Happy
Saturday everyone! Seeing as today is Halloween, this week’s blog is fitting.
As a
variety of winter squash, pumpkins are native to the New World, and Native
American tribes were growing the “Connecticut Field” variety when settlers
arrived. We grow the same kind now for
Jack-o’-lanterns, but back then they used every part of the pumpkin for a range
of purposes, including a good source of food.
Strips of the pumpkin were roasted over the fire and could be stored to
help them last through the long, cold North American winters. The flesh of the pumpkin, which is sweet,
they ate roasted, baked, parched, boiled and dried, as well as the seeds for
sustenance and medicine.
A
number of theories for the origins of Jack-o’-lanterns are quite
interesting. Turnips and potatoes were
used early on by the Scottish and Irish to carve out the very well-known
decoration we associate with Halloween.
The English used beets, and to illuminate them they would light a piece
of coal, that was set inside, on fire and this would do the trick. After arriving in North America, the
Europeans discovered that pumpkins were easy to carve and this is thought to be
the reason that pumpkins are now the classic vegetable used as our primary
Jack-o’-lantern shell.
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