Pardon my Halloween ignorance, but do you guys actually eat all those carved pumpkins? Because from an outsider's perspective it just looks like a massive waste of food...
Posted Oct 26, 2011, 2:30 PM UTC
568
90% of those pumpkins sit on porches until they rot and then they are thrown in the trash. Some people I know bake the seeds to eat later but that's about it.
22
failing to bake pumpkin seeds is a travesty. you may as well just paint the pumpkin, or draw all over it with markers like an ignorant child
5
OMG, yes! Freshly cooked pumpkin seeds are one of the best things ever invented.
1
[deleted]
1
Nah. Ya cut em in half, bake em, then scoop out the soft innards to use like and other squash. Peeling them while raw would just end in multiple amputations.
1
Well we do roast the seeds that are inside and people make pumpkin pie and a lot of other things that taste like a dog's butt out of them. But mostly they're just for show.
9
I thought pumpkin pie was made out of the inside of the shell? If you are making pumpkin pie out of the slimy gut stuff, that would explain why your pie tastes like dog butt...
6
Pretty sure the 'pumpkin' in pumpkin pie is, in fact, pureed pumpkin guts. I don't think the 'shell' has any flavor, kind of like a watermelon rind. Could be wrong though.
[edit] Seems I was incorrect. TIL!
1
Nope. To make pumpkin pie you heat the pumpkin until the shell gets soft and scoop that out much in the same way you eat a squash.
That part is then puréed and mixed with cinnamon, sugar , vanilla and cream to make the pie filling.
7
When you carve a pumpkin, you scoop out the innards, and many people roast and eat the seeds.
People don't eat the "meat" from the pumpkins they carve and leave outside, because by the time Halloween is over they are either rotten or eaten by squirrels and other animals.
Also, most Americans do not use pumpkin in their everyday meals. We eat pumpkin pie, but the vast majority of people get their pumpkin pie filling out of a can, and that stuff isn't even real pumpkin anyway. (It's squash). Some classier restaurants will do pumpkin risotto or ravioli, and there are a few good soups you can make with pumpkin, but those are usually made with "sugar" or "pie" pumpkins, which are much smaller than the carving varieties.
7
pumpkin is a variety of squash...
2
Yes, there are many types of squash, but the type used in canned pumpkin pie filling is usually butternut, hubbard, or boston marrow squash. Notice that none of them look anything like the sugar pumpkin that real pumpkin pies are made of.
5
TIL. Upvote, good sir.
-1
Wasting food is our national past time.
7
Eating seeds is a past time activity....
2
Compost heap, so I'm kind of using the innards still.
7
My family's jack-o-lanters get thrown on the compost which gets used to grow much better tasting pumpkins and other squashes, watermelon, corn, peppers, potatoes, sweet peas, onions, garlic, and broccoli. It really doesn't seem like a waste of food to me since the big ones taste horrid anyway.
2
Typically jack-o-laterns are only for decoration, a good bit of people I know do clean and roast the seeds though.
6
We eat the seeds, roasted, out of the pumpkins, but the carved ones are the wrong sort to eat (there are smaller 'pie pumpkins' for that). Besides, by the time you're done w them, they're usually to gnarly for food.
6
[deleted]
2
I can not believe that some people actually throw the insides out. Pumpkin is delicious in all sorts of things. My mother gave me one recipie that involves filling a pumpkin with wild rice, bits of steak, and various vegetables and baking it all together. Best Nightmare Night dinner ever.
3
WANT RECIPE!!!!
1
I will try to find it when I get home. I can not seem to find it online. Odd.
1
The seeds are good eating, the flesh on the larger ones is not.
3
I've seen people use the crap they get out of the middle for stuff, but i've never heard anyone say they actually eat the carved bit.
2
They are pretty much decoration only.
2
I'm not american but I would make a crap load of soup. I'm sorry but pumpkin pie is disgusting.
2
Pumpkin bisque is fabulous.
2
On the contrary, after the pumpkins are carved I throw the seeds in the garden. Pumpkins grow like weeds and the whole exercise winds up producing much more food than than would have been the case if they were just bought and roasted for dinner.
2
All the pumpkins we have this year are volunteers that grew out of last year's seeds after they rotted, not too bad for no effort involved.
2
We eat the seeds but yeah, carving pumpkins aren't the same as cooking pumpkins. They don't taste good and don't have a ton of useable meat, you know? I'm actually surprised more animals don't eat them, my neighborhood is full of raccoons and they haven't even touched them.
2
Squirrels chew on them where I'm from.
1
I dislike pumpkin very much. I've never been a fan of the taste. Nasty!!!
1
Most people don't. Some do.
I couldn't live through october without pumpkin bread and toasted seeds.
Never been a huge pumpkin pie fan.
1
No, up north we let the moose eat them.
1
where up north do you live?
1
Up north, you can pretty much divide the world into zones based on how frequently you encounter moose. Moose per diem, if you will. Alaska is about .15 Mpd, where as Denmark is more like .00014 Mpd
1
yep i'm from maine and with our pop of ~ 1.2 mil, and a moose population of ~ 30k, giving us a MPD of about .025. evidently maine has the second highest concentration of moose only to alaska
2
Close to the Arctic Circle.
1
Some people make pie.
EDIT: Reading the rest of this thread, it seems like this may not be true.
1
I roast the seeds!
1
The pumpkins we grow for decoration are not all that good eating. I myself grow a couple different kinds of pumpkins that taste way better but i would not carve them up.
A lot of the bigger pumpkins taste horrible. The ones that are good for cooking with are much smaller and sweeter.
I prefer the green and yellow striped ones for eating.