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Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's your friend who's at the mall and
Speaker 1: texts you photos of jeans that cannot possibly be the
Speaker 1: new thing. Please tell me highwayted with no pockets isn't
Speaker 1: a thing? Please all you work back with another episode
Speaker 1: of Oologies. We're just leaning into this season. Curunchy leaves,
Speaker 1: wood smoke scarves, glowy little lights in the darkness. This
Speaker 1: episode Pumpkins. If Pumpkins were a person, I'd be down
Speaker 1: to be the roommate. They seemed chill, they seem friendly,
Speaker 1: they seem down for a good time, like they would
Speaker 1: come in lunch with a pep talk when you need it.
Speaker 1: Pumpkins seem like totally not assholes. But before we get
Speaker 1: into it, let me thank all the folks at patreon
Speaker 1: dot com slash ologies for supporting the podcast. Thanks to
Speaker 1: everyone wearing ologies merch from ologiesmerch dot com. Thanks to
Speaker 1: all the folks of course who are just destroying that
Speaker 1: subscribe button and rating the show and keeping it up
Speaker 1: in the charts. And of course you brave souls who
Speaker 1: submit a review because you know I care, and I
Speaker 1: pick out a new one each week, such as for example,
Speaker 1: Alchemist nineteen eighty seven twenty thirteen says dad Ward is
Speaker 1: like your long lost best friend from kindergarten, you know,
Speaker 1: the one you would sneak off to the playground with
Speaker 1: and turnover rocks by the pond. I have rebelled against
Speaker 1: the podcast culture since it's very inception, but it's just
Speaker 1: not possible to not enjoy this podcast. Alchemists, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Let's get into it. Let's turn over the
Speaker 1: rock that is cue crepetology. Okay, what in the David S.
Speaker 1: Pumpkins is this word? David Pumpkins, I mean, are we
Speaker 1: supposed to know who that is? I know you have questions, Okay,
Speaker 1: I looked it up. Cu creb patology comes from the
Speaker 1: Latin for gourd, and yes, cucub petology looks like cucumbers
Speaker 1: because they're related. We're going to get into that later.
Speaker 1: But also I'd like to note that the word pumpkin
Speaker 1: comes from the French for pump pump, which came in
Speaker 1: a winding viny way from the Greek peppo, which means
Speaker 1: to be cooked by the sun. Genus and species of
Speaker 1: most pumpkins cucurbita pepo, a gourd that's a big cooked
Speaker 1: in the sun. So I was looking for a pumpkin
Speaker 1: expert or someone who studies pumpkins or a pumpkin scholar,
Speaker 1: but not just the science of pumpkins, but also the
Speaker 1: emotions and the folklore and the history. And I came
Speaker 1: across a book entitled Pumpkin, Pumpkin Folklore, History, Planting, Hints,
Speaker 1: and Good Eating by someone who loves pumpkins so much
Speaker 1: she studied them intensely in wordal whole book about them.
Speaker 1: So I tippy tapped around on the internet. I found
Speaker 1: this ologists info. I cold called her. I just left
Speaker 1: a voicemail at six pm on a Sunday like a freak.
Speaker 1: I was driving on my way back from the Mohave Desert.
Speaker 1: She called me back like an hour later, and I
Speaker 1: just happened to be driving through her tiny town of Yukaipa,
Speaker 1: so I pulled over. I chatted with her for about
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes before I had the nerve to say, Hey,
Speaker 1: I know I'm a stranger and it's like eight pm
Speaker 1: on a Sunday night, but can I come over?
Speaker 3: Can?
Speaker 1: I talked about pumpkins and she said she was a
Speaker 1: night owl. Anyway, she gave me the address. I headed over.
Speaker 1: I'm approaching the porch. Here we go. Hello, and how
Speaker 1: could I be so lucky? So she was preceded by
Speaker 1: a few huabas and came out in comfy Sunday clothes,
Speaker 1: her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail.
Speaker 4: Right, Hi made you?
Speaker 1: Thanks let me lovely lady? So are you thanks for
Speaker 1: letting me come over?
Speaker 2: And I was like, I'm kind.
Speaker 1: Of really close to you. Is that okay? That's okay?
Speaker 5: We're really free for him around. Oh you're great. I'm
Speaker 5: an old old time hit. Now you're down mommy's doing
Speaker 5: an interview.
Speaker 6: Okay, So if you hear any little pup whimpers or
Speaker 6: the song gurgling of a nearby fish tank, just consider
Speaker 6: it part of the immersive pumpkin experience, which was lovely.
Speaker 6: We chatted about what is a pumpkin? How long have
Speaker 6: we been carving them up and cooking them down? How
Speaker 6: many varieties are there? What else are they used for?
Speaker 6: How do you pick out a good one? What are
Speaker 6: the biggest myths and the biggest pumpkins, How memories can
Speaker 6: follow you for decades, and the fascinating history that led
Speaker 6: this pumpkin studyre to embark on her research.
Speaker 1: So let alone, candle enjoy the flickering and cozy wisdom
Speaker 1: of curebatologists and Copeland. I'm a senior.
Speaker 5: I'm going to be seventy eight November twenty second, which
Speaker 5: falls on Thanksgiving every so many years. And that's how
Speaker 5: I one of the ways I come to love pumpkins.
Speaker 1: You must have had a pumpkin pie for your birthday?
Speaker 5: Oh? I always had pumpkin pie, pumpkin cake, pumpkin soup,
Speaker 5: pumpkin nip, you name it.
Speaker 1: And did you get sick of having a pumpkin.
Speaker 5: Oh no, no, no, no, no, never never never no.
Speaker 5: And it was encouraging to me because I sort of
Speaker 5: adopted pumpkins is my own thing. So no, I never
Speaker 5: got tired of pumpkins.
Speaker 1: And now, were you always really curious? Did you go
Speaker 1: up curious as a kid?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, Oh yeah, I used to. I used to
Speaker 5: lie in the grass and look through the grass and
Speaker 5: look at insects and try to imagine what their lives
Speaker 5: would be like living down there, and you know what
Speaker 5: their world was like.
Speaker 1: So when we chatted on the phone and described herself
Speaker 1: as quote an unconventional senior, woohoo. And when a person
Speaker 1: uses woohoo as a form of punctuation, you have to
Speaker 1: make it. You turn and you have to to come
Speaker 1: over to meet this person and hear about their life
Speaker 1: and how pumpkins fit into the past and the present.
Speaker 5: Kind of a hippie, I'm very much a hippie, never
Speaker 5: into the drug scene and all that. But I love
Speaker 5: the music, I love the art. I love creativity. I
Speaker 5: love people speaking up about things they believe in.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about your background. What did
Speaker 1: you study?
Speaker 5: Okay, I started out in nursing when I finally got
Speaker 5: to go to college. I think I was close to thirty,
Speaker 5: and so I started out in nursing and I went
Speaker 5: through that about two years. And after two years, I said, gee,
Speaker 5: I wonder when we're ever going to get to go
Speaker 5: to a hospital. This is a four year program. I
Speaker 5: sort of need to get a sense of what it's
Speaker 5: like to be a nurse. And so I said, what
Speaker 5: could I be. Well, my husband at the time said,
Speaker 5: you know, I'm going to take you to this place
Speaker 5: in Los Angeles. It's called the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation.
Speaker 5: And these people test you based on your innate abilities,
Speaker 5: not on questions that they ask you. So they did
Speaker 5: this long testing process for days and days, and then
Speaker 5: they came up with this idea that he said, you
Speaker 5: are perfect for archaeology. Oh, I said, archaeology. I said, well,
Speaker 5: you know, that does sound really interesting. So I got
Speaker 5: a degree in archaeology and I actually worked in the field.
Speaker 5: I went out into Arizona, New Mexico, and also I
Speaker 5: went down into Mexico.
Speaker 1: So as an archaeologist, Anne was researching the pottery of
Speaker 1: indigenous people of the Southwest and Mexico, looking at some
Speaker 1: pre Columbian methods of firing, pottery and cooking, and she
Speaker 1: said she loved the work.
