Ologies with Alie Ward - Cucurbitology (PUMPKINS) with Anne Copeland

Episode Date: October 9, 2019

PUMPKIN PUMPKIN! Not only a thing to scream while passing a patch, but also the name of author and human delight Anne Copeland's gourd opus. Yes, she's so charmed by pumpkins that she dedicated a whole book to exploring their folklore, history, planting protocol, care, and cooking. On a lark, Alie stops by her house in the rural hamlet of Yucaipa, California to chat about everything from creation myths surrounding pumpkins to Anne's favorite recipes, how to make a pumpkin last longer on your porch, the secret medicinal properties of pipitas, why humans might need to go bananas on Halloween, how to propose via pumpkin, and the big flimflam Anne needs the world to know about the pumpkin origin story. Also: who is Jack and why does he have a lantern?Anne Copeland's book "Pumpkin, Pumpkin: Folklore, History, Planting Hints and Good Eating" is available via AmazonAnd here: https://www.amazon.com/Pumpkin-Folklore-History-Planting-Eating-ebook/dp/B07YLFR119/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=pumpkin+pumpkin+copeland&qid=1570549807&sr=8-1A donation went to Shriners Hospitals for ChildrenSponsor links: withcove.com/ologies; periodbetter.com, code OLOGIES; betterhelp.com/ologies; HelixSleep.com/OLOGIES; Stitch Fix.com/OLOGIESMore links up at alieward.com/ologies/cucurbitologyBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologiesOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes and STIIIICKERS!Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologiesFollow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWardSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray MorrisTheme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh hey, it's your friend who's at the mall and texts you photos of jeans that cannot possibly be the new thing. Please tell me highways to the windowpockets isn't a thing. Please. I'll be back with another episode of allergies. We're just leaning into this season. Crunchy leaves, wood smoke, scarves, glowy little lights in the darkness. This episode, pumpkins.

If pumpkins were a person, I'd be down to be their roommate. They seem chill. They seem friendly. They seem down for a good time. Like they would come and clutch with a pep talk when you need it. Pumpkins seem like totally not assholes. But before we get into it, let me thank all the folks at patreon.com slash allergies for supporting the podcast.

Thanks to everyone wearing allergies merch from allergiesmerch.com. Thanks to all the folks, of course, who are just destroying that subscribe button and rating the show and keeping it up in the charts. And of course, you brave souls who submit a review because you know I care and I pick out a new one each week, such as, for example, Alchemist 1987, 2013, says, Dad Ward is like your long lost best friend from kindergarten. You know the one you would sneak off to the playground with and turn over rocks by the pond.

I have rebelled against the podcast culture since it's very inception, but it's just not possible to not enjoy this podcast. Alchemist, thank you so much. Let's get into it. Let's turn over the rock that is cucurbitology. Okay. What in the David S. Pumpkins is this word? David Pumpkins?

I mean, are we supposed to know who that is? I know you have questions. Okay. I looked it up. Cucurbitology comes from the Latin for gourd. And yes, cucurbitology looks like cucumbers because they're related. We're going to get into that later. But also, I'd like to note that the word pumpkin comes from the French for pompom, which came

in a winding, viney way from the Greek pepo, which means to be cooked by the sun. Genus and species of most pumpkins, cucurbita pepo, a gourd that's been cooked in the sun. So I was looking for a pumpkin expert or someone who studies pumpkins or a pumpkin scholar, but not just the science of pumpkins, but also the emotions and the folklore and the history. And I came across a book entitled Pumpkin, Pumpkin, Folklore, History, Planning, Hints, and Good Eating by someone who loves pumpkins so much, she studied them intensely and wrote a whole book about them.

So I tippy tapped around on the internet. I found this ologist's info. I cold called her. I just left a voicemail at 6 p.m. on a Sunday like a freak. I was driving on my way back from the Mojave Desert. She called me back like an hour later and I just, I happened to be driving through her tiny town of Yuccaipa. So I pulled over.

I chatted with her for about 15 minutes before I had the nerve to say, hey, I know I'm a stranger and it's like 8 p.m. on a Sunday night, but can I come over? Can I talk to you about pumpkins? And she said she was a night owl anyway. She gave me the address. I headed over and approaching the porch. Hello. And how could I be so lucky?

So she was preceded by a few chihuahuas and came out in comfy Sunday clothes. Her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. Hi, nice to meet you. Hi, nice to meet you. Thanks for letting me come over. Lovely lady. Oh, so are you. Thanks for letting me come over.

And I was like, I'm kind of really close to you, is that okay? Oh, that's okay. We're really freeform around here. Oh, great. I'm an old, old-time kid now, you're down, mommy's doing an interview, okay? So if you hear any little pup whimpers or the soft gurgling of a nearby fish tank, just consider it part of the immersive pumpkin experience, which was lovely. We chatted about what is a pumpkin?

How long have we been carving them up and cooking them down? How many varieties are there? What else are they used for? How do you pick out a good one? What are the biggest myths and the biggest pumpkins? How memories can follow you for decades and the fascinating history that led this pumpkin study year to embark on her research. So let a little candle.

Enjoy the flickering and cozy wisdom of cucurbitologists and Copeland. I'm a senior. I'm going to be 78 November 22nd, which falls on Thanksgiving every so many years. And that's how I, one of the ways I come to love pumpkins. You must have had a pumpkin pie for your birthday, right? Oh, I always had pumpkin pie, pumpkin cake, pumpkin soup, pumpkin, you name it. And did you get sick of having a pumpkin pie? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, never, never, never, no.

And it, it was encouraging to me because I sort of adopted pumpkins as my own thing. So no, I never got tired of pumpkins. And now were you always really curious? Did you grow up curious as a kid? Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. I used to, I used to lie in the grass and look through the grass and look at insects and

try to imagine what their lives would be like at living down there and, you know, what the world was like. So when we chatted on the phone and described herself as, quote, an unconventional senior, woohoo. And when a person uses woohoo as a form of punctuation, you have to make a U-turn and you have to beg to come over to meet this person and hear about their life and how pumpkins fit into the past and the present. Kind of a hippie.

