the recipe up on my blog.

4:28 pm AEDT
Ms. Conduct said...

Yeah, but you pretty much have to used canned pumpkin here in the States. We were in AU a couple of months ago for 3.5 weeks and I kept seeing pumpkin soup on a lot of menus. We actually had some at Uluru and I found it really bland, but couldn't figure out how to spice it. Like it needed salt, but I'm so used to pumpkin being in sweet recipes here that salt seemed absurd! And sugar equally absurd since it's a savory soup! So I just ate it as it was for the "when in Rome" factor. Tabasco maybe? Anyway, thanks for the pumpkin education!

1:10 am AEDT

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