Driving along Sugar Creek, I pointed out excitedly an authentic pumpkin patch. Large orbs of yellow orange lying amongst fallen leaves, attached to the earth by spindly vines. Pumpkins in a field bare of high-grown grasses or other grains this area of the country is famous. Just big, big pumpkins.
The part of the country where we live grows pumpkins like no one's business. When I first moved here with my family, crisp autumn air brought not only brilliantly clear and cool skies, but the smell of moldy decomposing leafy matter kicked up in a walk in the woods, (a damp dripping nose as airborne ragweed pollens trigger the hypersensitivity of immune systems), shades of crimson, umber and brown, as well as various hues of orange from gold to dross of tarnished brass.
And, bats, there are bats here, too. They live in the belfry of the little brick church down around the corner. When my husband walks in the evening they exit in flocks (or whatever a gaggle of flying mammals is called) in a group to the night sky. Patients come to the E.R. at this time of year looking for rabies vaccine often when left they've left a screen window open at night and wake in the morning to stare one unexpectedly in to eye while brushing teeth. It's the subsequent inadvertent broken leg from tripping over furniture or jumping out a two-story window that brings the patient into the E.R., though, and on further questioning, when the subject of possible contact with bat spit, then it's Pharmacy's job to obtain the costly rabies immunoglobulins and first of the vaccination series.
Pumpkins are fascinating as one realizes so many varieties in all shapes and sizes belong to the larger family of squashes and gourds, genus cucurbita. Pumpkins as members of the cucurbitaceae family include cousins such as muskmelons (which grow in wide abundance in the southern part of the state) to cucumbers, and gourds. Differences in taste among these family members are often attributed to textural differences, the cool smoothness of cucumbers, and pickles contrasted to warm chunkiness of boiled and subtly sweetened pumpkin mash.
Like the sweet potato or yam, texture and taste differences are as subtle as the seasonings used in food preparation. Sometimes it seems the difference between sweet potato and pumpkin pie could be attributed to a set of different growing conditions for either one. In any case, I have found pureed pumpkin an adequate substitute in pumpkin bread, pumpkin chiffon cheesecake, and pumpkin pie, not so much, though, for entering into a pumpkin carving contest. However, a recipe I made up for a Knox Blox type of gelatinous food item with melted gelatin in hot skim milk and mixed with vanilla fat-free yogurt or fat-free pudding, pumpkin puree, and gently folded into a frozen whipped cream is a guiltless substitute for any time of the year pie.
At one time, there were concerns about overdoing Vitamin A intake (I was the one at carrot harvest time when a steady diet of sweet tender baby carrots caused a slight skin tinge.) With liver problems there's always concern about taxing its ability to metabolize common nutritional components, and Vitamin A is a fat-soluble vitamin which means its storage is in fatty tissues, slowing passage to liver metabolism, and attendant risk of accumulation. Hyper vitaminosis of the A vitamin occurs when maximal stores in the liver are exceeded, and can result in toxicities and even death, as I recall, from Goodman and Gilman's pharmacology text... and, since the vitamin is in a fat cell, its retrieval is not readily available.
Evidently most members of the squash family have no problem with propagation here. I heard stories of the uninvited guest. Suddenly, overnight, brown paper bags filled with zucchini show up on the stoop, on the porch, and you trip over them on the doorstep. Neighbors take orders for fresh sweet corn, and co-workers bring from home to share their perfect little red globes of summer sunshine. (This area is known as the ketchup capitol of the world, also for popcorn, and farming soybeans, the ones not generally for human consumption. But, on the otherhand, there is a sizable portion of the pumpkin crop that make their stand as a Hallowe'en decoration, and no where near a pie crust.)
It's time once again to reminisce about reciting odes to autumn 'when the frost is on the punkin' by Jimmy Boy Riley and Mama Mama Huckabuck, Jonas Jonas Huckabuck and their daughter Pony Pony and the great silver buckles found in golden pumpkins. "... a sign; it is a signal... ...a buckle, a slipper buckle, a Chinese silver slipper buckle... our luck is going to change. Yoo hoo! Yoo hoo!"
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
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