I'm very much a hippie, never into the drug scene and all that, but I love the music. I love the art. I love creativity. I love people speaking up about things they believe in. Tell me a little bit about your background. What did you study? Okay. I started out in nursing when I finally got to go to college.

I think I was close to 30. And so I started out in nursing and I went through that about two years and after two years I said, gee, I wonder when we're ever going to get to go to a hospital. This is a four-year program. I sort of need to get a sense of what it's like to be a nurse and so I said, what could I be? Well, my husband at the time said, you know, I'm going to take you to this place in Los Angeles.

It's called the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation. And these people test you based on your innate abilities, not on questions that they ask you. So they did this long testing process for days and days. And then they came up with this idea that he said, you are perfect for archaeology. Oh, I said, archaeology. I said, well, you know, that does sound really interesting. So I got a degree in archaeology and I actually worked in the field. I went out into Arizona, New Mexico, and also I went down into Mexico.

So as an archaeologist, Anne was researching the pottery of indigenous people of the Southwest and Mexico, looking at some pre-Columbian methods of firing pottery and cooking. And she said she loved the work. So I loved the study. It was it was kind of perfect for me. Unfortunately, archaeologists have this thing that's known as the archaeological diseases. So I got peritifoid and then I got valley fever. And by then I said, you know, I may not make it many more years if I don't switch fields.

She also worked as a graphic artist doing typesetting. And she started a small nonprofit for people dealing with physical and developmental challenges. She said she was deeply affected by her brother's experience in Vietnam after he returned with a brain injury and PTSD. This woman's heart is a cucurbitomaxima, which is a species of giant pumpkin, which we'll talk about later. And I love people. I love relating to other people of all kinds and helping them in different ways.

I taught a literate adults. I did a lot of things in my life. So then how did I come to write this book? Solid question. So Ann's husband at the time was an anthropologist who was super encouraging. And he said, you know, you're, you're good at writing. You like to write. Why don't you become, you know, why don't you write a book?

You said, why don't you write a book about, I don't know, pumpkins? And we had been to Virginia when we first got together and I had never been there before. It was raining. It was in the winter or fall. It was muddy everywhere and we were driving through the hills and I just suddenly said, pumpkins, we're coming to pumpkins. And he said, no, don't be silly. There's no, and he didn't even finish his sentence.

We come over the top of the hill and they're on the right side down at the bottom of the hill and right in the mud puddle and the biggest mud puddle is this pumpkin stand. So I had to go and get my pumpkin right then. And I had to, you know, you don't just go get a pumpkin. You have to evaluate it, right? You have to make sure it has the qualities and the qualities change every year because, you know, they're magical. They don't just stay the same.

So I went and picked this really, really big pumpkin because I decided I had to have a big, big pumpkin. Now mind you, we had to fly back from Virginia to California. So I wouldn't let go of my pumpkin. So I took it on the plane with me and it was so cute because normally, you know, people are kind of like, they're looking at you, oh gee, what are they up to? Could they be a terrorist? Who knows?

You know, but even the pilot, everybody was smiling and they were like, oh yeah, take it in. And so, so that kind of, that kind of started it. Anne had a few friends who were gourmet chefs with this huge library of vintage books and she would leaf through them just mesmerized. And they had this remarkable collection of old, old, old cookbooks. I mean, from the 1800s. And in fact, every recipe was cooked on a wood burning stove in an iron pot and there

were no measurements. So, so Louisa and I had fun trying to figure out, well, how much do you think? Oh, I don't know. What do you think? And like I said, I'm unconventional in a sense. Number one, I don't make a recipe twice at the same way. And number two, I question things that are caught for to put in. And I address this in my book because I don't want anybody to go, she forgot to tell me

to put in a quarter teaspoon of salt. And my cooking is ruined. And so I, I tell people, you know what? Salt is a very personal issue. And I did a little bit on the history of salt. And I said, you know, salt is your choice, but it's not an essential. You're not going to ruin your recipe if you don't put salt in it at all. It's my business.

And I said, why should I tell you a quarter of a teaspoon when maybe you want to put a whole teaspoon or even a tablespoon? It's up to you. You want to kill yourself early? Have at it, you know, have fun. So, so that was, that was how I got into. So Louisa and I would try out all these recipes and like we made, we made pumpkin soap. And it was one of our funniest experiences because neither of us had made soap before

and they're calling for like mutton fat and things like that that we didn't really have. So we sort of had to figure out, well, what would be like mutton fat? Could we go get the donkey down the street or how about a goose or what should we use? We just kept experimenting and it took us a long time to get it to where we actually were able to make it, but we did do it. So that was, that was a heap of fun. And now getting back to how to pick a pumpkin, how do you pick a pumpkin? What are we looking for?

It's going to be different. Every single time you go, it's going to be different. The color is going to be different. The shape of the pumpkin is going to be different. The size of it, whether it has a stem at the top that's long or whether it doesn't even have a stem and it's going to change every year. According to what your, you know, your person, it's, I mean, it's magic. Every year you'll know it when you see it and it may take a long time to figure it out.

But that's half the fun of getting one. So for a decorative pumpkin, use intuition. You can summon your spidey scents. Tap into some witches magic and just get magnetized to the right one. Now, if you're going to eat it, the darker, the green stem and the orange skin mean it's ready to be picked, ready to be purchased. And you can hold it up to your ear and you can thump it. And the louder that hollow echoey sound, the better the pumpkin.

And side note, if you ever need to lovingly threaten someone, say for Venmoing you for enchiladas when you said they were your treat or not texting you the second they get home safe, you can always say that you'll thump them on the pumpkin. That's been a word family threat for years and it translates to I love you. How dare you. And now what about some varieties of pumpkins? Oh, there are a lot, a lot, a lot of pumpkin varieties.

