Ah, pumpkins! They're adorable, aren't they? When they start showing up on store shelves you know Halloween isn't far behind. When pumpkin flavored treats start appearing on menus, even better!
Shakespeare mentioned pumpkins in his play The Merry Wives of Windsor. Pumpkins make an appearance in the fairy tale Cinderella, and Washington Irving's spooky story of early American fright The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Pumpkins were eaten by Native American peoples. The early English-American colonists ate them too, even baking cleaned pumpkins filled with milk, honey, and spices in hot coals. Pumpkin pie baked right inside the pumpkin shell! Peter Peter, Pumpkin Eater had nothing on those clever cooks.
Personally, I love pumpkins. They signal the coming of fall, my favorite season. I never liked the start of school as a kid, but I could deal with it because I knew that soon the night air would start getting crisp. The fall colors would start creeping into the foliage of my mother's beloved garden, the magenta and yellow and purple and orange chrysanthemums bursting out in bloom just as the summer flowers wound down for a winter nap.
And of course, pumpkins mean Halloween. What is Halloween without a bunch of jack o' lanterns grinning into the dark night as trick-or-treater make their merry rounds?
No comments:
Post a Comment