Speaker 5: So I loved the study. It was kind of perfect
Speaker 5: for me. Unfortunately, archaeologists have this thing that's known as
Speaker 5: the archaeological diseases. So I got paratyphoid and then I
Speaker 5: got valley fever, and by then I said, you know,
Speaker 5: I may not make it moneymore years if I don't
Speaker 5: switch field.
Speaker 1: Anne also worked as a graphic artist doing typesetting, and
Speaker 1: she started a small nonprofit for people dealing with physical
Speaker 1: and developmental challenges. She said she was deeply affected by
Speaker 1: her brother's experience in Vietnam after he returned with a
Speaker 1: brain injury and PTSD. This woman's heart is a cucurbato maxima,
Speaker 1: which is a species of giant pumpkin, which we'll talk
Speaker 1: about later.
Speaker 5: And I love people. I love relating to other people
Speaker 5: of all kinds and helping them in different ways. I
Speaker 5: taught illiterate adults, so I did a lot of things
Speaker 5: in my life. So then how did I come to
Speaker 5: write this book?
Speaker 1: Solid question. So Anne's husband at the time was an
Speaker 1: anthropologist who was super encouraging.
Speaker 5: And he said, you know you're good at writing. You
Speaker 5: like to write. Why don't you because you know, why
Speaker 5: don't you write a book? He said, why don't you
Speaker 5: write a book about I don't know pumpkins. And we
Speaker 5: had been to Virginia when we first got together, and
Speaker 5: I had never been there before. It was raining, it
Speaker 5: was in the winter or fall. It was muddy everywhere,
Speaker 5: and we were driving through the hills and I just
Speaker 5: suddenly said, pumpkins, We're coming to pumpkins. And he said, no,
Speaker 5: don't be silly, there's no and he didn't even finish
Speaker 5: his sentence. We come over the top of the hill
Speaker 5: and there on the right side, down at the bottom
Speaker 5: of the hill, and write the mud puddle and the
Speaker 5: biggest mud puddle is this pumpkin stand. Uh. So I
Speaker 5: had to go and get my pumpkin right then. And
Speaker 5: I had to you know, you don't just go get
Speaker 5: a pumpkin. You have to evaluate it, right. You have
Speaker 5: to make sure it has the qualities. And the qualities
Speaker 5: change every year, because you know, they're magical. They don't
Speaker 5: just stay the same. So I went and picked this really,
Speaker 5: really big pumpkin because I decided I had to have
Speaker 5: a big, big pumpkin. Now, mind you, we had to
Speaker 5: fly back from Virginia to California, so I wouldn't let
Speaker 5: go of my pumpkin. So I took it on the
Speaker 5: plane with me. And it was so cute because normally,
Speaker 5: you know, people are kind of like they're looking at you,
Speaker 5: Oh gee, what are they up to? Could they be
Speaker 5: a terrorist? Who knows? You know, But even the pilot,
Speaker 5: everybody was smiling and they were like, oh yeah, take
Speaker 5: it in and so so that kind of that kind
Speaker 5: of started.
Speaker 1: And had a few friends who were cornet chefs with
Speaker 1: this huge library of vintage books, and she would leave
Speaker 1: through them just mesmerized.
Speaker 5: And they had this remarkable collection of old, old, old cookbooks,
Speaker 5: I mean from the eighteen hundreds, and in fact, every
Speaker 5: recipe was cooked on a wood burning stove in an
Speaker 5: iron pot, and there weren't measurements. So Luisa and I
Speaker 5: had fun trying to figure out how much do you think? Oh,
Speaker 5: I don't know, what do you think? And like I said,
Speaker 5: I'm unconventional in a sense. Number one, I don't make
Speaker 5: a recipe twice the same way. And number two, I
Speaker 5: question things that are called for to put in. And
Speaker 5: I address this in my book because I don't want
Speaker 5: anybody to go. She forgot to tell me to put
Speaker 5: in a quarter teaspoon of salt, and my cooking is ruined,
Speaker 5: you know. And so I told people, you know what,
Speaker 5: salt is a very personal issue, and I did a
Speaker 5: little bit on the history of salt, and I said,
Speaker 5: you know, salt is your choice, but it's not an essential.
Speaker 5: You're not going to ruin your recipe if you don't
Speaker 5: put salt in it at all business And I said,
Speaker 5: why should I tell you a quarter of a teaspoon
Speaker 5: when maybe you want to put a whole tea spoon
Speaker 5: or even a tablespoon. It's up to you. You want
Speaker 5: to kill you yourself? Really have had it, you know,
Speaker 5: have fun. So so that was that was how I
Speaker 5: got into so Luisa and I would try out all
Speaker 5: these recipes and like we made we made pumpkin soap
Speaker 5: and it was one of our funniest experiences because neither
Speaker 5: of us had made soap before and they're calling for
Speaker 5: like mutton fat and things like that that we didn't
Speaker 5: really have. So we sort of had to figure out, well,
Speaker 5: what would be like mutton fat? And I'm like, could
Speaker 5: we go get the donkey down the street, or how
Speaker 5: about a gooser and what should we use, And we
Speaker 5: just kept experimenting and it took us a long time
Speaker 5: to get it to where we actually were able to
Speaker 5: make it, but we did do it. So that was
Speaker 5: that was a heap of fun.
Speaker 1: And now getting back to how to pick a pumpkin?
Speaker 5: Uh huh?
Speaker 1: How do you pick a pumpkin? What are we looking for?
Speaker 5: It's going to be different every single time you go.
Speaker 5: It's going to be different. The color's going to be different,
Speaker 5: the shape, but the pumpkin's going to be different, the
Speaker 5: size of it, whether it has a stam at the
Speaker 5: top that's long, or whether it doesn't even have a stam.
Speaker 5: And it's going to change every year according to what
Speaker 5: you're you know your person. It's I mean, it's magic
Speaker 5: every year. You'll know it when you see it, and
Speaker 5: it may take a long time to figure it out,
Speaker 5: but that's half the fun of getting one.
Speaker 1: So for a decorative pumpkin, use intuition. You can summon
Speaker 1: your spidey sense, tap into some witches magic and just
Speaker 1: get magnetized to the right one. Now, if you're going
Speaker 1: to eat it, the darker, the green stem and the
Speaker 1: orange skin mean it's ready to be picked ready to
Speaker 1: be purchased, and you can hold it up to your
Speaker 1: ear and you can thump it. And the louder that
Speaker 1: hollow echoe sound, the better the pumpkin. In side note,
Speaker 1: if you ever need to lovingly threaten someone, say for
Speaker 1: venmoing you for enchiladas when you said they wear your treat,
Speaker 1: or not texting you the second they get home safe,
Speaker 1: you can always say that you'll thump them on the pumpkin.
Speaker 1: That's been a word family threat for years and it
Speaker 1: translates to I love you, how dare you? And now?
Speaker 1: What about some varieties of pumpkins?
Speaker 5: Oh, there are a lot, a lot, a lot of
Speaker 5: pumpkin varieties. Now, a pumpkin is not a typical fruit.
Speaker 5: It's also not a vegetable. Oh it's no, it's not
Speaker 5: a vegetable. It's a fruit, well, sort of a pumpkin,
Speaker 5: believe it or not. Is a berry? Oh? What? It's
Speaker 5: a berry? Why it's a berry? Because it said I'm
Speaker 5: going to be a berry and it's erry. True.
Speaker 1: It's a freakin berry, y'all. It's a frickin berry. And
Speaker 1: I looked it up, and so are cucumbers, and avocados
Speaker 1: are a berry? Bananas are a berry. Eggplants are a berry.
Speaker 1: These are berries. They are fleshy seeded fruits. They're formed
Speaker 1: from a single flower containing one ovary boom berries. Anne says,
Speaker 1: the biggest fum flamp she's here bunk is that pumpkins
Speaker 1: are not a vegetable, and in her book she calls
Speaker 1: the pumpkin a botanical platypus, but refer to them as
Speaker 1: a vegetable. She might thump you on the berry.
Speaker 5: So, yeah, you have a lot of fun with pumpkins,
Speaker 5: because there's a lot of really different things about pumpkins.
Speaker 5: They come in different sizes, shapes. They were grown in
Speaker 5: Mexico way way back, even before the Incas and so forth.