Now a pumpkin is not a typical fruit. It's also not a vegetable. Oh, it's not a vegetable? No, it's not a vegetable. It's a fruit? No. Well, sort of a pumpkin, believe it or not, is a berry. Oh, what?

It's a berry. Why? It's a berry because it said I'm going to be a berry and it's very true. It's a freaking berry, y'all. It's a freaking berry. And I looked it up and so are cucumbers and avocados are a berry. Bananas are a berry. Eggplants are a berry.

These are berries. They are fleshy, seeded fruits. They're formed from a single flower containing one ovary. Boom, berries. Anne says that the biggest plant she's here to debunk is that pumpkins are not a vegetable. And in her book, she calls the pumpkin a botanical platypus. But refer to them as a vegetable. She might thump you on the berry.

So, so yeah, you, you have a lot of fun with pumpkins because there's a lot of really different things about pumpkins. They come in different sizes, shapes. They were grown in Mexico way, way back, even before the Incas and so forth. They were grown in China way, way back. So I don't know the Chinese name. Sorry to say for those of you who speak fluent Chinese, I'm sorry. I don't mean to disappoint you.

And what are some of your favorite varieties of pumpkin? I like, I like, there's a pumpkin that is green, that has stripes. And sometimes it has red and green. And they're very small. I think they're called kabochi. Okay, these little pumpkins are Japanese. And if you Google image search kabocha in Japan, you will find all manner of pumpkins. But to English speakers, kabocha means a short squat squash that you've probably had in tempura.

And you either save it as the last piece you eat as a treat or you eat it first because life is short and someone at the table may say, ooh, can I have some of your tempura? And you want the pumpkin one for yourself. You got to eat it fast. PS Australians call all kinds of squash pumpkins. It's calabaza in Spanish and candied in Mexico for day the dead festivities. And the British used to call them pumpkins. Now the smooth doorstep pumpkins, we're used to in America, are Connecticut field pumpkins.

And the smaller ones that we make in a pies are sweet sugar pies. And there are gerundale, blue pumpkins, Casper, white pumpkins, the bumpy ones are called peanut. There's long island cheese pumpkins because they look like a cheese wheel. There are others called white ghost, warty goblins, and baby boo essentially just come up with a new pumpkin and give it your cat's weirdest nickname. You're good to go. But how do you make a new pumpkin?

If you want to cross pollinate pumpkins, you can't just put the seeds together and expect them to grow right. You have to literally hand pollinate them. You have to pretend to be a bee. Go out there and buzz around and take your little Q-tip and hand pollinate them. And then sometimes they will grow for you and sometimes they won't. It depends on the level of the type of pumpkin that it is. So back in the day when I started working on the pumpkin cookbook, it was pretty incredible

because I'd go to the grocery store. They would have gotten the Halloween pumpkins out, but they'd have a lot of pumpkins left still. And I'd tell them I was writing the book and they'd give me a whole, I mean, I had people give me a whole basket full, a whole grocery basket full of pumpkins for free because they wanted to get rid of them anyway. And they said, oh, wow, you know, you're going to write, okay, good, here, take them during pioneer days because they didn't always have a flower available.

And they also didn't always have food for the cattle. So those were used in particularly back east to feed the cattle and also to get flowers. So they would slice the pumpkins and get the seeds out of them and then they would hang them up on the ceilings to dry. And then they would grind them into flour and they actually made pumpkin flour. I didn't know that. Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about the history of pumpkin.

So South America, right, Incas. And then at what point did they start growing them in North America and Europe? I mean, they're pretty much grown on every continent. Right. Well, they figured that the American Indians were growing them for a while. They just may not have looked like the pumpkins we have today. They might have looked more like a squash, for example, they might have been smaller. They believe that the seeds were very healthy for you, which they are.

So they believe that they would take away like parasites and things like that. So they would eat the seeds and dry them and eat them. Okay, so how ancient are pumpkins? Did they come from aliens? Probably not. Scientists have found seeds that are over 7,000 years old. I think they originated in Central America as smaller, more bitter little gourds. And indigenous populations all over the continent have for centuries used pumpkins in stews,

dried them, they use them in medicine, squash blossoms, which also side note, amazing fried. Thank you very much. Those were used for skin injuries. And from 1836 to the mid 1900s, pumpkin seeds were recognized as a remedy for intestinal infections. And more recent research has been on the L. tryptophan in Papida seeds helping with symptoms of depression, which part of that is probably just sitting there cracking in with your teeth is so dang dang fun.

Also according to Kaiser Permanente's website, there have been pumpkin seed medical trials showing promise in reducing kidney stone risk and helping with a parasite that comes from snails. So your glowing porch orb contains a little botanical wizardry. You mentioned earlier that pumpkins are magical. Oh, absolutely. We'll talk a little bit about how you feel about pumpkins. Yeah, I mean, it's it's not just the pumpkin itself.

It's the whole season that it ushers in. It's all the good things that we know and love getting together with friends, changing our personality via a costume. Halloween, quick reminder, is the eve of all hollows day to honor saints and the tradition of dressing up comes in part to embody the costume that you're wearing and partly to scare off the demons that are just all around just chilling, waiting to cross the boundary into death the next day. It's kind of like right before some holy day, we need to just wild out and get stupid.

Like Mardi Gras before Lent, you got New Year's Eve before all of our January 1st resolutions take effect. And then there's always those soggy eyed squads of pre-wedding bachelor and bachelorettes just vaping through Las Vegas Casinos weeks before a wedding. Now some researchers have found a link between higher caloric intake in the colder months and attributing it to all kind of hard wiring for storing up on fat before a fast. So Halloween is a time to dress up like someone who can kick more ass than you can in order to ward off evil and also to eat all the candy you can because death looms close and

the fruit trees will be bare in the winter. It makes sense. There were all these kind of magical things when I was growing up, you know, we did bobbing for apples, we did popcorn balls, we did, you know, today they just go out and buy a bag of candy, throw it in a bowl and give it to the kids, but it wasn't like that then. It was, it was a lot, there was a lot more to the activity itself. And so to me, pumpkins became magical, you know, when something changes your memories in life and makes it something you'll always remember.

