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How About Eating Your Jack-o'-lantern?

© Traute Klein, biogardener

Pumpkins are hard to digest unless you know how to prepare them. Here are some tricks which I use.

Happy Hallowe'en

For this year's Hallowe'en, I am sharing with you some practical hints of how to avoid waste of good food at this time when loads of discarded pumpkins are thrown in the landfill.

Ideal Growing Conditions

Pumpkins are probably the easiest vegetable for me to grow, because I learned how from my father when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Pumpkings are cucurbits as are also cucumbers, squash, and zucchini. They love heat, water, and lots of natural fertilizer. In Europe, the seeds get stuck right into the compost pile where they sprout quickly and grow fruit of enormous size because of the decomposition heat and the unlimited supply of fresh fertilizer and moisture in the compost. I usually stick strong poles into the compost and tie them up at the top to form teepees. That way, none of the fruit ever touches the ground, and I can continue piling composting material around the plants.

Digestion Problem

Unfortunately, many people, including me, have a hard time digesting pumpkin and zucchini, and I have learned what the problem is from East Indian cooking. Fruit and vegetable should not be combined in one meal, because they need a different group of enzymes for digestion, and cucurbits use a third group of enzymes and should not be combined with either of the other two. They should be eaten by themselves. I haven't found that to work either, because even when I eat pumpkin without fruit or veggies, I can't digest it, so I prefer to leave it alone.

There are just a few ways in which pumpkin does not bother me, and I will tell you about them later.

People with a gall bladder problem also have a hard time digesting cucumber. It is easy to tell, because cucumber makes them burp. I had that problem when I lived with a landlady who used a lot of ground beef in her cooking. My gall bladder could not handle all that beef, especially the beef fat. As soon as I lived on my own and did my own cooking, the problem subsided, never to return.

Utilizing That Pumpkin as Food

I no longer grow pumpkin, because so many of my neighbors carve jack-o'-lanterns which they discard after Hallowe'en. They are happy to donate them to me for use in my cooking. I usually have fresh pumpkin all winter long. What I don't use right away, I cut up and freeze for later use.

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