Speaker 5: They were grown in China way way back. So I
Speaker 5: don't know the Chinese name. Sorry to say for those
Speaker 5: of you who speak fluent Chinese, I'm sorry. I don't
Speaker 5: mean to disappoint you.
Speaker 1: And what are some of your favorite varieties of pumpkin?
Speaker 5: I like, there's a pumpkin that is green, that has
Speaker 5: stripes and sometimes it has red and green, and they're
Speaker 5: very small. I think they're called kabasi.
Speaker 1: Okay, these are pumpkins or Japanese And if you Google
Speaker 1: image search kobacha in Japan, you will find all manner
Speaker 1: of pumpkins. But to English speakers, kobacha means a short
Speaker 1: squat squash that you've probably had in tempura, and you
Speaker 1: either save it as the last piece you eat as
Speaker 1: a treat, or you eat it first because life is short,
Speaker 1: and someone at the table may say, ooh, can I
Speaker 1: have some of your tempura, and you want the pumpkin
Speaker 1: one for yourself, you gotta eat it fast. Pas Australians
Speaker 1: call all kinds of squash pumpkin. It's calabasa and Spanish
Speaker 1: and candied in Mexico for Day the Dead festivities, and
Speaker 1: the British used to call them pumpions. Now the smooth
Speaker 1: doorstep pumpkins we're used to in America are Connecticut field pumpkins,
Speaker 1: and the smaller ones that we make int pies are
Speaker 1: sweet sugar pies. And there are Jarendale blue pumpkins, Casper
Speaker 1: white pumpkins. The pumpy ones are called peanut. There's Long
Speaker 1: Island cheese pumpkins because they look like a cheese wheel.
Speaker 1: There are others called white ghost, warty, goblins, baby boo. Essentially,
Speaker 1: just come up with a new pumpkin and give it
Speaker 1: your cat's weirdest nickname. You're good to go. But how
Speaker 1: do you make a new pumpkin?
Speaker 5: If you want to cross pollinate pumpkins, you can't just
Speaker 5: put the seats together and expect them to grow, right.
Speaker 5: You have to literally hand pollinate them. You have to
Speaker 5: pretend to be a bee. I'm go out there and
Speaker 5: buzz around and take your little que tip and hand
Speaker 5: pollinate them. And then sometimes they will grow for you,
Speaker 5: and sometimes they won't. It depends on the level of
Speaker 5: the type of pumpkin that it is. So back in
Speaker 5: the day when I started working on the Pumpkin Cookbook,
Speaker 5: it was pretty incredible because I'd go to the grocery store.
Speaker 5: They would have gotten the Halloween pumpkins out, but they'd
Speaker 5: have a lot of pumpkins left still, and I'd tell
Speaker 5: them I was writing the book, and they'd give me
Speaker 5: a whole I mean, I had people give me a
Speaker 5: whole basketful, a whole grocery basketful of pumpkins for free
Speaker 5: because they wanted to get rid of them anyway. And
Speaker 5: they said, oh, wow, you know you're gonna write. Okay, good,
Speaker 5: here take them. During pioneer days because they didn't Noliays
Speaker 5: have a flower available, and they also did noise have
Speaker 5: food for the cattle. So those were used in particularly
Speaker 5: back East, to feed the cattle and also to get flowers.
Speaker 5: So they would they would slice the pumpkins and get
Speaker 5: the seeds out of them, and then they would hang
Speaker 5: them up on the ceilings to dry, and then they
Speaker 5: would grind them into flour. And they actually made pumpkin flour.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Yep. Tell me a little bit
Speaker 1: more about the history of pumpkins. So South America rights
Speaker 1: and then at what point did they start growing them
Speaker 1: in North America and Europe? I mean, they're pretty much
Speaker 1: grown on every continent.
Speaker 5: Right, Well, they figured that the American Indians were growing
Speaker 5: them for a while. They just may not have looked
Speaker 5: like the pumpkins we have today. They might have looked
Speaker 5: more like a squash, for example. They might have been smaller.
Speaker 5: They believed that the seeds were very healthy for you,
Speaker 5: which they are, so they believe that they would take
Speaker 5: away like parasites and things like that. So they would
Speaker 5: eat the seeds and dry them and neat them.
Speaker 1: Okay, side note, how ancient are pumpkins. Did they come
Speaker 1: from aliens?
Speaker 5: Probably not.
Speaker 1: Scientists have found seeds that are over seven thousand years old.
Speaker 1: I think they originated in Central America as smaller, more
Speaker 1: bitter little gourds, and indigenous populations all over the continent
Speaker 1: have for centuries use pumpkins in stews, dried them. They
Speaker 1: use them in medicine. Squash blossoms which also side note
Speaker 1: amazing fried thank you very much. Those were used for
Speaker 1: skin injuries, and from eighteen thirty six to the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds pumpkin seeds were recognized as a remedy for
Speaker 1: testinal infections, and more recent research has been on the
Speaker 1: l trip to fan in pepita seeds helping with symptoms
Speaker 1: of depression, which part of that is probably just sitting
Speaker 1: there cracking them with your teeth is so dang dang fun. Also,
Speaker 1: according to Kaiser Permanente's website, there have been pumpkin seed
Speaker 1: medical trials showing promise in reducing kidney stone risk and
Speaker 1: helping with a parasite that comes from snails. So your
Speaker 1: glowing porch orb contains a little botanical wizardry. You mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier that pumpkins are magical. Oh, absolutely, we'll talk to
Speaker 1: you a little bit about how you feel about pumpkins.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, it's not just the pumpkin itself, it's
Speaker 5: the whole season that it us shures in. It's all
Speaker 5: the good things that we know and love, getting together
Speaker 5: with friends, changing our personality via costume.
Speaker 1: Halloween, quick reminder, is the eve of all hollows day
Speaker 1: to honor saints, and the tradition of dressing up comes
Speaker 1: in part two in the costume that you're wearing, and
Speaker 1: partly to scare off the demons that are just all around,
Speaker 1: just chilling, waiting to cross the boundary and to death
Speaker 1: the next day. It's kind of like right before some
Speaker 1: holy day, we need to just wild out and get stupid,
Speaker 1: like Marti Gras before Lent. You got New Year's Eve,
Speaker 1: before all of our January first resolutions take effect. And
Speaker 1: then there's always those soggy eyed squads of pre wedding
Speaker 1: bachelor and bachelorettes just vaping through Las Vegas casinos weeks
Speaker 1: before a wedding. Now, some researchers have found a link
Speaker 1: between higher caloric intake in the colder months, attributing it
Speaker 1: to old kind of hard wiring for storing up on
Speaker 1: fat before a fast. So Halloween is the time to
Speaker 1: dress up like someone who can kick more ass than
Speaker 1: you can in order to ward off evil, and also
Speaker 1: to eat all the candy you can because death looms
Speaker 1: close and the fruit trees will be bare in the winter.
Speaker 1: It makes sense.
Speaker 5: There were all these kind of magical things when I
Speaker 5: was growing up. We did bobbing for apples, we did
Speaker 5: popcorn balls, we did you know today they just go
Speaker 5: out and buy a bag of candy, throw it in
Speaker 5: a bowl and give it to the kids. Yeah, but
Speaker 5: it wasn't like that then. It was a lot. There
Speaker 5: was a lot more to the activity itself, and so
Speaker 5: to me, pumpkins became magical. You know when something changes
Speaker 5: your memories in life and makes it something you'll always remember.
Speaker 5: I mean here, I am almost seventy eight, and I
Speaker 5: remember every single minute of that. So yeah, it was
Speaker 5: a good time.
Speaker 1: What was it like for you to research your book
Speaker 1: when you really decided I'm going to write a book
Speaker 1: about pumpkins.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I love researching. It just fulfilled my need to
Speaker 5: do something that I love to do.
Speaker 1: And so when you were researching for the book, how
Speaker 1: did you structure it? I know that you go over
Speaker 1: some recipes and you go over history and folklore. What
Speaker 1: was your favorite part of researching?