I mean, here I am almost 78 and I remember every single minute of that. So, so yeah, that was a good time. What was it like for you to research your book when you really decided I'm going to write a book about pumpkins? Yeah. Researching, it just fulfilled my need to do something that I love to do. And so when you were researching for the book, how did you structure it? I know that you go over some recipes and you go over history and folklore.

What was your favorite part of researching? Actually it was the history and the folklore to start out with the, the, the recipes came along later, but I actually started looking into the history and the folklore first. And then I got into kind of like growing hints and then I kind of got into the cooking part of it. Ann says that after she wrote the first edition of Pumpkins Pumpkins in 1986, she had to send off query letters to publishers. That's how he did it those days, hoping that one would write back and request the manuscript.

And someone suggested that she keep a chart of the publishing houses responses. And if she got rejected, just keep a record of why. Now before her book finally made it to print, now in its third edition, she was rejected 600 times. And somehow she's still sunny about it. What a great learning experience that was because of all those 600. Not one of them was because of my writing or my style. They all liked it.

In those days, there weren't a lot of specialized cookbooks. That was one issue. And the other issue was that they considered it seasonal, which of course we all know it's not. You can buy pumpkins all year round in one form or another and people do. So you know, it was a good, it was a good learning experience. So I always tell anybody who's writing a book today, don't get discouraged because number one, it's not in all likelihood, it's not your writing.

It's either the wrong kind of book or it's a book that even though you may have written it well, there's something about it that did not sell. It's that you've picked the wrong title or you've picked the wrong art or there's some aspect of it that doesn't draw people. You've got to have the right ingredients. And it took me three editions to get this really good cover that looks good to take all the art out of the book, you know, and get down to basics. So it's been through good revisions and I'm glad I I had this ability to go through this

process really like going to college, you know, and it's free free. And now what is some of the folklore surrounding pumpkins? Because I'm thinking like people stepping into pumpkins as carriages. We got Igobod Crane out there. We got all kinds of stuff. Oh, there are there's myths that involve pumpkins from other lands that where they actually believe that humanity came from a pumpkin. P.S. I did look this up in a 2001 article from the journal Economic Botany catalogs

several creation myths from different Asian cultures, most of which involve people surviving a great flood by floating in a hollow pumpkin or the birthing of a pumpkin. It's cut into many pieces to form people. Can you imagine going through labor and they're like, P.S. Your baby is huge. It's a pumpkin. Also, we're going to dice it up so you now have like a thousand babies. No, hard pass.

But historians think that the pumpkin plant didn't even make it to Asia until post Colombian times, but this folklore has been passed down through enough oral and written tradition that it stuck. And here in America, there are old stories from southern communities and African-American communities about riding pumpkin vines into new lands since they grow so fast, just like hop a pumpkin vine like a bullet train. And also stories about convincing Europeans that pumpkins are donkey eggs. And Anne includes some of these southern United States folklore tales verbatim in her

book and says they're of special interest to her because the historical stories are in African-American vernacular English. And you can see the international phenology episode with the phenomenal Dr. Nicole Holiday for more on that. And Anne's husband is part of African-American. And so those stories have ties to his family history. So she loves the folklore, which is such a hard word to say three times. Let's say folklore.

Can you say folk? I've messed this up so many. Anyway, folklore. So there's there's a lot of variety in the folklore, and it depends where where it comes from. What are some of your favorite stories? I like the one. There's one about a Chinese princess and the emperor wants to marry her. But she is in love with another man. She agrees to marry him, but she wants to go inside this pumpkin for a while.

She jumps basically off a cliff into the into the river and push the pumpkin gets off. So that's one of the ones I like because it's it's kind of strange. It's kind of really different from what you expect. OK, this one is about a family who has a pumpkin in their yard and they decide to cut it in half and surprise, there's a human baby inside and they're like, cool, free baby. And the baby grows up to be smoking hot. The emperor is like, you're my hot wife now. And she's like, gross. No, I already have husband.

Her real husband dies of a broken heart because the emperor is like, I'm here to steal your girl. And so she tricks the emperor. She's like, oh, I'm definitely down to be your wife. Just score me a pumpkin and something super tall to climb up. And then she jumps off and she dies and becomes a bunch of tiny fish. And she's like, later, loser, you don't get to marry me. I'm a hot pumpkin bitch. Now, the moral of the story is that now you can just not text people back

and you can save yourself the trouble of becoming a bunch of fish. Now, moving on to bigger and gianter topics. What about them big old honkin pumps? And how do people grow those huge giant pumpkins? Oh, that's that's quite a quite an effort. Yeah, they do have seeds for those. However, they don't necessarily grow to be big on their own. You have to kind of baby them along.

And one of the things a lot of people do is that once the pumpkin starts growing, they have to keep it turned and they have to keep it moving so that it doesn't squash its own leaves and everything and prevent it from growing. So they have to put something under it. You know, it could be cloth. It could be hay or whatever, but they put something under it. Some of them feed the pumpkins with milk. What some.

Yeah, they do. They do. And there's there's a lot. There's a lot of different ways they can do things. And of course, growing the biggest pumpkin is a longstanding thing that's happened. Oh, and back at back in the early colonial days, when people would get their hair cut, they used to put a pumpkin, half a pumpkin on top of their heads and they even named the town Pumpkin Shire because

that's how they would cut their hair. They would just cut it around the pumpkin like that. Yeah. P.S. New Haven in particular was known for this look. And like Instagram photos of Rose a brunch, it spread quickly and gave New Englanders the nickname pumpkin heads. Now, Boston, hi, hi, Boston. You are once known as Pumpkin Shire.

