Autumn is the season for pumpkins! Pumpkins are not just round and orange. Delight yourself with all those fun and creative pumpkins you’ll find at farmers markets, orchards, and garden centers! Technically, all pumpkins are edible with a long storage life. However, if you’re just going for a culinary pumpkin, the small, round sugar pumpkins called 1. __________ pumpkins are best for cooking. In 1842, Lydia Maria Child, wrote her famous poem about a New England Thanksgiving that began, “Over the river, and through the woods” and ended with a should “Hurrah for pumpkin pie!”
Pumpkins have deep American roots. The Pilgrims subsisted
on these edibles during their harsh winters, thanks to 2.___________________
people, (which American Native Indian tribe?) who helped them survive their
first year at Plymouth Colony. The Pilgrims had gone hungry their first winter,
turning up noses at the long-storing foods like pumpkins and squash. When
summer came, the colonists planted the seeds given to them by their Native
American neighbors. The pumpkin is a native American crop, believed to have
originated in Mexico at least 10,000 years ago. Along with 3. ________ and
beans, which were domesticated much later, it joins the legendary Three sisters
of early Native American agriculture.
As stated above, Native Americans introduced the European
Colonists to the many uses of pumpkin, which quickly became a common staple
food, as suggested by this couplet from a Pilgrim verse written around 1633:
“We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon,
If it were not for pumpkins
we should be undoon.”
(*undoon in this poem was an old English
expression for ‘undone’. “to be undone” means “to be without hope for the
future”)
Answer Keys
1. Pie
2. Wampanoag
3. Corn
(=maize)
Care for some idioms using the word “PUMPKIN”?
pumpkin head: a dim-witted
or unintelligent person; a dolt; a dumb
some pumpkins: someone
or something that is particularly great, special, wonderful, etc.
to turn into a pumpkin: to
have to return home or go to bed due to the late hour of the night. (Usually
used as a present participle, the phrase is a reference to the story of
Cinderella, whose magic carriage turned into a pumpkin at midnight.)
Time to practice!
1.
Oh, gosh! It’s already midnight? I'm _________________
into a pumpkin if I don’t head home right now!
2.
Did you see Hans’s new laptop? It’s ____________ pumpkins, huh?
3.
Why did I ever hire that pumpkin _____________?
He can't do anything right around here.
Answer Keys
1. turning
2. some
3. head
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