Homegrown Pumpkins for Tasty Pies and Colorful Lanterns
This Halloween as my family lights the candles in their freshly carved jack-o'-lanterns, I'll be in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on my pumpkin pies. Baking the pies and handing out trick-or-treat candies to the neighborhood kids is something the older me has learned to do; I guess it's the welcome right of passage to be the one to host the Halloween ritual; to bake the pies, carve the pumpkins and distribute the candy.
The pungent aromas of spices and candlelit pumpkins rekindle in me thoughts of my childhood and Halloweens past; to a time when three generations of my family lived happily together under one roof. It was late October in 1947, all along my avenue neighbors were busy raking up yard leaves to be piled and burned. It was a time when homeowners were allowed to burn yard leaves in smoky piles creating a tantalizing smoke that filled our nostrils with an unforgettable aroma, an aroma that signaled the arrival of fall.
Grandpa was sitting in the backyard under his favorite fig tree, cracking and shelling walnuts. Grandma was there too, searching her vegetable patch for some late-blooming squash. The crisp, late October weather was invigorating, and it filled me with anticipation for Halloween and the coming holidays ahead. The house smelled sweet, as it always did this time of year.
Bottles of vanilla and bowls of sugar, spices and flour were carefully arranged on mom’s kitchen table; all the ingredients for homemade pumpkin pies, included were five or six of Grandpas garden pumpkins. Looking out the back window, I saw Grandma heading toward the house, cradling an armload of zucchini in the fold of her apron. Meanwhile, Grandpa announced he’d finally finished shelling a huge bowl of walnuts and almonds for homemade Halloween candy. This was my favorite time of the year.
Halloween marked the beginning of all the warm and wonderful winter celebrations that were to come. Like all our family holidays together, Halloween was a time of sharing and enjoying. It was a time of kitchens warmed with spices and family smiles. The night before Halloween, our house came alive with the mouth-watering flavors of hot caramel and melting sugar as Grandma and Grandpa boiled up batches of sugar coating for the glazed nuts. But of all the memories that Halloween brings, it was the homegrown pumpkins that set the theme for this very special time of the year. Papa had an old saying about growing pumpkins.
He would say to me "If you want to be a successful gardener, grow pumpkins." He was right of course, there is very little needed to make a pumpkin seed sprout. These tenacious seeds practically plant themselves and require a minimum of tending. My grand- parents were excellent growers of fruits and vegetables. They had learned their skills early on, back in the old country.
They also learned that pumpkins are part of the fruit family, like gourds and other varieties of squash, all members of the Cucurbitacae family, which also includes cucumbers, gherkins, and melons. My grandparents grew a variety of pumpkins in their gar- den. For carving they grew the Connecticut Field Pumpkin, which grew to a respectful 10 to 20 pounds and occasionally produced some as huge as 50 lbs. For homemade pies they grew the Small Sugar Pumpkins (4-10 pounds), the lantern pumpkins are too stringy.
Other types included: Baby Bear (1-3 pound pumpkins), Autumn Gold (10-15 pounds), Baby Boo (6 ounces) and Lumina (10-20 pounds). Big Max, Cinderella, Atlantic Giant ... Pumpkin varieties come in a wide range of sizes, from a few ounces to over 500 pounds. Their colors range from white to pink to red to traditional orange. Each year, we preserved some of the seeds form our pumpkins for next season’s planting. We cleaned off all the soft pumpkin pulp form the seeds, selecting only the largest before spreading them onto newspapers to air dry. The fun was seeing what kind of pumpkin would grow from these seeds, sometimes a hybrid was produced, something that was neither a pumpkin nor a squash.
They were one of a kind and we always looked for one of these to pop up in the pumpkin patch. When the planting season came along, just after the spring rains had ended, our backyard looked like it was covered in three-foot wide anthills. These were the soil mounds, about 4 feet apart, that papa created where the pumpkin seeds were to be planted. Papa choose the sunniest section of the yard, one that received at least 6 hours of sun.
He placed 4 to 6 seeds, about 8 inches apart, in the hilly mounds, each of these hills was surrounded by a water moat about 5 inches deep and wide. This was how they were watered with the moat holding the water for the root system. He covered his seeds about an inch deep with enough earth to keep the birds from finding them. It would be a long waiting process for the developing pumpkins as they require at least 110 or more frost free growing days. During that time the pumpkin needs to be well watered.
During the seed stage, we watered them gently with a sprinkling can to avoid washing away the covering soil. Pumpkin vines are tenacious and will spread and grow in many different areas so give these crawlers plenty of room. The flamboyant, emerald green leaves help to keep the pumpkin shaded from the hot sun and help it retain its necessary water and nutrients that are fed to it through its main vine, the umbilical vine. The tendrils guide the vine's direction as it grows.
When the young seedlings have begun to take hold, papa made sure to thin the small ones from the mound and keep the large ones. Pumpkins are ready to harvest once the color of the fruit has deepened into a true orange color, somewhere between deep yellow and golden red, depending on the variety. When we selected our pumpkins from the patch for Halloween carving, papa instructed us to leave several inches of stem on the pumpkin, it helped them stay fresh as they cured in the sun for 10 days before storing them in a cool dry place.
Today, as I work in my little kitchen putting the finishing touches on an old-fashioned pumpkin pie and prepare for Halloween visitors at my door, I remember my special parents and grandparents, our simple house on Terra Bella Avenue, and the good and uncomplicated, yet beautiful, lifestyle we once shared together and I'm reminded that the best things, like holidays, food, and even lives, aren't necessarily the most elaborate ones.
Simple can be a good thing. Wishing you a simple but extraordinary Halloween.
PUMPKIN PIE RECIPE
Grandma liked to use a medium-sized sugar pumpkin, which is about a 5-pound pumpkin. Which will yield about 1-1/2 cup mashed pumpkin.
OLD FASHIONED PUMPKIN PIE
Ingredients:
1-1/2 cups fresh pumpkin puree (One sugar pumpkin about 5 lbs.)
One recipe pastry for a 9 inch single crust pie
Two eggs
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2-1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie
spice One (12 fluid ounce) can evaporated milk
Directions:
Cut pumpkin in 4 halves and remove seeds. Place cut side down on a cookie sheet lined with lightly oiled aluminum foil. Bake at 325-degrees for 40 to 45 minutes, or until the flesh is tender when poked with a fork. Cool until just warm. Scrape the pumpkin flesh from the peel. Either mash, or puree in small batches in a blender. Increase oven temperature to 450- degrees.
In a large bowl, lightly beat eggs. Add brown sugar, flour, and salt, 2-cups of the pumpkin puree, pumpkin pie spice, and evaporated milk. Stir well after each addition. Pour mixture into the unbaked pastry shell. Place a strip of aluminum foil around the edge of the crust to prevent over browning. Bake 15 minutes at 450- degrees, then reduce the oven temperature to 350-degrees. Bake an additional 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Remove the strip of foil about 20 minutes before the pie is done so that the edge of the crust will be a light golden brown. Cool pie.
