What is Pumpkin?

An edible pumpkin about to be cooked in my kitchen a few years ago.

Thanksgiving is coming, and thus pumpkins have turned from a decorative/scary item into a food. Pumpkins that are grown for jack-o-lanterns generally have flesh that is stringy and watery — including, both big and small decorative pumpkins.  Small edible pumpkins are the ones you buy if you want to cook them — the stores label them as “pie pumpkins.” They would also make good pumpkin soup, roast pumpkin, or pumpkin stew. I assume that canned pumpkin also comes from this cultivar, though certain other types of squash are also used (legally) in canned pumpkin.

Decorative pumpkins wouldn’t poison you, but just wouldn’t make good food. After the holiday, the giant pumpkins in our neighborhood (as far as I know) are picked up by the same truck that brought them. I have no idea how the disposal is done, but I assume they go to some composting center.

Canned pumpkin or pie filling can legally be either
actual pumpkin or one of a few kinds of orange squash.

Pumpkin Decorations

The pumpkin wall on Halloween night. It goes on much longer than this. (Alice’s photo)

The pumpkin wall on Sunday. Some pumpkins remain, others are gone.

Cooking pumpkin and squash

A pumpkin pie web image search.

An old spice container with pumpkin pie spice that my mother always used.

Some people confuse the “pumpkin spice” blend (allspice, ginger, nutmeg, cloves. and cinnamon) with actual pumpkin. The spice is used in many beverages and dishes at this time of year, sometimes with actual pumpkin, sometimes not.

Making soup in my kitchen this week: a squash that’s equivalent to pumpkin.

 

Stereotyped Thanksgiving image with pumpkins.

Our Leaders Enjoy A Meal?

Presidential banquet, starving masses. (Image from the Guardian)
Thinking about Thanksgiving forces me to consider how some Americans are being abused,
deprived of ways to buy food, and kicked around by our leaders.

Blog post © 2025 mae sander

Starving his Enemies

 

Books old and new

Looking Forward to a New Book

To be published later this week: Margaret Atwood’s memoir.
I have been reading her novels since the very first one, The Edible Woman.

From the publisher’s blurb:

“How does one of the greatest storytellers of our time write her own life? The long-awaited memoir from the author of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments, one of our most lauded and influential cultural figures.

“‘Every writer is at least two beings: the one who lives, and the one who writes. Though everything written must have passed through their minds, or mind, they are not the same.’”

Looking at Our History

I’ve read around half of Joseph Ellis’s Founding Brothers.

I am learning a lot of history!

Looking at a Hobbit — Again

This is the cover of the book I just reread.
I enjoyed it as much as ever. It was published in 1937.

This is the cover of the edition that I read decades ago.
We wore it out by reading it often. In good condition, it’s worth quite a bit.

This is the cover I like the best (but I’ve never seen one).

There are dozens of editions of The Hobbit! It’s an inspiring and influential book.

Blog post © 2025 mae sander

October Wrap-up

In my kitchen in October I have two new refrigerator magnets among all my bird magnets.

New: flamingos and an eagle.

UPDATE: Jeanie asked where retired magnets go. The answer: I have a big plastic box on a high shelf and they all go in there. Some years ago the theme (now birds) was Mona Lisa. All the Mona Lisa magnets are in a separate box in a closet somewhere. I like Jeanie’s idea that there’s a big wall covered with magnets somewhere, but my house isn’t big enough for that.

Len’s Latest Bread

 Good Dinners from My Kitchen

Apple crisp.

Alice and Len with the apple crisp.

Cabbage salad, stuffed mushrooms, and pork tenderloin.

Savory corn pancakes with lettuce and cottage cheese.

Pastrami with tomatoes and lemons, garlic bread, spaghetti, and chocolate pudding with biscotti.

Lamb chops and salads.

Salad — note the purple carrots!

Outside the Kitchen Door

Beyond the kitchen door: the last of the potted herbs. The first frost this year is very late.

Happy Halloween

One more photo of the giant pumpkin (with me to show how huge it is).

New York Times Headline about decreasing chocolate quality
due to very high prices.