Speaker 5: Actually, it was the history and the folklore just start
Speaker 5: out with The recipes came along later, but I actually
Speaker 5: started looking into the history and the folklore first, and
Speaker 5: then I got into kind of like growing hints, and
Speaker 5: then I kind of got into the cooking part of it.
Speaker 1: Anne says that after she wrote the first edition of
Speaker 1: Pumpkins Pumpkins in nineteen eighty six, she had to send
Speaker 1: off query letters to publishers, That's how you did it
Speaker 1: those days, hoping that one would write back and request
Speaker 1: the manuscript. And someone suggested that she keep a chart
Speaker 1: of the publishing houses responses and if she got rejected,
Speaker 1: just keep a record of why. Now, before her book
Speaker 1: finally made it to print now in its third edition,
Speaker 1: she was rejected six hundred times, and somehow she's still
Speaker 1: sunny about it.
Speaker 5: What a great learning experience that was. Because of all
Speaker 5: those six hundred, not one of them was because of
Speaker 5: my writing or my style.
Speaker 1: They all liked it.
Speaker 5: In those days, there weren't a lot of specialized cookbooks.
Speaker 5: That was one issue, And the other issue was that
Speaker 5: they considered it seasonal, which course we all know it's not.
Speaker 5: You can buy pumpkins all year round in one form
Speaker 5: or another, and people do, so you know, it was
Speaker 5: a good it was a good learning experience. So I
Speaker 5: always tell anybody who's writing a book today, don't get
Speaker 5: discouraged because number one, it's not in all likelihood it's
Speaker 5: not your writing. It's either the wrong kind of book,
Speaker 5: or it's a book that, even though you may have
Speaker 5: written it well, there's something about it that did not sell.
Speaker 5: It's that you've picked the wrong title, or you've picked
Speaker 5: the wrong art, or there's some aspect of it that
Speaker 5: doesn't draw people. You've got to have the right ingredients.
Speaker 5: And it took me three editions to get this really
Speaker 5: good cover that looks good, to take all the art
Speaker 5: out of the book, you know, and get down to basics.
Speaker 5: So it's been true good revisions, and I'm glad I
Speaker 5: had this ability to go through this process, really like
Speaker 5: going to college, you know.
Speaker 1: And it's free, yeah, free. And now what is some
Speaker 1: of the folklore surrounding pumpkins? Because I'm thinking like people
Speaker 1: stepping into Pumpkins's carriages. We got Igabod Crane out there
Speaker 1: we got all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 5: Oh, there are there's myths that involve pumpkins from other
Speaker 5: lands that where they actually believe that humanity came from
Speaker 5: a pumpkin.
Speaker 1: Ps. I did look this up. In a two thousand
Speaker 1: and one article from the Journal Economic Botany catalogs several
Speaker 1: creation myths from different Asian cultures, most of which involve
Speaker 1: people surviving a great flood by floating in a hollow
Speaker 1: pumpkin or the birthing of a pumpkin. Youch that's cut
Speaker 1: into many pieces to form people. Can you imagine going
Speaker 1: through labor and they're like, ps, your baby is huge.
Speaker 1: It's a pumpkin. Also, we're gonna dice it up so
Speaker 1: you now have like a thousand babies. No hard pass.
Speaker 1: But historians think that the pumpkin plant didn't even make
Speaker 1: Dasia until post Colombian times. But this folklore has been
Speaker 1: passed down through enough oral and written tradition that it's stuck.
Speaker 1: And here in America there are old stories from Southern
Speaker 1: communities and African American communities about riding pumpkin vines into
Speaker 1: new lands since they grow so fast, just like hop
Speaker 1: a pumpkin vine like a bullet train, and also stories
Speaker 1: about convincing Europeans that pumpkins are donkey eggs. And Anne
Speaker 1: includes some of these Southern United States folklore tales verbatim
Speaker 1: in her book and says they're of special interest to
Speaker 1: her because the historical stories are in African American vernacular English.
Speaker 1: And you can see the International Phonology episode with the
Speaker 1: phenomenal Doctor Nicole Holiday for more on that. And Ann's
Speaker 1: husband is part African American and so those stories have
Speaker 1: ties to his family history. So she loves the folklore,
Speaker 1: which is it's such a hard way to say three
Speaker 1: times that's say fulglar. Can you say, well, I've messed
Speaker 1: this up? So anyway, fulk war.
Speaker 5: So there's a lot of variety in the folklore and
Speaker 5: it depends where it comes from.
Speaker 1: What are some of your favorite stories?
Speaker 5: I like the one there's one about Chinese princess and
Speaker 5: the emperor wants to marry her, but she is in
Speaker 5: love with another man. She agrees to marry him, but
Speaker 5: she wants to go inside this pumpkin for a while.
Speaker 5: She jumps basically off a cliff into the river and
Speaker 5: pushes the pumpkin, gets off. So that's one of the
Speaker 5: ones I like because it's kind of strange. It's kind
Speaker 5: of really different from what you expect.
Speaker 1: Okay, this one is about a family who has a
Speaker 1: pumpkin in their yard and they decide to cut it
Speaker 1: in half, and surprise, there's a human baby inside and
Speaker 1: they're like, cool, free baby, and the baby grows up
Speaker 1: to be smoking hot. The emperor is like, you're my
Speaker 1: hot wife now, and she's like, oh, gross, no, I
Speaker 1: already have husband. Her real husband dies of a broken
Speaker 1: heart because the emperor is like, I'm here to steal
Speaker 1: your girl, and so she tricks the emperor. She's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm definitely down to your wife. Just score me a
Speaker 1: pumpkin and something super tall to climb up, and then
Speaker 1: she jumps off and she dies and becomes a bunch
Speaker 1: of tiny fish and she's like, later, loser, you don't
Speaker 1: get to marry me. I'm a hot pumpkin bitch. Now.
Speaker 1: The moral of the story is that now you can
Speaker 1: just not text people back, and you can save yourself
Speaker 1: the trouble of becoming a bunch of fish. Now, moving
Speaker 1: on to bigger and gianter topics, what about them big
Speaker 1: ol' honkin' pumps and how do people grow those huge
Speaker 1: giant pumpkins.
Speaker 5: Oh, sir, that's quite an effort. Yeah, they do have
Speaker 5: seeds for those. However, they don't necessarily grow to be
Speaker 5: big on their own. You have to kind of baby
Speaker 5: them along. And one of the things a lot of
Speaker 5: people do is that once the pumpkins starts growing, they
Speaker 5: have to keep it turned and they have to keep
Speaker 5: it moving so that it doesn't squash its own leaves
Speaker 5: and everything and prevent it from growing. So they have
Speaker 5: to put something under it. You know, it could be cloth,
Speaker 5: it could be hay or whatever, but they put something
Speaker 5: under it. Some of them feed the pumpkins with milk. Yeah,
Speaker 5: they do, they do, And there's a lot there's a
Speaker 5: lot of different ways they can do things. And of course,
Speaker 5: growing the biggest pumpkin is a longstanding thing that's happened.
Speaker 5: Oh and back at back in the early colonial days,
Speaker 5: when people would get their hair cut, they used to
Speaker 5: put a pumpkin, half a pumpkin on top of their heads.
Speaker 5: And they even name the town pumpkin Shire because that's
Speaker 5: how they would cut their hair. They would just cut
Speaker 5: it around the pumpkin.
Speaker 1: Oh like that, Yeah, yes, New Haven in particular no
Speaker 1: for this luke, and like Instagram photos of rose at brunch,
Speaker 1: it spread quickly and gave New Englanders the nickname Pumpkinheads.
Speaker 1: Now Boston, Hi, Hi, Boston. You are once known as
Speaker 1: pumpkin Shire. So the next time you enjoy some baked
Speaker 1: beans from Beantown, just think, wow, you could be pumpkin
Speaker 1: Muncheon instead. So let's say you need a haircut in
Speaker 1: several months, so you've decided to grow pumpkin. Does Ann
Speaker 1: have any tips? First, she says, have a space about
Speaker 1: four feet wide and thirty or forty feet long. Or
Speaker 1: or you can train your vines to grow in a
Speaker 1: circle around the rest of the garden.
Speaker 4: Is that cute?
