Carma's Cookery
Always pick up a pumpkin from the bottom.
Never carry it by the stem, as this might damage the pumpkin around the stem and maybe even cause it to break off.
Once you pick it up, notice how it feels. A pumpkin that has a good, solid weight is more likely to be healthy all over. However, a pumpkin that appears oddly lightweight and hollow might just be rotting on the inside.
Here’s something interesting found on the Internet: Pumpkin Wine. Three Lakes Winery in Wisconsin makes this and it sells for $9.95 a bottle. According to the marketing description, it is made only from 100% pie pumpkins (that would be sugar pumpkins, I assume). “It has been described as having qualities of a semi-sweet Chardonnay.”
Then again, I found an article by Dan and Krista Stockman of the Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, Ind., that found it to have quite a different flavor.
We bought Three Lakes Winery’s Wine of the Pumpkin for $2.99 on clearance at a grocery store…. The label said it was wine made from pie pumpkins: We knew it was strange, but we couldn’t resist, especially at that price.
We opened it a couple of weeks ago and realized why it was on clearance. It smelled like pumpkin guts. It also tasted like pumpkin guts….
Checking the label, it said to drink fresh, that it was not meant to age, and there was no telling how old it was. Hmmmm.
So now I’m terribly curious. What does this wine taste like? Did the Stockman’s bottle taste funky because it was too old? If you have the opportunity to try this wine, please post your experience as a comment to this post.
As you may know, pumpkins are now out of season. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend a day without them in your life. Not only can you purchase canned pumpkin to make your favorite pumpkin dishes year ’round, you can buy a variety of other products, too.
I tooled around Amazon and thought I’d highlight a few here.
Pumpkin Room FreshenersYou don’t have to bake to get that wonderful pumpkin pie smell to permeate your room. You can buy pumpkin spice candles, which often come in large sizes. Or you can try out a trendy new type of room fresher, the reed diffuser. |
Have you ever created your idea jack-o-lantern and wished that you could keep it forever — and not just as a photograph? Well, Dennis and Tyler Szabo have just the thing for you.
The Szabos are the father and son team behind Funkins, a company that makes artificial pumpkins. “Funkins” are made out of polyurethane foam and designed to look as much like real pumpkins as possible. In fact, real pumpkins are used to make the molds.
“We try to duplicate the authenticity of the product with the paint,” Dennis Szabo told CBS4 Weekend Morning News, in Denver.
You can buy Funkins online and at various craft stores for between $5 and $20 depending on the size.
If you’ve decided to forgo the canned pumpkin this year and give fresh pumpkin a try, here are some tips for choosing one that won’t let you down.
First, you want to make sure that you’re not buying a Halloween pumpkin. You want the smaller, darker orange sugar pumpkin for cooking.
Then you want to check the rind and make sure it is firm. If the rind is soft, this is a sign of either immaturity or improper storage.
Also look at the color quality of the skin. If it is shiny, the pumpkin may be underripe or waxed (which could mask bad quality).
To avoid mold or bacteria growth, look for a pumpkin with the remnant of a dried-out stem still attached. Give it a little push — if it moves, move on. If it holds firm, you should be O.K.
Once you get your selected pumpkin home, store in a cool spot with good air circulation — not the refrigerator. It should stay good for up to a month.
Of course, if you’re looking for other types of winter squash, these tips work just as well.
Now that your jack-o-lantern has been laid to rest, it is time to think about pumpkins in a different way — as food and home decor.
Pumpkins are an integral part of November’s main holiday in the U.S. They are the prime ingredient in the most popular dessert, pumpkin pie. But you can also use pumpkins a variety of other fall recipes such as pumpkin soup (my favorite is a curried pumpkin soup), pumpkin bread and even pumpkin cookies.
But they also make great decorative items. Toss a few miniature pumpkins and gourds together, add some maize and a wicker cornucopia and you’ve got a perfect fall decoration.
Recently, I visited the atrium at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. They made great use of pumpkins for decoration. I thought I’d share a few of them with you here. I’ll be putting up a whole gallery of images later — after I’ve settled into my new home and the holidays are through.
The other day, as my husband was listening to one of his podcasts, it occurred to me that the world is so amazingly connected. The podcast was talking about the issue of bee die offs happening throughout the U.S. They even interviewed a pumpkin farmer about how bees were affecting his crops.
Also, to help me develop content for this blog, I have a Google Alert set for the keyword “pumpkin” and so I get a lot of news about how weather — both lack of rain and too much rain — are adversely affecting the pumpkin crops around the country.
When you hear about global climate change, does it occur to you that this might affect what kind of pie you’ll be able to serve with Thanksgiving dinner? If you don’t like honey, a bee die off might not catch your attention. But this simple fact actually might raise the prices of the vegetables in your local grocery store because the crops are smaller.