Growing up, the only thing we ever did with a pumpkin was carve it, roast the seeds, then watch the jack-o-lantern shrivel and blacken before being unceremoniously dumped into the garbage. The smell of roasting seeds still takes me back to those years.
There was one year, however, I decided to make my own pumpkin puree from one of our pumpkins. It was an interesting experiment that didn’t produce the desired results. Now I know that the same pumpkins we carve are not the pumpkins that make the best puree for pies--those would be the small sugar pumpkins, often called pie pumpkins. I guarantee there were no sugar pumpkins for sale where I bought my pumpkins growing up.
The other change that has come into our food culture is that people are more familiar with savory pumpkin dishes, whether they have tasted curried pumpkin soup or savory pumpkin filled ravioli.
Now, for all the pumpkin lovers out there, here are 10 things you might not know about pumpkins:
1. Although I didn’t get good pumpkin pie puree out of my carved pumpkin, those pumpkins make great roasted pumpkin. Either cut into pieces and trim the hard skin then roast OR clean out the seeds, return the top to the whole pumpkin, place it in a baking dish and bake it whole until it is soft. Scrape the softened pumpkin out and discard the shell.
2. The biggest pumpkin ever grown and on record weighed in at 1,810 pounds and 8 ounces. That nearly one-ton pumpkin was weighed in at the Stillwater Harvest Fest in Stillwater, Minn. in 2010.****
3. Pumpkins are a fruit and are 90 percent water. *
4. Antarctica is the only continent pumpkins are NOT grown.**
5. Halloween has its roots in a Celtic celebration known as Samhain. The Celts carved turnips or gourds as small jack-o-lanterns, but Irish immigrants to the United States found pumpkins easier to carve for this celebration, which became modern-day Halloween.**
6. Pumpkins are packed with antioxidants and are relatively low in calories per serving.***
7. One serving of pumpkin provides more than the recommended daily allowance of Vitamin A and 20 percent of your daily fiber requirement.***
8. Farmers grow more than 1.5 billion pounds of pumpkin every year in the U.S.****
9. The largest pumpkin pie ever baked (and on record) weighed 2,020 pounds.****
10. Find a new pumpkin recipe with one of our favorite foods at PumpkinRecipes.org.
*Information from University of Illinois Extension
**Information from The Pumpkin Patch
*** Information from Libby’s Pumpkin
**** Information from The History Channel
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