A pumpkin is as great as its shelf life

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The Great Pumpkin keeps passing me by. For years I’ve tried and failed to grow at least one big pumpkin. I fleetingly have considered trying a giant variety, but what would one do with a pumpkin as big as a boulder in one’s garden?

I’m sure all the fault is mine because I plant my pumpkins in the drier end of the plot. I am not, you see, as attached to my pumpkins as I am to my summer squash and cucumbers.

At least I am not until the trees change color and frost has wiped out every plant except the cabbages. Then I really like my pumpkins.

This year I decided to grow only small varieties, to sort of beat the Great Pumpkin to the punch. I planted Small Sugar, an heirloom given to the colonists by American Indians. I also tried a new hybrid, Snackjack, that offers seeds without hulls.

Despite the disadvantage of location and the drought, I ended up with a basketful of small pumpkins in September. I have no idea if both kinds grew, although I think they did because they have a certain Abbott and Costello look: some tall, some squat.

I haven’t yet chopped any of the pumpkins up since they are posing as Halloween decorations, but I intend to cook at least one of them soon. The rest likely will keep indefinitely because their shells are well-hardened and unblemished.

It is that winter-keeper feature that has made pumpkins a symbol of the harvest for centuries in the United States. They and other winter squash were the “fresh” vegetables consumed during long winters. Pumpkins provided beta-carotene and vitamin C, and their versatility meant they could be served plain or used in baking.

While I could understand the harvest imagery associated with pumpkins, I couldn’t quite figure out what linked the pumpkin to Halloween. Pumpkins didn’t show up in the Old World until after Columbus took his trip to the New. It turns out that it is a strictly American connection. But there’s a lot of history before the pumpkin got involved.

The origins of Halloween are disputed with some believing that it is rooted in the Celtic festival of Samhain, or summer’s end. Samhain, on Nov. 1, marked the Celtic New Year and was believed to be the day that the dead mingled with the living. But the name Halloween came from the Roman Catholic Church, which was trying to wed its holy days to pagan celebrations in an attempt to end those observances.

In A.D. 731, Nov. 1 was declared All Hallows Day, making Oct. 31 All Hallows Eve by default. Over the years, the name mutated, becoming Hallow Evening, until it finally was shortened to Hallowe’en.

The plan to change the focus pretty much failed, although the restless spirits became evil and needed to be warded off.

Enter a guy named Jack who had a … turnip. (And you thought it was a pumpkin. No, not yet.)

Jack had a run-in with the Devil in an Irish pub. He got the upper hand and made the Devil promise not to claim his soul for 10 years. The Devil agreed and 10 years later, Jack met the Devil again, tricked him again and made him promise to never ask for his soul. But when Jack finally died, he was refused admittance to heaven and went to ask for entrance to hell. The Devil turned him away, but Jack begged for a light and received a burning coal that he put inside a turnip he was eating.

So, Jack was condemned to wander the darkness with his turnip lantern until judgment day. And Jack of the lantern became the symbol of a damned soul.

(Hmmm, and turnips became the symbol of what? Food for a damned soul? I would like to point out that the turnip is a tasty and nutritious vegetable, especially nice with touch of brown sugar and a pat of butter.)

Fearful folks started putting lighted turnips in their windows, carving out faces in hopes of scaring away spirits with the glowing image of a damned soul.

But where are the pumpkins in all of this doom?

Remember Jack? He was Irish, and that was an Irish tale. When hundreds of thousands of Irish fled their homeland during the potato famine in the 1840s, they brought with them to the United States their traditions, including that of the glowing turnips.

The problem here, however, was twofold: Turnips weren’t as plentiful as back home and turnips were really hard to carve.

Enter the pumpkin.

Kind of anticlimactic, huh?

Janine Pineo is a NEWS systems editor and can be contacted at jpineo@bangordailynews.net. And while she champions turnips everywhere, she thinks that there are some things that pumpkins do better than turnips. She doesn’t think roasted turnip seeds sound tasty and isn’t at all interested in trying Chocolate Chip Turnip Bread. Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread, well, that’s another story.

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread

Makes three loaves

3 cups sugar

1 15-ounce can pumpkin (or approximately 2 cups fresh, cooked pumpkin)

1 cup vegetable oil

2/3 cup water

4 eggs

31/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1 tablespoon ground nutmeg

2 tablespoons baking soda

11/2 teaspoons salt

1 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Grease and flour three 9×5-inch loaf pans. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In large bowl, combine sugar, pumpkin, oil, water and eggs. Beat until smooth. Blend in flour, spices, soda and salt. Fold in chocolate chips and nuts. Divide batter into the three pans and bake for about 50 minutes or until knife inserted in center comes out clean. Cool before removing from pan.