Speaker 1: She says, Plant five or six seeds in each mound,
Speaker 1: and then when they start to sprout, you got to
Speaker 1: thin them out and pluck a couple. Let only the
Speaker 1: best to grow. She says. It's going to be heartbreaking,
Speaker 1: but it's worth it.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: Her book has more growing tips about hot capping them,
Speaker 1: coddling them in cold weather, keeping them cozy as they
Speaker 1: start their journey to pumpkin Town. I guess Pumpkinshire.
Speaker 5: They grow into the fall, and there's a few types
Speaker 5: that can even grow into the winter. So yeah, it
Speaker 5: just depends how they're grown and where they're grown and
Speaker 5: what they put into it to how they will grow.
Speaker 1: Do you have a favorite movie involving a pumpkin?
Speaker 5: I guess Cinderella mainly. I think that's everybody's everybody's favored
Speaker 5: her in that pumpkin eve or not carriage. You know,
Speaker 5: that's that's pretty classic. I can't think of any others
Speaker 5: that I've seen right off an, Yeah, but that's one
Speaker 5: I always liked a.
Speaker 1: Lot, Okay, p has The tale of Cinderella dates back
Speaker 1: over two thousand years and has taken various forms, many
Speaker 1: of which involve this future princess having a dead mom
Speaker 1: who's reincarnated into a talking fish, kind of like those
Speaker 1: billy big mouth bass things, but it's your parent chatting
Speaker 1: you up from the grave and shit talking your dad's
Speaker 1: awful new wife. Now, the version with the pumpkin carriage
Speaker 1: was far from a Walt Disney invention, so don't give
Speaker 1: him props that part of the story was whipped up
Speaker 1: in the sixteen hundreds in France. What about pumpkin carving tips?
Speaker 5: Pumpkin carving tips, I'm not good at carving pumpkins. But
Speaker 5: I'll tell you why. I have carved a pumpkin or two,
Speaker 5: But after a while I got twere. I didn't really
Speaker 5: want to carve them. I really wanted to paint them
Speaker 5: or to do something else with them. For some reason,
Speaker 5: I just didn't like to cut them up unless I
Speaker 5: was cooking them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know you are not the only cu
Speaker 1: crebatologist I have heard say that. I understand that there's
Speaker 1: a movement to cook not carve, because it's like you
Speaker 1: put all this water and resources.
Speaker 5: Into it, so you're just gonna let it rot on
Speaker 5: the porch.
Speaker 1: That's true, that's true. Yes, Tempera not to be confused
Speaker 1: with tempera or acrylic paint works well on pumpkins. And
Speaker 1: if you're like, why am I seeing so many turquoise
Speaker 1: colored pumpkins? What's this trend? That is the teal pumpkin
Speaker 1: project and on someone's porch, it's a sign that there
Speaker 1: are non food treats being given out. So if you're
Speaker 1: kiddo or shamelessly you trolling your neighborhood as an adult
Speaker 1: for goodies, is allergic to peanuts or gluten, those houses
Speaker 1: are like, I got you covered, with like a fake tattoo,
Speaker 1: some silly putty, So keep an eye off with those.
Speaker 1: And let's say you've painted a face on a pumpkin,
Speaker 1: you've scrubbed it all off, and now you want to
Speaker 1: yum it up.
Speaker 5: Well, you can cook any size pumpkin. You're gonna have
Speaker 5: to cut it up a lot more to get it
Speaker 5: in a pan, but you can cook it. But the
Speaker 5: it's like the difference between say steak, where say what
Speaker 5: it called filling mignon is gonna cook up a lot
Speaker 5: nicer than a great, big, old ten pound steak, just
Speaker 5: partly because of the way it's structured and all. You
Speaker 5: can cook a good pumpkin, even from the big pumpkins,
Speaker 5: you need to process it a lot differently. You probably
Speaker 5: are gonna use something like a pres s cooker, or
Speaker 5: you're gonna dry it and use it that way and
Speaker 5: grind it up as flour, or you're gonna do something
Speaker 5: slightly different from what you do with the smaller pumpkin.
Speaker 5: The smaller pumpkins are really delicious. And when we were
Speaker 5: in Virginia, that's one of the things I did, was
Speaker 5: we continued to drive along after I got my pumpkin
Speaker 5: on that country road, and off to the left I
Speaker 5: saw where they had picked up all the pumpkins, but
Speaker 5: they had left these little, tiny green ones. So we
Speaker 5: went and got the little tiny green ones that were
Speaker 5: still they were growing, but they weren't going to pick them.
Speaker 5: They just left them there and we got this and
Speaker 5: took them home and steamed them. Best thing I ever ate.
Speaker 5: I mean, they were absolutely delicious. So yeah, each size,
Speaker 5: each type will be a little different. And that's part
Speaker 5: of the magic too, is that there's nothing that you
Speaker 5: can say, well, they're all like this. No, they're not
Speaker 5: all like this. They're all different. Seeds are different within them,
Speaker 5: dry differently, seeds have different shapes. They're all kind of
Speaker 5: the same shape. But there are pumpkins that have different,
Speaker 5: different shaped seats. So yeah, there's a lot of magic.
Speaker 1: Many can I ask you questions from listeners? Sure? Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: real quick, before we get to Patreon questions, we may
Speaker 1: have a few words about some sponsors of the show
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Speaker 1: to a cause of the ologists choosing and this week
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's get your questions. Meg Mahlly asks, and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people probably have the same question
Speaker 1: they did, and they include Jonathan and Ambermead, Kaylin Church,
Speaker 1: Jen s Ellen, Silva Rayden, Markham, Kyra and I, Laura
Speaker 1: Springer and Rosemary Galton y'all wanted to know where did
Speaker 1: the jack O'Lantern originate?
Speaker 5: The jack o lantern actually originated a long time ago,
Speaker 5: and we think back around whin Stonehenge and all that
Speaker 5: was well was active, let me put it that way.
Speaker 5: They think that it goes back that far and that
Speaker 5: Jack was like comparable to the devil, and he had
Speaker 5: to be a sort of punished, and he had to
Speaker 5: carry around a light so that people wouldn't be afraid
Speaker 5: of him, that they would know he was coming.
Speaker 1: Here's Johnny.
Speaker 5: So it goes back, it goes back a long way. Again,
Speaker 5: we only know from things that have been written, and
Speaker 5: we don't know in a lot of cases how truly
Speaker 5: accurate they are. So I'm doing my best to give
Speaker 5: a correct answer.
Speaker 1: Okay. It's also been said that Irish and Scottish kids
Speaker 1: used to carve their jackal interns out of turnips or potetatoles,
Speaker 1: and let me tell you, they look like tiny baby
Speaker 1: mummy heads and are so much scarier by so much
Speaker 1: many multitudes than any melon headed ichabod crane figure. And
Speaker 1: in this tale of Jack and the Devil, so some
Speaker 1: versions say that a guy named Jack trick the devil
Speaker 1: into buying him a beer and then trap the devil
Speaker 1: in the tree, and the devil was like, I am ho.
Speaker 1: And so the devil condemned Jack to wander the earth earth,
Speaker 1: just hoofing it around, carrying a hot coal in a
Speaker 1: turn up kind of like a smouldering earth purse filled
Speaker 1: with hell fire? Is that to mimic the devil Jack's Lanternian?
Speaker 5: Probably? And also so that it would light the way
Speaker 5: for people in the dark in the in the winter time.
Speaker 5: And it wasn't really like Halloween as we know it now.
Speaker 5: It used to be called sam Hane, and sam Hane
Speaker 5: was so different. It was connected with Celtic people and
Speaker 5: so it was a different sort of holiday then, And.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting, okay, so quick aside. Sam Hayne also
Speaker 1: pronounced Sowin, is a Gaelic festival and it celebrates the
Speaker 1: Celtic pagan New Year and the end of the harvest
Speaker 1: season and into the cold times, and feasts are had,
Speaker 1: costumes are donned, fairies are appeased, neighbors are shaken down
Speaker 1: for treats, and dead spirits are invited to come kick
Speaker 1: it before they cross over. And if you're like Day
Speaker 1: of the Dead, you didn't more shows what a nutty coincidence.