So the next time you enjoy some baked beans from Beantown, just think, wow, you could be pumpkin munchin instead. So let's say you need a haircut in several months. So you've decided to grow a pumpkin. Does Anne have any tips? First, she says, have a space about four feet wide and 30 or 40 feet long. Or or you can train your vines to grow in a circle around the rest of the garden. Is that cute?

She says plant five or six seeds in each mound. And then when they start to sprout, you got to thin them out and pluck a couple, let only the best to grow. She says it's going to be heartbreaking, but it's worth it. Now, her book has more growing tips about hot capping them, coddling them in cold weather, keeping them cozy as they start their journey to pumpkin town. I guess pumpkin shire. They grow into the fall and there's a few types that can even grow into the winter.

So yeah, it just depends how they're grown and where they're grown and what they put into it to how they will grow. Do you have a favorite movie involving a pumpkin? I guess Cinderella mainly. I think that's everybody's, everybody's favorite her and that pumpkin. Carriage, you know, that's, that's pretty classic. I can't think of any others that I've seen right off and yeah, but that's one I always liked a lot.

Okay. P.S. The tale of Cinderella dates back over 2000 years and has taken various forms, many of which involve this future princess having a dead mom who's reincarnated into a talking fish, kind of like those Billy big mouth bass things, but it's your parent chatting you up from the grave and talking your dad's awful new wife. Now the version with the pumpkin carriage was a far from a Walt Disney invention, so don't give him props.

That part of the story was whipped up in the 1600s in France. What about pumpkin carving tips? Pumpkin carving tips. I'm not good at carving pumpkins, but I'll tell you why. I have carved a pumpkin or two, but after a while I got to where I didn't really want to carve them. I really wanted to paint them or to do something else with them. For some reason, I just didn't like to cut them up unless I was cooking them.

Yeah. So, you know, you are not the only cucurbitologist. I have heard say that I understand that there is a movement to cook, not carve. Cause it's like, yeah, put all this water and resources into this. You're just going to let it run on the porch. That's true. That's true. Yes.

Tempera, not to be confused with tempura or acrylic paint works well on pumpkins. And if you're like, why am I seeing so many turquoise colored pumpkins? What's this trend? That is the teal pumpkin project. And on someone's porch, it's a sign that there are non food treats being given out. So if you're kiddo or shamelessly you trolling your neighborhood as an adult for goodies is allergic to peanuts or gluten, those houses are like, I got you covered with like a fake tattoo, some silly putty.

So keep an eye out for those. And let's say you've painted a face on a pumpkin, you've scrubbed it all off and now you want to yum it up. Well, you can cook any size pumpkin. You're going to have to cut it up a lot more to get it in a pan, but you can cook it, but it's like the difference between say steak where say what it caught Philly Mignon is going to cook up a lot nicer than a great big old 10 pound steak.

Just partly because of the way it's structured and all you can cook a good pumpkin, even from the big pumpkins, you need to process it a lot differently. You probably are going to use something like a pressure cooker or you're going to dry it and use it that way and grind it up as flour or you're going to do something slightly different from what you do with a smaller pumpkin. The smaller pumpkins are really delicious. And when we were in Virginia, that's one of the things I did was we continued to drive along after I got my pumpkin on that country road.

And off to the left, I saw where they had picked up all the pumpkins, but they had left these little tiny green ones. So we went and got the little tiny green ones that were still, they were gone, but they weren't going to pick them. They just left them there. And we got this and took them home and steamed them. Best thing I ever ate. I mean, they were absolutely delicious.

So yeah, each size, each type will be a little different. And that's part of the magic too, is that there's nothing that you can say, well, they're all like this. No, they're not all like this. They're all different seeds are different within them. Seeds dry differently. Seeds have different shapes. They're all kind of the same shape, but there are pumpkins that have

different, different shaped seeds. So yeah, there's a, there's a lot of magic. Can I ask you questions from listeners? Sure. Okay. Okay. Real quick, before we get to Patreon questions, we may have a few words about some sponsors of the show who make it possible for us to donate each week to a

cause of theologist choosing and this week and shows Shriners hospitals for children because children and their sense of magic and wonder have a special place in her giant heart. So Shriners hospitals for children is a network of 22 nonprofit medical facilities across North America. So thank you to Anne for choosing them and to some of the sponsors for making it possible. Okay, let's get to your questions.

Meg Mahaley asks, and I think a lot of people probably have the same question. They did. And they include Jonathan and Amber Meade, Kaylin Church, Jen S, Ellen Silva, Raiden Markham, Kyra Dye, Laura Springer, and Rosemary Galton. Y'all wanted to know where did the jack-o-lantern originate? The jack-o-lantern actually originated a long time ago. And we think back around when Stonehenge and all that was, well, was active. Let me put it that way.

They think that it goes back that far and that Jack was like comparable to the devil and he had to be a sort of punished and he had to carry around a light so that people wouldn't be afraid of him, that they would know he was coming. So it goes back, it goes back a long way. Again, we only know from things that have been written and we don't know in a lot of cases how truly accurate they are. So I'm doing my best to give a correct answer. Okay, it's also been said that Irish and Scottish kids used to carve their jack-o-lanterns

out of turnips or potatoes. And let me tell you, they look like tiny baby mummy heads and are so much scarier by so much many multitudes than any melon-headed Ichabod crane figure. And in this tale of Jack and the devil, so some versions say that a guy named Jack tricked the devil into buying him a beer and then trapped the devil in the tree. And the devil was like, I am so pissed. And so the devil could demjack to wander the earth, just hofin' it around, carrying a hot coal in a turnip, kind of like a spouldering earth purse,

filled with hellfire. Is that to mimic the devil Jack's lantern that he has had? Probably, and also so that it would light the way for people in the dark, in the in the wintertime. And it wasn't really like Halloween, as we know it now. It used to be called Samhain, and Samhain was a different. It was connected with Celtic people. And so it was a different sort of holiday then.