About those chocolate prices:  

 

”Experts say high cocoa prices have triggered a wave of ‘reformulations,’ the industry term for recipe changes. As the Halloween season boosts demand, some candy companies are replacing expensive cocoa butter with other fats, a swap that means their products no longer meet the U.S. regulatory definition of milk chocolate and can no longer be called that on packaging.” (source) 

 

What’s Missing From Our Nation?

Will Congress and the Nation really let this injustice prevail? 
A last-minute reprieve is a somewhat distant possibility.
Some states have acted to provide funding for food programs, but others can’t afford to do so.

As I survey my own food for this month and next month, I realize how lucky I am. Heartless actions by the government and our leaders threaten large numbers of citizens with hunger and desperation. SNAP, the federal food assistance program, is critical in the lives of many Americans. This headline is local, but the disaster is national. What’s missing from our nation is compassion and generosity,

“The threat of food assistance disappearing for 42 million Americans, even for a month, has exposed how threadbare the nation’s social safety net has become at a time of persistent inflation and deep federal funding cuts. Filling the void in the coming weeks will strain many food banks and other organizations that were already stretched thin.” (source)

Friday Afternoon Update: 

Crisis may be over

Blog post © 2025 mae sander

I’m sharing this post with Sherry’s kitchen round-up, 

with Eileen’s critter round-up, 

and with Deb’s weekly round-up.

More Books and More Walks

Neighborhood News: 

The Great Pumpkins Have Arrived! 

When I drove past this morning, this year’s giant pumpkins were being carved.
Now we are ready for Halloween!

Reading

Practical Magic: a real Halloween book about witches!

Books about witches seem to be domestic, because witches are domestic. Their cookpots may be filled with unthinkable and inedible stews, but the concoctions do steam up the domestic space in the kitchen. And often, witches cook real delicious food. The witches in Practical Magic definitely fit this stereotype, and I loved it. From the beginning when witch Sally fixes lunches for herself and her sister, and also later when Sally and her daughters go back to visit the witching house in Massachusetts, their cooking sounds delicious and also normal: 

“Sally was the one who cooked healthy dinners of meat loaf and fresh green beans and barley soup, using recipes from a copy of Joy of Cooking she’d managed to smuggle into the house. She fixed their lunchboxes each morning, packing up turkey-and-tomato sandwiches on whole-wheat bread, adding carrot sticks and iced oatmeal cookies…” (p. 6)

“They’ll fix a picnic lunch of cream cheese and olive sandwiches, pita pockets stuffed with salad, Thermoses filled with lemonade and iced tea. They’ll pack up the car the way they do every August, and get on the highway before seven, to avoid traffic.“ (p. 195) 

“Vegetarian lasagna and green bean salad with almonds, and cherry cheesecake for dessert, all homemade.” (p. 198) 

The two sisters escape the real witch house of their aunts, who actively practice witchcraft and do spells for women in distress (especially distressed love) — but their powers follow the sisters when they try to escape, and in the end, witching is the big thing. Meanwhile, they have insights about life and all its complexities, but can’t always solve their own problems. They are also cursed: the men they love are doomed to die. As one sister observes: “Money, love, or fury—those are the causes for most everything.” (p. 202)

Note: I haven’t seen the movie of this book, and I just read about a coming sequel to that movie. The review was lukewarm, so I probably won’t bother to see either of them.

Mary Burton: What She Saw

What She Saw was a free book offered to me by amazon.com (I don’t know why). I had never heard of the book or of the author, but I did read the whole thing. It’s a suspense novel about some pretty icky murders, but the descriptions of violence aren’t excessive. The author has written many other books, but I doubt if I. will read any of them. I guess this is another good choice for Halloween reading!

Halloween Again: Walking in my Neighborhood

This “dog” barks and jumps out of his house when you walk by on the sidewalk.
It’s very scary!

Most of the blow-up decorations are boring, but this one is kind of neat.

At the local produce store: pumpkins everywhere.

Important Halloween news from the New York Times: “the price of chocolate candy has risen almost 29 percent over the start of the Halloween season last year. A recent survey by the personal finance site FinanceBuzz has prices of Halloween candy up 78 percent from five years ago.” If you have been getting ready for trick-or-treaters you already know this!

The Botanical Garden in Autumn

A beaver lives here.

Photos © 2025 mae sander