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Pumpkin—It's Not Easy Being Orange
Plants & Gardens News Volume 13, Number 3 | Fall 1998
by Elizabeth McGowan
Pity the poor pumpkin, America's part-time vegetable. Prized for its pie-filling pulp and jack-o-lantern potential, the pumpkin enjoys its 15 minutes of fame each fall before being unceremoniously banished from produce stands, not to be seen until the leaves turn crimson again. You can buy mangos in March, asparagus in April, and kiwis all year. But just try to find a pumpkin in January. You'd have a better chance of tracking down a snowball in the Sahara.
That, of course, isn't all bad—like anything else, pumpkin pie wouldn't be such a treat if you ate it every day. But we Americans are missing out on a good thing by quarantining this full-figured vegetable to the holiday dessert table. To many other cultures, the pumpkin is as pedestrian as the potato. Afghanis, for example, use pumpkin as a starchy side dish, serving much the same function as the baked Idaho does here. Spicy pumpkin soup is a regular on menus in the West Indies; curried pumpkin a mainstay in Thai cuisine.
Even in America, pumpkin, a type of squash, wasn't always the passing fancy it is today. In Pilgrim times, pumpkins were a diet staple. Native Americans taught the Pilgrims how to grow pumpkins, along with beans and corn—known collectively in Iroquois legend as the Three Sisters, gifts from the Sun God to nourish his people. "We have pumpkin at morning and pumpkin at noon, if it were not for pumpkin we would be undoon," wrote a Plymouth Rock veteran in the 1600s, lauding the vegetable that sustained the New World settlers through their first grueling winter. The Pilgrims ate pumpkins stuffed with apples and cranberries. They made pumpkin bread and puddings. They recycled pumpkin seeds for cereals. And when they figured out a way to make a vegetarian version of their beloved English meat pies, using spices like ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, a Thanksgiving tradition was born.
Though pumpkins filled their bellies, the Pilgrims, it's safe to say, didn't have a clue just how much nutrition they were getting with each bite. According to Prevention magazine, one cup of cooked pureed pumpkin "packs more beta carotene than an equal amount of cantaloupe or cooked, dried apricots...surpasses broccoli (and corn!) in dietary fiber...contains more iron than one 3.5-ounce serving of extra-lean ground beef...has twice as much magnesium as kale...and offers a substantial boost of vitamin C and even a smidgen of niacin, riboflavin, copper, and vitamin B6...all this with less than 1 gram of fat and only 83 calories!" It's also a respectable source of vitamin A.
So how come modern-day Americans reserve this powerhouse vegetable for special occasions? Who knows? The same question might be asked about turkey, which, until recently, made a guest appearance at dinner only once or twice a year. Now that its health benefits have been discovered, turkey's giving beef a run for its money in everything from hot dogs to lasagna. Can pumpkin patties be far behind?
A Pumpkin in Every Pot
Pumpkins can be stored throughout winter in a cool dark spot. Key to cooking with pumpkins is to start off with the right variety—the large jack-o-lantern candidates tend to be too stringy and watery. Pumpkins that make for good eating are small and heavy for their size with thick stems. Chefs suggest Early Sugar, Sweet Sugar, and Winter Luxury.
Elizabeth McGowan is a former editor of P&G News.