My mother is feeling a bit of the empty nest syndrome lately, so I decided to carve a couple of pumpkins for her last night. Now that I’ve sliced up a couple of pretty good scaregourds, I’m faced with a possible problem. Halloween’s a week away, and I don’t want them to start wrinkling and sagging before next Wednesday. Bea Arthur’s a scary visage and all, but I’d like for these pumpkins to stay fresh and firm for a while.
So any suggestions to keep them from going bad before All Hallow’s Eve? Or will they go bad by then? Am I just worrying for nothing?
I was wondering if refrigeration would be a possible answer. I wasn’t sure about the freezer, though; would that cause a problem with crystallizing the water that’s still in the flesh? I was afraid that once the candles were lit, the ice would thaw and there’d be a puddle of pumpkin sauce in the bottom, and then the thing’d collapse.
No idea if that would be a problem or not. Maybe afterwards you could put it in the microwave and thaw it out. Warning: I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.
I’ve had pretty good luck with rubbing the areas of the pumpkin that have been cut with petroleum jelly and then wrapping the whole thing up in Saran Wrap. I can get a carved pumpkin to last a week that way before it shrivels.
The most important thing to do is to go back and scrape them out thoroughly. The part that wrinkles and rots is the “meat” while the orange, fibrous “skin” will last quite a while. I’m not sure of any way to guarantee survival for six whole days, but the more of the insides that are not there to begin turning to mush, the longer they will last.
From experience, I know this method works: place the carved pumpkin in a shallow pan of water, then put the pan and the pumpkin in the refrigerator (not the freezer).
Eh, does your mom live in Springfield, too? It got pretty cool in Central Illinois today, so if the cool weather holds this week, I’d say you could keep them in a dark corner of the front porch and not have any problems. Make sure they’re scraped out real good, though.
However, the downside of keeping them on the front porch is neighbor kids smashing them. Keep them under the empty recycle bin, is what I do.
FlypZ, I think tom is on the mark. Get/scrape the mooshy stuff out, and put an advance candle in to dry it out further. And definitely * save*the seeds and roast 'em salted on a tray in the oven! The best part of punkin-carving !
Man, and here I thought DDG would sick the Google beast on me! (I must say, though, her crusade is taking off-I checked a good 8 or 10 sites on it today after I posted this.)
Yep, mom’s in Springpatch too, so I think she’s just going to keep them in the garage until she wants to put 'em out. Hopefully the weather’ll stay cold (I can’t believe I just said that). Thanks for the tips, guys.
Oh, and in case it helps someone next year, there are indeed at least two products that purport to extend the life of jack o’ lanterns. But I had to search on Google to find them, so you can too.
And Happy All Hallow’s Eve to you too, el, you red-headed siren you! And to everyone else who answered.
To save your pumpkin in case of shrveling, soak your pumpkin in water for 1 to 8 hours (use bucket or bathtub). After pulling it out of water, drain it for a half hour then dry throughly.
To stop it from molding and to preserve it, rub cut areas with vaseline
If it does start molding. There is nothing really you can do. I suggest a small sacrifice to your pumpkin gods, prefereably on the neighbors front porch that starts the leaf blower at 7 AM on the weekend.