Speaker 1: It's the same day that Mexican holiday honoring and celebrating
Speaker 1: They're Gone and Not Forgotten. Used to be celebrated in
Speaker 1: the beginning of summer pre Spanish colonization, but gradually it
Speaker 1: got moved to late October to fit in with Western
Speaker 1: halloweeny things. So if you're into a painting project Day
Speaker 1: of the Dead, skull pumpkins cute as hell on in
Speaker 1: this case heaven hopefully, depending on your relatives. Oh Naomi
Speaker 1: Barry wants to know what's the deal with white and
Speaker 1: pink pumpkins? How do they make them like that?
Speaker 5: They don't make them. They cross pollinate them and they
Speaker 5: grow new varieties when they can. Now, white pumpkins have
Speaker 5: been something that they wanted to develop for a long
Speaker 5: time and they finally were able to. They've had red
Speaker 5: pumpkins reddish. Let's put it this way. They're more red
Speaker 5: than they are orange. So if they cross the red
Speaker 5: with the white, chances are they'll get the pink. But
Speaker 5: the pink is you don't don't see many pink Yeah,
Speaker 5: it's more rare. So if you get a chance to
Speaker 5: get a pink pumpkin, by all mean to get one.
Speaker 1: These, by the bye are called porcelain doll f one
Speaker 1: varieties or Rascal f ones and they are light, light, peachy, pink, lumpy,
Speaker 1: but hardy with deep ribbing. And if you google them
Speaker 1: the porcelain doll pumpkin, they look a little like my butt.
Speaker 1: And I found a website called Pink Pumpkin patch dot
Speaker 1: org and it encourages growers to donate a portion of
Speaker 1: the proceeds of their pumpkin sales pink pumpkin sales to
Speaker 1: breast cancer charities and research. Because October ps for more
Speaker 1: about breast cancer, listen to the Surgical Oncology episode from
Speaker 1: last October with surgeon doctor Donna Marie Manassi, who is
Speaker 1: full of warmth and charm. Okay, This next question was
Speaker 1: also asked by Colleenibe. I mean, Craschfields wants to know
Speaker 1: how can I make my Jack o' lantern last longer?
Speaker 5: Last longer? Paint paint its face, keep it in a
Speaker 5: cool temperature, a cool dry temperature if possible, and then
Speaker 5: when you when you see that it's not gonna last
Speaker 5: forever and ever, go ahead and do something with it.
Speaker 5: Do something with the seeds, dry the seeds in the oven.
Speaker 5: Go ahead and dry the seeds and use them. You
Speaker 5: can paint them, you can dry them and eat them,
Speaker 5: you can salt them, you can use them in recipes,
Speaker 5: and you can make jewelry out of them and make
Speaker 5: really cool jewelry with wooden beads and so forth. So
Speaker 5: with the pumpkin seeds, oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, they're beautiful. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and they'll thread. You can thread them really well, so
Speaker 5: the needle will go right You use a big needle,
Speaker 5: but the needle go right through.
Speaker 1: Cool. I never knew that. Ye oh yeah, gosh, okay,
Speaker 1: I know. I look these up and they look kind
Speaker 1: of like puka shells mixed with smarties on an elastic
Speaker 1: and they're hellicol So people are out there making floral
Speaker 1: brooches out of pumpkin seeds. And if you're ever in
Speaker 1: a long line or you're stranded in a bog, you
Speaker 1: just not. I'm on them necklace, man. I'll fend off
Speaker 1: some parasites while you're at it. And Chrisper wants to know,
Speaker 1: do you watch It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown every year?
Speaker 5: Oh my god, is there anything else that's better that? That?
Speaker 5: Is my all time favorite is Charlie Brown and the
Speaker 5: Great Pumpkin.
Speaker 4: True, the Great Pumpkin Rises, the pumpkin patch that he
Speaker 4: thinks is the most sincere. He's gotta pick this one,
Speaker 4: He's got to. I don't see how a pumpkin patch
Speaker 4: could be more sincere than this one. You can look
Speaker 4: all around and there's not a son of hypocrisy, nothing
Speaker 4: but sincerity as far as the I can see.
Speaker 1: There's just nothing like it for the holidays. This is
Speaker 1: the best time of year. I'm a November baby as well.
Speaker 1: And okay that November birthdays love fall. Absolutely we do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we do. Okay, thank you for backing my theory. Oh yeah, Paul,
Speaker 1: And not everyone agreed with me. No, I'm telling you
Speaker 1: it's a thing ask people at your next awkward business
Speaker 1: dinner or when you're on a jury and you've got
Speaker 1: some time to kill now. This next question was also
Speaker 1: asked my patrons Morgan Ashley, Katie Coast, Sam Taylor, Laura Kenny,
Speaker 1: and Joe Porfino, who simply wrote What's with Pumpkin Guts?
Speaker 1: Jacob Farmer wants to know why is it sometimes really
Speaker 1: easy to get the goop out of the inside of
Speaker 1: the pumpkin, and sometimes it's really long.
Speaker 5: Because the pumpkin hasn't either fully matured. And there are
Speaker 5: some varieties you think about making spaghetti noodles. If you
Speaker 5: take them out too early, they're really hard to get
Speaker 5: out of the pan, and they're harder to deal with.
Speaker 5: If you get them out when they're just right, then
Speaker 5: they're pretty easy to deal with. So it's possible that
Speaker 5: the pumpkin isn't fully right. So if the skin is
Speaker 5: really rough and really thick, sometimes it doesn't want to
Speaker 5: let go of this sheed.
Speaker 1: That's great advice. I never realized that Dana Van wants
Speaker 1: to know what is your favorite pumpkin or pumpkin labored
Speaker 1: food And how do you feel about pumpkin spic's popularity
Speaker 1: or everything being like pumpkin spice flavor.
Speaker 5: Oh, pumpkin spice flavor. Oh, I like it, of course,
Speaker 5: I'm not ash. I'm not as crazy about pumpkin drinks.
Speaker 5: I do like.
Speaker 1: Them, okay. Audio note, In addition to the white noise
Speaker 1: gurgling fish tank, a grandfather clock just abruptly joined the
Speaker 1: Autumn Symphony, and so we snipped it out. But I
Speaker 1: will paraphrase her answer and not big on PSLs, but
Speaker 1: she'll take a pumpkin spice lattes an occasional treat. She
Speaker 1: also has tons of recipes in her Pumpkin Pumpkin book,
Speaker 1: and she started telling me about jamming stuff into little
Speaker 1: pumpkins like her mom used to do.
Speaker 5: But you have to use small pumpkins and you stuff
Speaker 5: them with just like you would the bail pepper, and
Speaker 5: you cook them like the beil pepper.
Speaker 1: Dang, I'm gonna try that.
Speaker 5: And pumpkin chili is another favorite of mine. Pumpkin chili,
Speaker 5: there's a lot. I have a lot of favorites, like
Speaker 5: it ugly.
Speaker 1: And Lesley Whitman has a question. I feel like this
Speaker 1: is a heated question. Pumpkin pie or sweet potato pie?
Speaker 1: Which is better? Actually?
Speaker 5: I love both, really really love both, and to me,
Speaker 5: I'll take either one. I think, you know what, because
Speaker 5: sweet potatoes are fabulous, she ams are fabulous, and there's
Speaker 5: so many things she can do with them, so many
Speaker 5: ways she can cook them. So I guess one thing
Speaker 5: I haven't done yet with pumpkins, and I just thought
Speaker 5: about it when you mentioned sweet potatoes is nowadays you
Speaker 5: can buy sweet potato fries. You've probably had. I mean,
Speaker 5: I've never made pumpkin fries, so that's a thought I
Speaker 5: may have to go in the next edition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, someone out there with a deep fryar. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: goes announcement. Everyone sit down, gather yourselves. I guess I
Speaker 1: have to tell you. Pumpkin fries do exist. You can
Speaker 1: even bake them at home if you don't have access
Speaker 1: to a commercial fryer. This is big news. We're all
Speaker 1: gonna do this. Also, we had a few questions about
Speaker 1: the best autumn sport. This was asked by Justin World
Speaker 1: Championship walker and Michael Trebash. Sherman Nathan Bronick, who is
Speaker 1: also my cousin, wants to know how do they create
Speaker 1: thick wall hybrid pumpkins for punkin Chunkin O punkin chunk. Oh? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: what do you think?
