Pumpkins -- a rant

The BBQ Pit
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How is it possible to rant against an inanimate orange piece of fruit (or vegetable or however they’re classifying pumpkins these days)? Read on, fellow Doper, and learn why the simple pumpkin deserves a dedicated rant…

Rant#1 - Pumpkin Traffic
Picture a line of SUVs. BMW X5s, Ford Expeditions, Chevy Blazers, all lined up heading east. Each SUV contains two soccer mom types. Each back seat (or open cargo area) contains at least three screaming kids. Now, picture these SUVs packed so tightly together, end to end, that you can’t possibly squeeze a single molecule of air in between them. These are the people heading toward the “U-Pick” pumpkin farms.

Picture a line of SUVs heading in the opposite direction. One soccer mom is driving (or trying to), while the other is turned 180 degrees in the passenger seat, trying to discipline the kids. The kids are beaning one another with gourds, swatting each other with cornstalks, and trying to smash pumpkins over each other’s heads. Again, there’s not an air molecule’s worth of space between each truck.

This, fellow Dopers, is what happens to my beloved home town of Wading River, New York every October. Around every Halloween, droves of soccer moms come out to rural Wading River from the suburbs and from Manhattan to spend the day picking pumpkins with their kids. And every year, the trucks are packed tighter together, because for the people heading east, God forbid another truck slips in front of them, because a line-cutting truck represents another family that will undoubtedly get there before the first truck and snag all the “good” pumpkins.

For the people heading back to the city (west), leaving two molecules’ worth of space means that someone could slip in front and cause a delay of 0.5 seconds in getting back to the city.

From what you’ve already gathered, it should be obvious that this, in conjunction with the tendency of these people to completely ignore red lights in Wading River, makes it nearly impossible to cross the street, either in a car or on foot. Need a prescription filled at the drug store across town? Better have it airlifted.

These days, I live in New York City. I would love to have a fall weekend back at my mom’s place in Wading River, but I dare not venture into the Pumpkin Traffic. It has killed men greater than I. I am convinced that my friend Dan has certainly expired by now, as I last saw him trying to make a left turn out of Lewin’s Farms in his 1980 Camaro. Poor guy.

I would rather put up with a dozen Lizzie Grubmans than have to put up with the Pumpkin Traffic every year. Lizzie may have smashed into a couple dozen club patrons with her SUV, but at least she had the courtesy to have a dad with millions of dollars in liquid assets, ripe for a monster lawsuit. A jury would never award millions of dollars to a guy that got hit by an SUV filled with innocent-looking soccer moms and their awfully cute offspring.

Damn them, damn them all to hell.

Rant #2 - Smashing Pumpkins
Picture a house. A nice-looking weathered colonial sitting on about an acre of land. Now picture the front lawn covered with pumpkin moosh. This is the home of my mom’s next door neighbor. Every year, the next-door neighbor (NDN) can be seen on her front lawn, picking up pumpkin moosh and tossing it into a 30-gallon trash bag and muttering “damn kids” under her breath repeatedly.

NDN, this is what 14-year-old kids in rural America do when they’re bored and they haven’t yet figured out where to buy drugs. Quit complaining about kids smashing your jack-o-lanterns and learn to bring the fucking things inside after dark. They’ve done this every freaking year for 25 years. An entire generation of young teens has grown up experiencing the fun that is sneaking on to your front lawn and playing bocce with your jack-o-lanterns. Why would this year be any different? Just be thankful your mailbox is still standing.

Rant #3 - Price gouging in NYC
Mr. Bodega Owner, please stop trying to sell me a small pumpkin for $28.00. I know that pumpkin has seen about half a dozen middle men between you and my home town, and everyone gets their cut, but I know how much pumpkins really cost. If I could make it past the Pumpkin Traffic, I could get an entire wheelbarrow full of pumpkins for $25. And I would get to pick out my own, meaning that I wouldn’t choose to purchase an inferior pumpkin like yours that has one side caved in (conveniently, the side facing away from me) and a colony of fruit flies hovering around it. Kindly fuck off.

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aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

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why do you keep doing that, gatopescado? i’ve seen that flash thing with the squrrels, but it wasn’t THAT memorable… have you taken that horrible, horrible phrase as your “bumper” phrase?

arrgh… the evil chipmunks with genital fixations… stop it, stop it!

