🎃 Pumpkins! 🎃 Pumpkins! 🎃 Pumpkins! 🎃 Facts! 🎃 Recipes! 🎃 More! 🎃

October 30, 2017 12:34 PM

All About Pumpkins is just that - a site that is all about pumpkins, from a brief history of the squash and general facts, to brief descriptions of 46 varieties of cucurbits or Cucurbitaceae plus 33 other winter squashand tips on growing and storing winter squash. Then there's cooking, carving, and picking the perfect pumpkin. TMI? Jump to the Q & A. And that's just one website, so let's go on for more pumpkiny goodness!

Other extensive resources:

• Pumpkin article on Wikipedia, which is as extensive as you might imagine, but generally less fun than other sites, like
• Pumpkin-patch.com, with more unusual pumpkin facts, a range of pumpkin cuisine, and other typical pumpkiny links
University of Illinois Extension | Pumpkins and More for a different regional take (All About Pumpkins is from a family farm located in the coastal foothills of San Luis Obispo County in California), and really a lot more information, but with a less catchy website name and charmingly vintage website design
• Colonial Williamsburg | Some Pumpkins! - Halloween and Pumpkins in Colonial America, with history from North America, including notes on how Native Americans grew, stored and used pumpkins, including companion planting with corn and beans
• How to grow a giant pumpkins, with a note that the true giants are bred from seeds traded and sold among pumpkin growing enthusiasts
• Spookmaster has patterns, patterns and MORE PATTERNS to carve your pumpkin! (previously)

posted by filthy light thief (16 comments total)

Don't forget everyones's favorite epumpkinonymous molecules, the cucurbit[n]urils!
posted by lalochezia at 12:38 PM on October 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Pumpkin beer links:

• Serious Eats | Pumpkin Beer History: Colonial Necessity to Seasonal Treat
• Paste Magazine | 63 of the Best Pumpkin Beers, Blind-Tasted and Ranked
• Beer & Brewing Magazine | site-wide search for "pumpkin" - this pulls up recipes with pumpkin beers, reviews of brews and recipes to make your own

posted by filthy light thief at 12:39 PM on October 30, 2017 [2 favorites]

Note: Beer & Brew's site-wide search doesn't seem to turn up anything properly old, specifically the purported Pilgrim recipe that called for a mixture of persimmons, hops, maple syrup, and, of course, pumpkin.

Luckily, Colonial Williamsburg has something for the recipe recreators:

Further south in Virginia, planter Landon Carter mentions pumpkins in his diary in 1765. He, too, concocted some sort of alcoholic beverage from fermented pumpkins. He christened it pumperkin.

Perhaps he used a method similar to an anonymous recipe of 1771:

Let the Pompion be beaten in a Trough and pressed as Apples. The expressed juice is to be boiled in a copper a considerable time and carefully skimmed that there may be no remains of the fibrous part of the pulp. After that intention is answered let the liquid be hopped culled fermented & casked as malt beer.

posted by filthy light thief at 12:44 PM on October 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

All about pumpkins .... Any questions ?!?!?
posted by Pendragon at 12:55 PM on October 30, 2017 [5 favorites]

More previous pumpkinophilia: pumpkinboat racing!
posted by oulipian at 12:55 PM on October 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

The long pie pumpkin is my top choice for, well, pie. Slice in half, scoop out seeds, bake until soft. As it cools the flesh pulls away from the skin and just falls, easy as pie into your bowl. Sugar pumpkins and butternut are acceptable substitutes.
posted by carrioncomfort at 12:58 PM on October 30, 2017 [4 favorites]

Seems you forgot something.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 1:04 PM on October 30, 2017 [3 favorites]

"I've always thought that we don't choose pumpkins. They choose us! There is an unwritten magical connection when when you find the perfect pumpkin. What one person rejects as ugly, too tall, too short, or too fat; the next person will exclaim and rejoice announcing their beautiful find."

Ugh pumpkin picking season is so magical. I love pumpkins so much and I DON'T KNOW WHY. This post made my day 🎃
posted by goodbyewaffles at 2:50 PM on October 30, 2017 [2 favorites]

Thank you for signing up for Pumpkin Facts! You now will receive fun daily facts about Pumpkins!
posted by pharm at 2:57 PM on October 30, 2017 [4 favorites]

Came for the SNL reference, was not disappointed.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:51 PM on October 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

That reminds me, I haven't yet made pumpkin bread. Or pumpkin pie. Or pumpkin cake. Or pumpkin brownies. Or pumpkin cheesecake. I should get on that this weekend.
posted by PearlRose at 7:07 AM on October 31, 2017

Perfect timing! Wait until after Halloween when pumpkins may be on sale, though that may not be a thing, unlike half-price candy.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:55 AM on October 31, 2017

It's [Roasting The Seeds Of] Decorative Gourd Season, M#\&%@ F>@$#%s!

We have four pumpkins this year over thirty pounds each (don't ask), but they didn't yield many or very good seeds. Still, I saved about a quart and a half of seeds, and tonight I will commence to roastin' once we finish trick-or-treating!
posted by wenestvedt at 12:21 PM on October 31, 2017

Just a couple days ago I made this tiny game featuring a pumpkin for my pumpkin-obsessed three-year-old daughter and she is very enthusiastic about it.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 7:29 PM on October 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

Jpfed, I love that game!
posted by moonmilk at 8:32 PM on October 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

Mod note: "The mission of BigPumpkins.com is to provide an interactive web site to the giant pumpkin growing community!"

trying to find the pumpkin movie I saw about a competition and having no luck, no it's not Bill's Big Pumpkins or Rise of the Giants
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:19 PM on November 3, 2017