What Pumpkins Are Good For ...

I carved my first pumpkin yesterday. We didn't do a pumpkin last year, but last week C grabbed us one of those big fat pumpkins at the market, and put me in charge of making something out of it. Actually, the agreement was that C would open it up and remove all the nasty stuff from it, then I would carve a figure into it. I must say that pumpkins are quite new to me. I didn't even know what it was we would find inside it. I've had pumpkin pie a couple of times, but never made one myself and was actually quite intrigued by this plant (or vegetable, or whatever).

So, C started cutting it open by carving out a lid on the top of the plant, and as it turns out, the inside is pretty hollow. There are seeds inside, held together by some gory stuff, sort of like inside a melon. Once you've scraped out the loose, wet, "gory" stuff, the inside of the pumpkin consists of the pumpkin meat. It's walls are thick, probably two inches, at least. I now took to carving the face, the best I could. There actually exist special tools for pumpkin carving, none of which we possess of course, but without them the carving is not completely obvious, because the walls are pretty thick and solid and one sort of has to saw through them. So, I opted for something simple, but I think the result was not all too bad ...

The pumpkin looks pretty neat by dark too as it stands the guard on our porch.

Now, once I had finished carving the pumpkin, feeling bad about throwing away the leftovers from the carvings, I cleaned the seeds up and put in a pan in the oven with a little salt sprinkled over them (they're great for snack), then gathered the meat that had fallen off and put in a pot. I had heard that good soup could be made from a pumpkin. I found this mean recipe on the internet for a Thai Pumpkin and Coconut Cream Soup, and swiftly cooked up one. It was actually not bad at all. Slightly tart with lemongrass, ginger and lime, but softened by the coconut milk.