260 animal, vegetable, miracle
Every dog has its day, and even the lowly squash finally gets its month.
We may revile zucchini in July, but in October we crown its portly orange
cousin the King Cucurbit and Doorstop Supreme. In Italy I had nursed a
growing dread that my own country’s food lore had gone over entirely to
the cellophane side. Now my heart was buoyed. Here was an actual,
healthy, native North American vegetable, non- shrink-wrapped, locally
grown, and in season, sitting in state on everybody’s porch.
The little devil on my shoulder whispered, “Oh yeah? You think people
actually know it’s edible?”
The angel on the other shoulder declared “Yeah” (too smugly for an
angel, probably), the very next morning. For I opened our local paper to
the food section and found a colorful two- page spread under the headline
“Pumpkin Possibilities.” Pumpkin Curry Soup, Pumpkin Satay! The food
writer urged us to think past pie and really dig into this vitamin- rich veg-
etable. I was excited. We’d grown three kinds of pumpkins that were now
lodged in our root cellar and piled on the back steps. I was planning a
special meal for a family gathering on the weekend. I turned a page to fi nd
the recipes.
As I looked them over, Devil sneered at Angel and kicked butt. Every
single recipe started with the same ingredient: “1 can (15 oz) pumpkin.”
I could see the shopping lists now:
1 can pumpkin (for curry soup)
1 of those big orangey things (for doorstep).Come on, people. Doesn’t anybody remember how to take a big old
knife, whack open a pumpkin, scrape out the seeds, and bake it? We can
carve a face onto it, but can’t draw and quarter it? Are we not a nation
known worldwide for our cultural zest for blowing up flesh, on movie and
video screens and/or armed conflict? Are we in actual fact too squeamish
to stab a large knife into a pumpkin? Wait till our enemies fi nd out.
Two days later my mother walked in the kitchen door, catching me
in the act of just such a murder, and declared “Barbara! That looks dan-
gerous.”
I studied my situation objectively: the pumpkin was bluish (not from