Speaker 5: One of my second edition book had a picture of
Speaker 5: the pumpkin chunkin Punkin chunkin competition. You know, actually, any
Speaker 5: large pumpkin, if it's still very firm and very ripe,
Speaker 5: it's gonna it's gonna be a good chunker. They they
Speaker 5: don't generally have thin they don't have thin shells. There
Speaker 5: are some that do, but they tend to be smaller,
Speaker 5: and they tend to be not well, they're not healthy.
Speaker 5: A healthy pumpkin is a chunker.
Speaker 1: I get that tattoo. How do you feel about the
Speaker 1: band smashing pumpkins?
Speaker 5: Oh? I like that a lot. I think that's really cool.
Speaker 5: And a couple more questions if that's okay? Oh? Sure?
Speaker 1: Isabel Helper wants to know is it the most underrated vegetable?
Speaker 5: Well, it's not a vegetable, but yes, it's definitely underrated.
Speaker 5: It's really high in vitamin content and a lot of
Speaker 5: vegetarians do recognize the value of it in meals and
Speaker 5: the many ways you can use it in a meal.
Speaker 1: Becky Woodriff has a great question. She wants to know
Speaker 1: what's with those bags of teeny tiny pumpkins in the
Speaker 1: produce aisle. Are they baby pumpkins or does that type
Speaker 1: naturally grow to that size? You know, I don't want.
Speaker 5: Actually, those are a special variety and they grow them
Speaker 5: that way. They're never gonna get big. They're they're grown
Speaker 5: to be small, like that bando slashretty much a long time. Yeah,
Speaker 5: Because they are small, they don't tend to rot, especially
Speaker 5: if you don't carve them up. If you're just having
Speaker 5: them sitting there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the little desk pumpkins, Yeah, they'll lashed. Okay. Side
Speaker 1: note one of those tiny, tiny pumpkins that Linda from
Speaker 1: Accounting has on our desk from like August thirty first
Speaker 1: until December first. Okay. They have many names among them
Speaker 1: Baby Boo, Pumpkin, Muchkin, baby Pam, we be little hooligan,
Speaker 1: mischief trickster, again supporting my theory that you can just
Speaker 1: name a new pumpkin after your cat. Also, you know
Speaker 1: those weird teeny ones that grow on sticks that are
Speaker 1: always in the floral department, Those are egg plants which
Speaker 1: your berries trust. No one, no one. Victoria Helen wants
Speaker 1: to know. Have you heard the fact that people used
Speaker 1: to give pumpkins to their significant others to propose to them.
Speaker 5: I haven't heard that one, but it's very possible because
Speaker 5: pumpkins were used in so many ways.
Speaker 1: I'll look into that, Okay. I couldn't find anything historical
Speaker 1: about promising one's future till death with a pumpkin, but
Speaker 1: it did lead me down this syrupy sweet internet hole
Speaker 1: to a website that gave stumped would be fiance's ideas
Speaker 1: of how to propose via pumpkin, like carving the question
Speaker 1: and then turning it around. You could cut a hole
Speaker 1: in the bottom of a pumpkin and then you can
Speaker 1: hide a ring in the slimy guts and have them
Speaker 1: carve it from the top. Or you could rent a
Speaker 1: pumpkin field and spell a message out via dozens of
Speaker 1: pumpkins and then ride over it in an air balloon.
Speaker 1: If you want to spend your entire wedding budget before
Speaker 1: they even say yes. Now, you might be out of
Speaker 1: your gourd, but perhaps it's worth a try if they
Speaker 1: love you. Warts and all. Okay, speaking of which, Brian
Speaker 1: Wharton wants to know, why do pumpkins get the weird
Speaker 1: wort looking thingies.
Speaker 5: Oh well, it's partly how they're grown and also the variety.
Speaker 5: Some pumpkins are going to be very lumpy and rumpy
Speaker 5: because it's part of their genetic makeup, and others will
Speaker 5: have a really smooth skin. I like the ones that
Speaker 5: have little wart thingies on them because they're they're they're different,
Speaker 5: you know, they're they're their own little characters, and to
Speaker 5: me it makes them look more interesting.
Speaker 1: So warts and all, you love them? Warts and all? Yep. Okay,
Speaker 1: I look this up because Ellie Sugarman and Sarah also
Speaker 1: had questions. And pumpkin worts are called ready this warts,
Speaker 1: they're called worts, and they can be caused by water imbalances, viruses, bugs,
Speaker 1: or just genetics. But these pumpkins all deserve hugs anyway,
Speaker 1: Alex Allen asked, could you give a shout out for
Speaker 1: our local native qu cubita foedissima. Does that sound familiar?
Speaker 5: Uh? Not that one, But again, there's all kinds of
Speaker 5: new ones out.
Speaker 1: Okay. The one he's talking about is the stinking Gord,
Speaker 1: the buffalo gord, the Calabazia, coyote gord, veetid gore, and
Speaker 1: other colorful names. And it's a small, bitter little thing,
Speaker 1: and folks are looking into its high oil content or
Speaker 1: the carbohydrates in the root stores as a source for biofuel.
Speaker 1: So one day, perhaps the stream of a pumpkin carriage
Speaker 1: will come true. Glass slippers, we always have a platform,
Speaker 1: looseight heels anyway, between new advancements with old pumpkins or
Speaker 1: new varieties being developed, and said, she can hardly keep up.
Speaker 5: There's new touch coming out every single year, so I'd
Speaker 5: be putting out a new addition every year, and that's
Speaker 5: too much work.
Speaker 1: Too much work.
Speaker 5: I want to play and have fun.
Speaker 1: As she wants to know, can you eat the guts
Speaker 1: of a pumpkin? Can? Can you eat the guts of
Speaker 1: a pumpkin?
Speaker 5: Oh? Yeah, it depends on how you cook it and
Speaker 5: how you but if you've ever eaten spaghetti, squash or
Speaker 5: some of those, you can essentially eat the innerns of
Speaker 5: the pumpkin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 5: So yeah, you can eat them. There it's not quite
Speaker 5: like eating say, an acorn squash or one of those.
Speaker 5: It's it's not going to be quite the same. You
Speaker 5: can eat them.
Speaker 4: I will personally gut every one of you.
Speaker 1: Oh so a pumpkin is very not so squash but
Speaker 1: not a vegetable. But some patrons also had questions about
Speaker 1: pumpkins and gourds, such as Sarah Chad Dylan Howe's Elizabeth
Speaker 1: la Plume and the Glide's gain and Delilah Green who
Speaker 1: simply typed those little gray pumpkins and the ones with
Speaker 1: the bumps all over them. That's the question. Okay, one
Speaker 1: last question. Pumpkins and gourds. Are they different or is
Speaker 1: it all?
Speaker 5: Yeah? No, they're they're very different. Yeah, they're very different.
Speaker 5: Gorge are more closely related to squash, but they're not
Speaker 5: even that e they're they're their own little thing and
Speaker 5: they have a very very hard shell, and when they
Speaker 5: are ripe, they're very very hard. You don't eat gorge,
Speaker 5: generally speaking. But you can paint on them, you can
Speaker 5: carve them, you can do all kinds of things like that,
Speaker 5: So they have their creative side too, And I love gords.
Speaker 5: I've seen some absolutely fabulous gourd art carved, painted, and otherwise.
Speaker 1: When do you start decorating for Halloween?
Speaker 3: Do?
Speaker 5: I start as soon as I can get my hands
Speaker 5: on a pumpkin and have one yet year, right I
Speaker 5: don't have one. We don't have a car right now.
Speaker 5: We're waiting for that to come home from the shop,
Speaker 5: so I haven't been able to get there. But when
Speaker 5: I do, and plus if I go in the grocery store,
Speaker 5: I may not find that perfect pumpkin. I may have
Speaker 5: to go to several places before I found what I want.
