Pumpkin trauma

2006-10-20, 9:34 p.m.
Hallo Everybodypeeps!

And a special big hello to all my gazillion new readers. Dont know what I did to deserve you but you're all very welcome!

Of course, I now feel obliged to write something fabulous to amuse you all, but its most likely to be the same old mix of crappy anecdotes, whining, overage sex and domesticity.

Firstly, as I have a fair few US readers, I have to ask, what IS it with pumpkins? Jooj and Treacle have persuaded the BF and I to throw a Halloween Party for them this weekend. I know its not really Halloween yet but they�ll be at their dad�s next weekend and Im not throwing a party on a school night, ie REAL Halloween. Needless to say, BF had been dispatched to the market to get a fuckoff big pumpkin (remember? I got one there last year) and, needless to say, he�d completely ignored me and gone to S@insbury�s instead so it was a bit smaller and a bit more expensive than I would have liked. Anyways, when I got in from work tonight I thought Id get cracking on the requisite lantern-y thing. I don�t know if I lack the right tools, or the right technique or both but �dealing with� a pumpkin is fucking hard work.

First off, you have to hack the top off. Once I�d got the breadknife firmly jammed in the top of the bloody thing I was looking around for something a bit sharper. The wee vegetable knife is super-sharp�but smallllll. *sigh*.

Once the top is off, there�s all that stringy, pippy goo inside. It always smells just a little bit rancid too. Im sure there�s some knack for getting all that stuff out, but Im not sure what it is. I found the ice-cream scoop was quite handy for scraping it off the inside of the pumpkin but there was no substitute for a big handful of kitchen roll for actually eviscerating its carcass. Im not being poofy with the kitchen roll, btw, its just that stuff is REALLY slippy and gooey and slidey and FUCKING ANNOYING!

So, its guts are out and splattered all round the kitchen. Now I can turn my attention to the bit that I know to be food. But. How. To. Get. It???? I had a big pan at the ready and was scraping away with the icecream scoop for, like two days (Ok, about ten minutes)and Id managed to shave, oooh, at least a millimeter off the inside. All the wile I was ::scrape, scrape, scrape:: I was also thinking ::invent, invent, invent:: so now I have in my head some kind of scythe-on-its-side, razor sharp and semi-flexible. In my head Im whistling a merry tune as I pare great swathes of pumpkin flesh from every inner surface, right down to the very skin of the thing. In fact, every edible morsel is in the pan and all that�s left is a WafferTheen (French accent please) outer extremity, ready for my skilled fingers and another specially designed knife to carve in a likeness of Sophie Ellis Bextor: a girl with a head more like a pumpkin you shall ne�er see, dear friends.

In reality, of course, I am hacking away with the veggie knife, trying to not lose any digits in the process. Lets not forget, in the guffawing at the inadequacies of the tools-at-hand, that these fucking things are ROUND. They roll. They slip. They have to have tea towels wedged underneath them to stop them flippin into the air and turning YT into Johnnie Pumpkinhead. Or Sophie Ellis Bextor, which would be worse.

Brief hiatus, while Stepfie recalls ancient episode of Friends where Joey gets a turkey stuck on his head. Hee hee hee. God, Im sad.

Once the pan (and it�s a BIG PAN) is full of bits of pumpkin, albeit �� square bits of pumpkin, Im ready to start carving the face. The apple corer helps make the eyes and even the weeny veggie knife is man enough to do a jaggedy mouth if I just jab it right through the skin and then jab it in again at right-angles (hard to explain, easy to do). Its only when I start �popping out� the bits Ive cut away for the face that I realize the pumpkin flesh is still four foot thick. There�s still food in there, folks. Now, you KNOW Im a Nazi when it comes to food. I wont waste anything and I�ll make something edible out of the most crap and uninspiring ingredients but�..well, REALLY. I set out a little list of pros and cons:

  • Its food. And therefore not to be wasted

  • I make a lovely pumpkin pie. And spiced pumpkin soup
  • It was �1.99. Of BFs money. How fucking broke ARE you, woman?

  • You�ve already spent an extraordinary amount of time on this and you have other things to do

  • You already have a BIG PAN of pumpkin stuff

  • You have already lost several things in the making of this pumpkin lantern. They are: three pints of sweat, one bit of fingernail (I found it again, it wasn�t in the pan), the will to live, your sanity � to such a degree that you are prepared to debate with yourself about this
  • I stopped there. The lantern looks fine. I had enough pumpkin stuff for at least one BIG pie. Enough already.

    So, my American cousins, how do you do that EVERY year?

    Halloween isn�t the big thing over here that it is over there � we�re a bit ambivalent about the whole thing really, preferring to wait a week and scare the shit out of our pets with fireworks on Guy Fawkes Night, but if Ive missed something vital about pumpkin hollowing, do let me know.

    Note to self: go to Sainsbury�s AFTER Halloween when all the pumpkins will be reduced, chop them into quarters with a meat cleaver and pare away in MANAGEABLE CHUNKS. I astonish myself sometimes.

    Might do a bit more later, BFs out so Im kicking back a bit.

    S
    x




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