It seems that the jack-o-lantern exists because when pumpkins proliferate they seriously know how to do it and someone had to invent a way of dealing with the excess vegetables. They obviously decided to be scary and creative about it. [1] The pumpkins spread around the Farm this year to such an extent that we couldn’t touch the grass in a large chunk of the backyard for fear of breaking the vine and so both the grass and the pumpkin vine went wild. The pumpkins were hiding in the long grass, so harvesting was fun because we didn’t know how many were in there. In the last few weeks we have given some away, made Spiced Pumpkin Oatmeal, Pumpkin and Adzuki Bean Stew, Pumpkin Gnocchi and I am still planning Green Curry Porridge and a real deal Pumpkin Pie. Plus we have had just plain old chunks of roast pumpkin, several rounds of Pumpkin Soup, as well as pumpkin in pasta sauce, omelet and frittata. And we still have 15 quite large pumpkins left.
Lucky they are tasty. Please get in touch if you have any interesting pumpkin recipes. We want to be done well before October 31.
[1] This is not an accurate historical claim, although I reckon it is partially true. Either way, the Wikipedia page has some interesting info on the history of scary vegetable carving and, of course, World Record breaking jack-o-lantern carving-a-thons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack-o%27-lantern