And that's so interesting. OK, so quick aside, Samhain, also pronounced Samhain, is a Gaelic festival and it celebrates the Celtic pagan New Year and the end of the harvest season and into the cold times and feasts are had, costumes are donned, fairies are appeased, neighbors are shaken down for treats, and dead spirits are invited to come kick it before they cross over. And if you're like, day of the dead, do you need more shows? What a nutty coincidence.

It's the same day that Mexican holiday honoring and celebrating the gone and not forgotten used to be celebrated in the beginning of summer pre Spanish colonization, but gradually it got moved to late October to fit in with Western Halloweeny things. So if you're into a painting project, day of the dead skull pumpkins, cute as hell, or in this case, heaven, hopefully, depending on your relatives. Oh, Naomi Berry wants to know what's the deal with white and pink pumpkins? How do they make them like that?

They don't they don't make them. They cross pollinate them and they grow new varieties when they can. Now, white pumpkins have been something that they wanted to develop for a long time and they finally were able to. They've had red pumpkins, reddish. Let's put it this way, they're more red than they are orange. So if they cross the red with the white, chances are they'll get the pink. But the pink is you don't see many pink.

Yeah, it's it's more rare. So if you get a chance to get a pink pumpkin, by all means get one. These by the by are called porcelain doll F one varieties or rascal F ones. And they are light, light, peachy, pink, lumpy, but hardy with deep ribbing. And if you Google them, the porcelain doll pumpkin, they look a little like my butt. And I found a website called pinkpumpkinpatch.org and it encourages growers to donate a portion of the proceeds of their pumpkin sales, pinkpumpkin sales to breast cancer charities and research

because October PS for more about breast cancer. Listen to the surgical oncology episode from last October was surgeon Dr. Donna Marie Manassi, who is full of warmth and charm. OK, this next question was also asked by Colleen E.B. Ivy Critchfields wants to know, how can I make my jack-o'-lantern last longer? Last longer paint, paint its face, keep it in a cool temperature, a cool, dry temperature if possible. And then when you when you see that it's not going to last forever and ever,

go ahead and do something with it. I do something with the seeds, dry the seeds in the oven. Go ahead and dry the seeds and use them. You can paint them, you can dry them and eat them. You can salt them, you can use them in recipes and you can make jewelry out of them and make really cool jewelry with wooden beads and so forth. So with pumpkin seeds. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, they're beautiful. Yeah. And they'll thread. You can thread them really well. So the needle will go right. You use a big needle, but the needle will go right through. Oh, I never knew that. Yep. Yeah. Gosh. OK, so I know I look these up and they look kind of like puka shells

mixed with smarties on an elastic and they're hella cool. So people are out there making floral brooches out of pumpkin seeds. And if you're ever in a long line or you're stranded in a bog, you just nom on that necklace, man. I'll fend off some parasites while you're at it. And CRISPR wants to know, do you watch? It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown every year. Oh, my God.

Is there anything else that's better? And that that is my all time favorite is Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin. Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere. He's got to pick this one. He's got to. I don't see how a pumpkin patch could be more sincere than this one. You can look all around at this, not a thoroughness hypocrisy.

Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see. There's just nothing like it for the holidays. This is the best time of year. I'm a November baby as well. Oh, OK, that November birthdays love fall. Absolutely, we do. Yeah, we do. OK, thank you for backing my theory.

Oh, yeah, Paul and not everyone agreed with me. I'm telling you, it's a thing. Ask people at your next awkward business dinner or when you're on a jury and you've got some time to kill. Now, this next question was also asked by patrons, Morgan, Ashley, Katie Coast, Sam Taylor, Laura Kinney and Joe Porfino, who simply wrote, what's with pumpkin guts? Jacob Farmer wants to know,

why is it sometimes really easy to get the goop out of the inside of the pumpkin? And sometimes it's very hard because the pumpkin hasn't either fully matured and there are some varieties. Think about making spaghetti noodles. If you take them out too early, they're really hard to get out of the pan. And they're harder to deal with. If you get them out when they're just right, then they're pretty easy to deal with. So it's possible that the pumpkin isn't fully right.

If the skin is really rough and really thick, sometimes it doesn't want to let go of the seed. That's great advice. I never realized that. Deanna Wan wants to know, what is your favorite pumpkin or pumpkin flavored food and how do you feel about pumpkin spice's popularity or everything being like pumpkin spice flavor? Oh, pumpkin spice flavor.

Oh, I like it, of course. I'm not as I'm not as crazy about pumpkin drinks. I do like them. OK, audio note in addition to the white noise gurgling fish tank, a grandfather clock just abruptly joined the autumn symphony. And so we snipped it out, but I will paraphrase her answer and not big on PSLs, but she'll take a pumpkin spice latte as an occasional treat. She also has tons of recipes in her pumpkin pumpkin book.

And she started telling me about jamming stuff into little pumpkins like her mom used to do. But you have to use small pumpkins and you stuff them with just like you would the bell pepper and you cook them like the bell pepper. Dang, I'm going to try that. And pumpkin chili is another favorite of mine. Pumpkin chili. There's a lot. I have a lot of favorites. Like it ugly.

And Wesley Whitman has a question. I feel like this is a heated question. Pumpkin pie or sweet potato pie, which is better? Actually, I love both. Really? I really love both. And to me, I'll take either one. I think, you know what? Because sweet potatoes are fabulous.

Yams are fabulous. And there's so many things you can do with them. So many ways you can cook them. So I guess one thing I haven't done yet with pumpkins. And I just thought about it when you mentioned sweet potatoes is nowadays you can buy sweet potato fries. You've probably had them. You know, I've never made pumpkin fries.

So that's a thought. I may have to go in the next edition. Yeah, someone out there with a deep fryer. Yeah, that goes. Announcement. Everyone sit down. Gather yourselves. I got something to tell you. Pumpkin fries do exist. You can even bake them at home.

