Electronic Highways
Pumpkins: Symbol of the season
As summer fades and the autumnal winds foreshadow the looming winter, pumpkins become the focal point of the season. In Western New York, commercial farms, grocery stores and side-of-the-road stands sell the orange gourd for tasty fall dishes and decoration.
The University of Illinois Extension maintains a fairly comprehensive site on pumpkins, titled “Pumpkins and More.” In the Pumpkin History section, the site discusses the origins of the “Jack ’o Lantern” and its namesake, a phantasmal character named “Stingy Jack.” The site also provides information on pumpkin varieties, nutritional information, how to grow pumpkins and how to pick out the right one from the grocery store. For more detailed historical information on pumpkins, try going to UB’s subscription to the Encyclopedia of Food and Culture in the Gale Virtual Reference Library, or to the America: History and Life database, where you can find “Squashed Myths: The Cultural History of the Pumpkin in North America,” a dissertation written on the subject.
Cooks throughout history have prepared the gourd to make pumpkin pies, pumpkin soup, pumpkin bread and even pumpkin beer. Pumpkin Recipes provides several free recipes, including Pumpkin Curry, Chocolate Pumpkin Pudding and Stuffed Pumpkin. Within the state, several microbreweries have put their own spin on pumpkin beer. My personal favorite is Post Road Pumpkin Ale by Brooklyn Brewery.
Long gone are the days of simply cutting a few triangles into a pumpkin—creativity and individuality rule the day with Jack ‘o Lanterns nowadays. If you want to be inspired, check out the winners of last year’s Extreme Pumpkin Carving Contest. Samurai Pumpkin, anyone? How about an Eight-Eyed Spider Pumpkin? The UB Libraries has multidisciplinary databases with full-text magazines and journals that allow searching on any topic, even pumpkins! For example, “Harvest Art,”, an article found in EBSCO MasterFILE Premier, gives practical advice on your pumpkin carvings, such as extending “…the life of your creation by rubbing the cut flesh with vegetable oil after carving.”
Happy Halloween from the UB Libraries!
—Dean Hendrix, Health Sciences Libraries
Reader Comments