Speaker 5: I don't know what color it's going to be this year,
Speaker 5: or what shape or the size. I'm gonna have to
Speaker 5: see them and it's going to just have to kind
Speaker 5: of feel right when I look at it. I don't
Speaker 5: buy a pumpkin just to buy the pumpkin. It has
Speaker 5: to be to me. And when it speaks to me,
Speaker 5: I know it.
Speaker 1: That is the way you have to pick out a pumpkin.
Speaker 5: Yep, that's the way I pick in my out.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like the pumpkin picks you really
Speaker 1: in a way it does. You know the way it does.
Speaker 5: Ye?
Speaker 1: You just go with your heart when it comes to
Speaker 1: pumpkin picking. You do pumpkin picking. And now, what is
Speaker 1: the one thing about writing a book about pumpkins, or
Speaker 1: pumpkin research, or pumpkins themselves that really annoys you?
Speaker 5: That annoys me? Having to do recipes the same way
Speaker 5: over and over and over again. And that would be
Speaker 5: true if I were writing a bread cookbook or a
Speaker 5: steak cookbook or anything I do not like to I
Speaker 5: don't like to go by the rules. I could throw
Speaker 5: it in there and it works. You know he's intuition.
Speaker 1: Too, huh yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 5: When you cook. To me, cooking is a creative thing. Yes,
Speaker 5: you're cooking to fill your belly, but you also want
Speaker 5: to put love and creativity and to it, especially if
Speaker 5: you're cooking for other people in your life that you
Speaker 5: care about. You're giving up yourself. You're not just giving
Speaker 5: the food, you're giving of yourself. And you want to
Speaker 5: put your best foot forward, but not in a way
Speaker 5: that we have to be rigid about how we do it.
Speaker 1: Oh one more thing about Ann's work.
Speaker 5: I love learning things. I'll never stop studying as long
Speaker 5: as I live. I'll probably never stop cooking, but I'll
Speaker 5: always cook in my own way. I won't cook by
Speaker 5: other people's standards.
Speaker 1: Do your own thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I made my first I love fruitcake, and most
Speaker 5: people go fruitcake, but I love fruitcake, but it's got
Speaker 5: to be a certain kind of fruitcake that has a
Speaker 5: lot of nuts, a lot of dried fruit, some liquor,
Speaker 5: and I like it when it's really robust. Let me
Speaker 5: put it that way. And so I made my first
Speaker 5: robust fruitcake this last November, I think, and oh my god,
Speaker 5: I ate the whole thing all by myself for my
Speaker 5: significant other. Richard does not like fruitcake. But that was okay.
Speaker 5: I made it for me and I enjoyed everybody. It
Speaker 5: took me a month to eat it all, but you
Speaker 5: know what, it was the best fruitcake I ever had,
Speaker 5: I could write a fruitcake cookbook.
Speaker 1: That's going to be next for you.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I literally forgot to ask her what her favorite thing
Speaker 1: about pumpkins are, So I sent her a quick email
Speaker 1: and she wrote right back and said, my favorite thing
Speaker 1: about pumpkins is that they, like we, are constantly evolved
Speaker 1: from year to year. They never become born, and each
Speaker 1: new generation looks forward to them with great anticipation. Woo,
Speaker 1: thank you from my heart and.
Speaker 5: Always, it's been a joy to be here. And I
Speaker 5: think you're doing a wonderful job. And I wish all
Speaker 5: the people out there who are getting ready to celebrate
Speaker 5: the fall, I wish you all a happy autumn and
Speaker 5: a happy holiday season. And you know what, do it
Speaker 5: your way. If you don't like to cook it a
Speaker 5: certain way, cook it the way you like it, it's okay.
Speaker 5: You have permission to do that. You have permission to
Speaker 5: be who you are and who you like to be. Best.
Speaker 5: I was trying to think one little quick thing when
Speaker 5: years ago, up in La a bunch of us went
Speaker 5: out to celebrate Halloween up in Hollywood, and we decided
Speaker 5: to be a box of crayons, and I got to
Speaker 5: be pink it's not my favorite color, but I was
Speaker 5: the pink and of all the costumes, all of them
Speaker 5: got all messed up, but me, my costume was still pristine.
Speaker 5: When I came back home, I was like, oh yeah,
Speaker 5: oh yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Got But we had to sort of, you know what.
Speaker 5: Our costumes went all the way down to our ankle
Speaker 5: like we had to hop along.
Speaker 1: We couldn't walk.
Speaker 5: We had to hop all the way through Hollywood. And
Speaker 5: it was truly one of the best grown up Halloweens
Speaker 5: I've had.
Speaker 1: So go out and enjoy Halloween.
Speaker 5: Yeah, go out and enjoy Halloween, and enjoy every day
Speaker 5: of your life because you never know what the next
Speaker 5: day is going to bring, and enjoy it while you're
Speaker 5: there to enjoy it and cooking or having pumpkins. You
Speaker 5: know what, it's what means something to you, what's important,
Speaker 5: what you make magic in your life. And even if
Speaker 5: you're not a believer in magic as most people describe it,
Speaker 5: magic is a joy of living just that simple, so that.
Speaker 1: There's magic in a pumpkin.
Speaker 5: Yeah, every day. Thank you very kindly for attending this interview,
Speaker 5: which really appreciated.
Speaker 1: Thanks for letting me come over it at night with
Speaker 1: not at all.
Speaker 5: You know what. That's the kind of thing I like, Bess.
Speaker 5: I'm very spontaneous. I do things on the spur of
Speaker 5: the moment, and that's the way I like it. So good.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Okay, take care. So ask smart
Speaker 1: folks stupid questions, because chances are what caused them to
Speaker 1: seek the answer was the exact same curiosity that you've
Speaker 1: got now to buy and Copeland's book, which I definitely
Speaker 1: suggest you do, it is delightful, as is she. Her
Speaker 1: book is called Pumpkin, Pumpkin Folklore, History, Planting Hints, and
Speaker 1: Good Eating. There's tons of recipes in it. You'll find
Speaker 1: a link in the show notes to the Amazon page
Speaker 1: where you can order it in paperback. It's also available
Speaker 1: on Kindle, and there's also a link in the show
Speaker 1: notes to the sponsors of the show and to the
Speaker 1: Shiner's Hospitals for Children and more. Links, as always, are
Speaker 1: up at aliward dot com, slash ologies, slash qu cre
Speaker 1: petology now for ologies merch, go to ologiesmerch dot com
Speaker 1: or aliward dot com. Thank you, Shannon Felt to some
Speaker 1: body Dutch of the podcast, you are that for managing that.
Speaker 1: Also thanks to Hannahlippo and Aaron Talbert for admitting the
Speaker 1: ologies podcast Facebook group. Thank you to assistant editor Jarreed
Speaker 1: Sleeper of the podcast My Good, Bad Brain, and of
Speaker 1: course to Ado with a Lot of Guts but who
Speaker 1: hates pumpkin guts? Steven Ray Morris of the per Cast
Speaker 1: and see Jurassic Right. The theme song is called Ellie
Speaker 1: at the Museum. It was written for this podcast by
Speaker 1: Nick Thorburn of the very good band Islands. And if
Speaker 1: you stick around till the end of the episode, you
Speaker 1: know until your secret. This week's secret is that to
Speaker 1: make a carved pumpkin last longer, you can also spray
Speaker 1: diluted bleach inside. But then you can't have your jack
Speaker 1: o lantern and eat it too. And also, you know
Speaker 1: when people carve pumpkins to look like they're barfing off
Speaker 1: their own guts. Whenever I see that, I get physically nauseated,
Speaker 1: Like just thinking about it makes me like like mission accomplished.
Speaker 1: Halloween terrifying. It's too real. You got me, tricksters, So
Speaker 1: for breeze your scarves, Let's meet here next week for
Speaker 1: another October Spookology spooped over. I'm so excited they're so good. Oh,
Speaker 1: there's so good.
Speaker 3: Okay, Bye bye Pacaderman's College, Hombiology or do Zoologyology, Technology, Meteorology,
Speaker 3: l of Parapology, Apology, Seriology, selenology.
Speaker 1: Okay, got SA grows. They hate the most, were the
Speaker 1: sitting here. The Thames are alone, the best coast. Stand
Speaker 1: up again, got SA gross