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I think he’s referring to my line:

Something similar is in the Flash movie.

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oh yah…

ok, now i get it. that’s still a little obscure, though…

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Twenty eight bucks for a freakin’ pumpkin? A pumpkin? Jesus Jenny, I just composted about 30 of the damn things because I couldn’t give them away. Who knew that a $1.29 packet of seeds would result in more than 100 pumpkins? :eek:

Shit. Twenty eight bucks. That’s absolutely insane. Someone’s making more than a few bucks on their pumpkins. And what really pisses me off is that it wasn’t me. :mad:

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Screw weed, let’s deal pumpkins. You don’t have the year-round demand, but the markup is better.

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A few years ago, I took a vacation starting in early November – I drove through mainland British Columbia, then took the very over to Vancouver Island (arriving in Nanaimo). I then drove across the island to get to Long Beach (my vacation destination). Midway across the island is the town (city?) of Port Alberni. On the far (west) side of the town, someone had put Halloween pumpkins on every available tree stump, rock and any other protuberance… single pumpkins, little family groupings… brilliant orange pumpkins against the coastal rainforest dark green background. It was awesome, and went on for about two miles. It brought a major smile to my face, finally, a use for discarded pumpkins. I wonder if this is an annual occurrence… if so it is worth checking it out.

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A pumpkin is a type of gourd.

What’s the matter with you NYC types, you never heard of a supermarket? Any supermarket that wants to bring the customers in during October has at least one week of the month when the pumpkins cost 15 (waitaminute, where’s my cents key? I never needed to use the cents key before today, and now that I need it, I can’t find it! What the FUCK!!!??? Did some freakin’ computer-designin’ jerk suddenly DECIDE for me that I’m NEVER going to need a cents key, so he’d just make it the industry standard to not put them on computer keyboards? DAMMIT, that’s arrogant! Oh, well.) cents a pound. Of course, this is in California, but I wouldn’t think the produce buyers in NYC supermarkets would have a hard time finding pumpkin farmers to fill the demand. It’s not like the state of New York has no agriculture sector. I know they do. I watch The Victory Garden on PBS just about every Saturday, and Roger Swaim is ALWAYS visiting with some farmer in upstate New York on that show. In fact, it was by watching that show that I learned that a pumpkin is a gourd.

So go get your pumpkins cheap at a supermarket. Or just use a black magic marker and draw a jack-o’lantern (I’m not sure if I spelled that right, but did you know that MSWord’s spell checker doesn’t have jack-o’lantern in it? Somebody should talk to Bill Gates about that) face on a big ol’ can of Libby’s cooked, packed pumpkin. That way, after Hallowe’en, you can still use your jack-o’lantern for a pumpkin pie, later. I tried that once with a real pumpkin that I’d used as a jack-o’lantern, but it didn’t taste very good. I think it was the candle smoke just permeating the pumpkin flesh all night long. The pumpkin did smell pretty good when we had it out on the porch all night with a lit candle inside, though.

Anyway, pumpkin = gourd. Remember that, just in case.

(freakin’ keyboards with no cents signs on 'em)

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Wading River rural? It’s the cutting edge of exurbanization in Brookhaven Township! Don’t worry, with the impending development of Calverton, those Pumpkin farms will be Golf Courses and Wineries within the next decade.
And what’s so hot about pumpkins anyway? They taste terrible.

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You know, there’s not a day that goes by that I am not happy I left NYC for Providence. Thank you for giving me my reason for the day.

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Mmmmm… Pumpkin Pie

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Yuck. . . pumpkin pie.

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To make a cents sign (¢) on a Windows PC, hold down the Alt key and type 0162 on your 9-key keypad (the numbers along the top of the typewriter portion of your keyboard won’t work for this).

¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

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Well, as a general rule, you’re supposed to cook them. As with any squash-like vegetable, of course, the taste of the end product will depend on many factors, such as cooking method and seasoning. Nutmeg is always a winner, and there’s nothing wrong with baking large chunks of pumpkin with a paste of butter and brown sugar spread inside.

So Chef Troy, a.)Thanks for directing me to the location for the ¢. b.)if it is true that

how much butter do I need to add to a bechamel-based cheddar cheese sauce to make it not taste grainy?