For the Love of Pumpkins, “Do What You Are Doing!”

For several years I’ve collected lovely coffee table books that are beautifully graphically designed with photo essays and recipes highlighting the uniqueness and wonder of . . . pumpkins!

One writer, Caroline Boisset, who grows some 75 varieties of squashes, pumpkins and gourds, says, “It is no accident that pumpkins and squashes, along with many other members of their family, the cucurbitaceae, fascinate people who have just encountered them and trigger passion in those who start to collect and cultivate them. They have everything to offer.”


Indeed, squashes, pumpkins and gourds are decorative: Nothing is more beautiful than a pile of orange pumpkins on a fall day with the fields going golden, the blue sky and the maple trees beginning to redden. What a whammy for the eyes when the orange pumpkins, lit by the sun, are juxtaposed against bunches of mums or fall zinnias!

But cucurbitaceae are also a cook’s delight. Immensely versatile, their taste is conducive to the making of soups and savories, vegetable dishes and salads, sweet breads and dumplings, pies and desserts, and preserves such as jams and pickles.

“Leisure is not so much having the time to do what we please, but the time to give to each activity what it deserves.”

My pile of pumpkin books is marked with sticky tabs. One marks the pumpkin quiche recipe, another the Mexican-style pumpkin and bean stew. I’ve tried the stuffed pumpkin and received the raves of family and guests. Pumpkin chutney tempts me as does the page that holds a luscious photo of a soufflé-like pumpkin pudding.

One caution, however: Every time I’ve gone to buy pumpkins after Halloween, it seems as though they’ve all been recycled to the pig troughs. My coffee-table books tell me that the best pumpkins are the greener ones—even the blue-gray fleshed ones—but the farm stands are now closed; Jewel Foods has taken to importing clementines; and the pumpkins I hunt are no longer to be bought. Alas for using that curried butternut squash recipe this year!

One year, before flying overseas for meetings in Spain, certainly before Halloween was over, I bought two boxes full of various types and sizes of squash and pumpkins. (I had already culled the neighborhood farmers’ market where I picked up as many dried gourds as I could afford and stained them various fall tints so that I could display them year after year.)

Now there would still be enough to make those enticing recipes, enough to celebrate the beauty of my own small harvest. Rynn Williams expresses my thoughts exactly, “Dense, richly hued, as sensuous as sculpture, pumpkins never fail to summon images of a crisp and dazzling autumn.”


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