Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Alaska pumpkins?

Sara King informed me that she was trying to raise pumpkins with some degree of success (I'll let her tell you the degree) , and that in her home state Alaska, pumpkins are the rage. This was a fact I was totally ignorant of, so I ran a Google search. I couldn't believe the size of the 707 lbs pumpkin I saw that was raised in Alaska: http://www.peninsulaclarion.com/stories/090204/gar_090204new001001.shtml
Maybe the pumpkin in the photo above was partially grown cuddled in a greenhouse. Even so, for this once-upon-a-time gardener, this seemed like some magical feat.

In the meantime, I learned a thing or two on pumpkins. Most pumpkins breathe through their stems and leaves. Yes, some have leaves attached to the stem, but not Jack-O-Lanterns. They just have the short, blunt stem. Maybe they grin because they can't breathe well. They must have asthma like me.

The rind of the pumpkin is called its skin; its meat is the pulp, the part we make pumpkin pie and other yummy stuff. The pumpkin's lid is the part around the stem that we cut before hollowing it. Its ribs are the indented ridges on the skin running from top to bottom. The empty cavity after removing the pumpkin's "guts" is called cavity.

Well if a fruit has guts, it better have brains, too. A pumpkin's brains are its fibrous, slimy, mushy strands. For these strands or brain, no transplanting (into human skull) enterprise is in the future--yet--for improved Stanford-Binet results. (Are those tests still around?)

Since a pumpkin has hundreds of seeds, each seed has a nut inside, wearing a "seed coat" on the outside, so it can stay warm and protected and can grow into another plant.

Next, I found a recipe for an Alaska Pumpkin Pie:
http://garden.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2005/11/15/1407057.html

Then in the Anchorage Press, I read about making pumpkin ale. That means not only you can have a sweet tooth, but also, you can sweep down what sticks to it with a brew.

I may just turn into a smashed pumpkin next Halloween.

I learn so much from WC members… Thanks Sara King.