If you don't have access to a commercial fryer, this is big news. We're all going to do this. Also, we had a few questions about the best autumn sport. This was asked by Justin, World Championship Walker and Michael Trebuchet Sherman. Nathan Bronnick, who is also my cousin, wants to know, how do they create thick wall hybrid pumpkins for pumpkin chunking? Oh, absolutely.

What do you think? One of my my second edition book had a picture of pumpkin chunking, pumpkin chunking competition. You know, actually any large pumpkin, if it's still very firm and very ripe, it's going to it's going to be a good chunker. It they they don't generally have thin. They don't have thin shells.

There are some that do, but they tend to be smaller and they tend to be not well. They're not healthy. A healthy pumpkin is a chunker. I get that tattoo myself. How do you feel about the band Smashing Pumpkins? Oh, I like that a lot. I think that's really cool.

And a couple more questions if that's OK. Oh, sure. Isabel Hopper wants to know, is it the most underrated vegetable? Well, it's not a vegetable, but yes, it's it's definitely underrated. It's really high in vitamin content. And a lot of vegetarians do recognize the value of it in meals. And the many ways you can use it in a meal. Becky Woodruff has a great question.

She wants to know, what's with those bags of teeny tiny pumpkins in the produce aisle? Are they baby pumpkins or does that type naturally grow to that size? You know, actually, those are a special variety and they they grow them that way. They're never going to get big. They're they're grown to be small like that. And those last pretty much a long time because they're they are small. They don't tend to rot.

Especially if you don't carve them up, if you're just having them sitting there. Yeah, they're all desk pumpkins. Yeah, they'll last. OK, so I know one of those tiny, tiny pumpkins that Linda from accounting has on her desk from like August 31st until December 1st. OK, they have many names among them. Baby Boo, Bumpkin, Munchkin, Baby Pam, We Be Little, Hooligan, Mischief, Trickster.

Again, supporting my theory that you can just name a new pumpkin after your cat. Also, you know, those weird teeny ones that grow on sticks that are always in the floral department? Those are egg plants, which are berries. Trust no one. Victoria, Helen wants to know, have you heard the fact that people used to give pumpkins to their significant others to propose to them? I haven't heard that one, but it's very possible because pumpkins were used in so many ways.

I'll look into that. OK, I couldn't find anything historical about promising one's future till death with a pumpkin, but it did lead me down this syrupy, sweet internet hole to a website that gave stumped would be fiance's ideas of how to propose via pumpkin, like carving the question and then turning it around. You could cut a hole in the bottom of a pumpkin and then you can hide a ring in the slimy guts and have them carve it from the top.

Or you could rent a pumpkin field and spell a message out via dozens of pumpkins and then ride over it at an air balloon if you want to spend your entire wedding budget before they even say yes. Now, you might be out of your gourd, but perhaps it's worth a try if they love you warts and all. OK, speaking of which, Brianne Wharton wants to know, why do pumpkins get the weird wart looking things? Oh, well, it's partly how they're grown and also the variety.

Some pumpkins are going to be very lumpy and bumpy because it's part of their genetic makeup and others will have a really smooth skin. I like the ones that have little wart thingies on them because they're they're they're different. You know, they're they're their own little characters. And to me, it makes them look more interesting. So warts and all, you love them warts and all. Yep. OK, I look this up because Ella Sugarman and Sarah also had questions

and pumpkin warts are called. You ready for this? Warts, they're just called warts and they can be caused by water imbalances, viruses, bugs or just genetics. But these pumpkins all deserve hugs anyway. Alex Allen asked, could you give a shout out for our local native Cucurbita phoedysma? Does that sound familiar?

Not that one. But again, there's all kinds of new ones out. OK, the one he's talking about is the stinking gourd, the buffalo gourd, the calabasia, coyote gourd, fetid gourd and other colorful names. And it's a small, bitter little thing. And folks are looking into its high oil content or the carbohydrates in the root stores as a source for biofuel.

So one day, perhaps this dream of a pumpkin carriage will come true. Glass slippers, we always have platform, lusite heels. Anyway, between new advancements with old pumpkins or new varieties being developed and said she can hardly keep up. There's new types coming out every single year. So I'd be putting out a new addition every year. It's too much work, too much work. I want to play and have fun.

Ashley wants to know, can you eat the guts of a pumpkin? Can can you eat the guts of a pumpkin? Oh, yeah, it depends on how you cook it and how you. But if you've ever eaten spaghetti squash or some of those, you can essentially eat the innards of the pumpkin. Yeah, that's amazing. So yeah, you can eat them there. It's not quite like eating, say, an acorn squash or one of those.

It's it's not going to be quite the same. You can eat them. I will personally gut every one of you. Oh, so a pumpkin is a berry, not a squash, but not a vegetable. But some patrons also had questions about pumpkins and gourds, such as Sarah Chad, Dylan House, Elizabeth Laplume and the Glide's Game and Delilah Green, who simply typed those little gray pumpkins and the ones with the bumps all over them.

That's the question. OK, one last question. Pumpkins and gourds, are they different or is it? Oh, yeah, no, they're they're very different. Yeah, they're very different. Gourds are more closely related to squash, but they're not even that either. They're their own little thing, and they have a very, very hard shell.

And when they are ripe, they're very, very hard. You don't eat gourds, generally speaking, but you can paint on them. You can carve them. You can do all kinds of things like that. So they have their creative side, too. And I love gourds. I've seen some absolutely fabulous gourd art, carved, painted and otherwise.

When do you start decorating for Halloween? Do I start as soon as I can get my hands on a pumpkin? And I don't have one yet this year, right? I don't have one. We don't have a car right now. We're waiting for that to come home from the shop. So so I haven't been able to get there. But when I do and plus if I go in the grocery store,

I may not find that perfect pumpkin. I may have to go to several places before I found what I want. I don't know what color it's going to be this year or what shape or the size. I'm going to have to see him and it's going to just have to kind of feel right when I when I look at it. I don't buy a pumpkin just to buy the pumpkin. It has to speak to me. And when it speaks to me, I know it.

