Carving Jack-O-Lanterns started over in Europe in the late 1700’s in Ireland England & Scotland. They weren’t originally made from pumpkins but from cultivated turnips called mangelwurzels (orange field beets) hollowed out to act as lanterns and often carved with grotesque faces. When the Irish immigrated to the U.S. in the 1800’s they brought the tradition with them and found that around the end of October pumpkins were very plentiful, cheap and much easier to carve than beets and that’s how come we use them today .
Here’s some pumpkin trivia
- Pumpkins are one of the few foods that we still eat that is native to America, originating in northern Argentina near the Andes or in certain Andean valleys.
- Small pumpkins with thin skins and sweet, smooth flesh are the best for pies. Look for varieties like Sugar pumpkins, Baby Pam, Autumn Gold, Ghost Rider, or New England Pie Pumpkin. Cinderella and Fairytale pumpkins are also good for pies, but they have hard, thick skins you have to get through.
- Local Abenaki called pumpkins “wasawa”.
- It is high in fiber and contains potassium and Vitamin A.
- Pumpkins were a main part of the daily diet for the Pilgrims, other early New England settlers and Native Americans.
- Dried pumpkin shells served as bowls for storing grains and seeds.
- The word “pumpkin” comes from the Greek word pepon, which means “large melon”. (Makes you wonder how the Greeks knew of a new world vegetable.) By the time it got to America it was pumpkin. If you’ve ever played telephone you can imagine how that happened over a couple of centuries and the French and English languages of the time.
- Native Americans flattened strips of pumpkins, dried them and made mats from them.
- The majority of canned pumpkin is made from the Dickinson variety. Dickinson pumpkins are not orange they’re tan color, have wicked smooth skin, and are larger than the average field pumpkin.
- Colonists made the first pumpkin pies by slicing off pumpkin tops, removing the seeds and filling the insides with milk, spices and honey, then baking it all in hot ashes.
- According to my friend who is a pumpkin snob, the best commercially canned “pumpkin” is Delicious, Boston Marrow, or similar squash. The flesh of these varieties of squash is much richer and more nutritious than that of pumpkin. They are especially prized because of their dense, dry texture and mildly sweet orange flesh.
- The town of Goffstown, New Hampshire, holds an annual pumpkin regatta each October, in which giant pumpkins are hollowed out to make room for a single passenger, then fitted with trolling motors and paraded on the Piscataqua River. There are knock-offs in Oregon and Belgium. Looks like real fun, I’d do it.
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