It is officially fall! Oh, how I love this time of year. I love the crisp air, brisk mornings, and crunch of frost beneath my feet. The afternoons bring sunshine, a hint of warmth in the air, and the sounds of kids coming home from school.
There is so much color everywhere! We still see the lingering green in the grass. Trees are alive with various jeweled tones before they drop their leaves for the winter. Along the ground, you can see patches of orange…it is pumpkin season!
Pumpkins are such a versatile plant. How many other vegetables can you use for cooking, baking, snacking, and decorating? It seems like once the frost is on the ground, I start seeing pumpkins everywhere. They are popping up at farm stands, grocery stores, and even in some backyards. We have grown our own over the years, but love the selections that we can get at some of the larger farm stands.
Growing up, my girls loved picking out their pumpkins each year. It was always and adventure and something that I had to set a lot of time aside for. I have a tendency to choose fairly quickly. I like a small to medium-sized pumpkin that is pretty round, and I never mind a blemish or two (it adds character). My daughters have very different ideas. My oldest daughter always wants a pumpkin that is perfectly symmetrical (or as close as possible) with a bright orange color. She already knows what she wants to carve and is looking for a shape that supports that. One year she might be looking for something short and round, the next taller and skinnier. My youngest daughter wants the biggest one she can find. She will look at, lift, and reject A LOT of them before she decides. She may have an idea of what she wants to carve before choosing, but it almost always changes once she starts.
One thing that we can all agree on is the process. We make sure that it is a night where we don’t have to rush out for anything else. We line the table with newspapers and get to work. We carefully scraped out the insides, making sure to save all of the seeds. We rinse them carefully, put them on a cookie sheet with salt and a touch of pepper, and let them start roasting while we work on our carving designs.
Each year, we all try to do something different. We have had years where we tried shadowing (this wasn’t much of a success), traditional free-hand carving, and more intricate work with stencils and stamps. The end results are always fun, but what is even more fun is the process. The house smells of fresh pumpkin and roasting seeds. There is lots of laughter and joking about each other’s designs. And there is a feeling of accomplishment when the jack-o-lanterns are complete.
After cleaning up, we put candles in our jack-o-lanterns, snack on fresh roasted pumpkin seeds, and admire our handiwork. We will keep them on display through Halloween before they get sent to the compost pile! It’s hard to believe that a vegetable can give us so much enjoyment!