Oh, I love that. That is the way you have to pick out a pumpkin. Yep. That's the way I pick it. Now, I mean, I feel like the pumpkin picks you really in a way. It does, you know, it does. Yep. So just go with your heart when it comes to pumpkin picking. You do pumpkin picking. And now what is the one thing about writing a book about pumpkins or pumpkin

research or pumpkins themselves that really annoys you? What's one that annoys me? Yeah, that sucks about pumpkins. Having to do recipes the same way over and over and over again. And that would be true if I were writing a bread cookbook or a steak cookbook or anything, I do not like to. I don't like to go by the rules. I just throw it in there and it works, you know.

He's intuition too, huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you cook to me, cooking is a creative thing. Yes, you're cooking to fill your belly, but you also want to put love and creativity into it, especially if you're cooking for other people in your life that you care about. You're giving of yourself. You're not just giving the food, you're giving of yourself.

And you want to put your best foot forward, but not in a way that we have to be rigid about how we do it. Oh, one more thing about Anne's work. I love learning things. I'll never stop studying as long as I live. I'll probably never stop cooking, but I'll always cook in my own way. I won't cook by other people's standards. Do your own thing.

Yeah, I made my first, uh, I love fruitcake and most people go fruitcake. But I love fruitcake, but it's got to be a certain kind of fruitcake that has a lot of nuts, a lot of dried fruit, some liquor. And I, I like it when it's really robust. Let me put it that way. And so I made my first robust fruitcake this last November, I think. And, oh my God, I ate the whole thing all by myself. My, my significant other Richard does not like fruitcake, but he, that was okay.

I made it for me and I enjoyed everybody. I, I took me a month to eat it all, but you know what? It was the best fruitcake I ever had. I, I could write a fruitcake cookbook. That's going to be next for you. Yeah. I've literally forgot to ask her what her favorite thing about pumpkins are. So I sent her a quick email and she wrote right back and said, my favorite thing

about pumpkins is that they, like we are, constantly evolve from year to year. They never become boring. And each new generation looks forward to them with great anticipation. Woohoo. Thank you from my heart and always. It's been a joy to be here and, and I think you're doing a wonderful job. And I wish all the people out there who are getting ready to celebrate the fall. I wish you all a happy autumn and a happy holiday season.

And you know what? Do it your way. If, if you don't like to cook it a certain way, cook it the way you like it. It's okay. You have permission to do that. You have permission to be who you are and who you like to be best. I was trying to think one little quick thing when, uh, years ago in up in LA, a bunch of us went out to celebrate Halloween up in Hollywood and we decided

to be a box of crayons and I got to be pink. It's not my favorite color, but I was the pink and of all the costumes, all of them got all messed up, but me, my costume was still pristine when I came back home. I was like, Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I got my, but we had to sort of, you know what? Our customs went all the way down to our ankles. So like we had to hop along.

We couldn't walk. We had to hop all the way through Hollywood. And it was truly one of the best grown up Halloween's I've had. So go out and enjoy Halloween. Yeah. Go out and enjoy Halloween and enjoy every day of your life. Because you never know what the next day is going to bring and enjoy it while you're there to enjoy it and cooking or having pumpkins.

You know what? It's what means something to you. What's important, what you make magic in your life. And even if you're not a believer in magic, as most people describe it, magic is a joy of living. Just that simple. So there's magic in a pumpkin. Yeah.

And thank you very kindly for attending this interview. It's really appreciated. Thanks for letting me come over at eight o'clock at night with no notice. You know what? That's the kind of thing I like best. I'm very spontaneous. I do things on the spur of the moment. And that's the way I like it.

So good. Excellent. Thank you so much. Okay, take care. So ask smart folks stupid questions because chances are what caused them to seek the answer was the exact same curiosity that you got now to buy and Copeland's book, which I definitely suggest you do. It is delightful as is she.

Her book is called Pumpkin Pumpkin Folklore History, Planting Hints and Good Eating. There's tons of recipes in it. You'll find a link in the show notes to the Amazon page where you can order it in paperback. It's also available on Kindle. And there's also a link in the show notes to the sponsors of the show and to the Shriners Hospitals for Children.

And more links, as always, are up at alleyward.com slash oligies slash Cucurbitology. Now for oligies merch, go to oligiesmerch.com or alleyward.com. Thank you, Shannon Feltas and Body Dutch of the podcast. You are that for managing that. Also thanks to Hannah Lipo and Erin Talbert for admitting the oligies podcast Facebook group. Thank you to assistant editor, Jared Sleeper of the podcast, My Good Bad Brain.

And of course, to a dude with a lot of guts, but who hates pumpkin guts? Stephen Ray Morris of the Percast and C Jurassic Wright. The theme song is called Alley at the Museum. It was written for this podcast by Nick Thorburn of the Very Good Band Islands. And if you stick around until the end of the episode, you know, until you see great, this week's secret is that to make a carved pumpkin last longer, you can also spray diluted bleach inside, but then you can't have your jack-o'-lantern and eat it too.

And also, you know, when people carve pumpkins to look like they're barfing up their own guts, whenever I see that, I get physically nauseated. Like just thinking about it makes me like, uh, like mission accomplished. Halloween. Terrifying. It's too real. You got me. Tricksters.

So for breeze your scarves, let's meet here next week for another October spookology. Spooked over. I'm so excited. They're so good. Oh, they're so good. Okay. Bye bye. Nanotechnology.

Meteorology. Peptology. Phycology. Cereology. Pseudology. Pumpkin guts are gross. I hate, hate, hate them the most. Where they're sitting here, the times are a long, the best coast.

And pumpkin guts are gross. Oh.