Five things you can do with fall’s favorite fruit

Five things you can do with fall’s favorite fruit

Lesson summary

Well hello there again, I’m Jeff; JR is the producer; and you are ready for another exciting Plain English lesson, this time number 308. And that means the full lesson is available at PlainEnglish.com/308.

It’s November 2 and that means we are in prime pumpkin season in North America. The bright orange squash is everywhere in October and November, so I thought we could spend some time talking about what we do with pumpkins here in the US. I got on quite a roll when I was writing this lesson and it turned into two lessons in a row. So today we’ll talk about two things you can do with pumpkins and on Thursday, we’ll finish up with three more things.

Picking and carving pumpkins

I’ll share five things you can do with pumpkins on today’s lesson and Thursday’s lesson. You can pick pumpkins; you can carve pumpkins; you can eat pumpkins; you can even drink them. There is one more thing that I’ll keep as a surprise for the end of tomorrow’s lesson.

So let’s start off with the first thing you can do with a pumpkin, and that is you can pick it. You can pick your own pumpkin. It’s a fun fall activity. If you have kids, it’s fun to go to a pumpkin patch. A pumpkin patch is a garden where the pumpkins are growing on the ground. And it’s popular to take kids to a pumpkin patch to pick their own Halloween pumpkins.

A pumpkin grows on a vine. At the beginning of the growing season, the farmer will plant the seeds in a mound of soil and a vine will start growing along the ground. And there will be pumpkins that start growing off the vine. A pumpkin patch is several vines growing in a garden. You can go, select your very own pumpkin, cut it off the vine, weigh it, and pay by the pound. So that’s number one—it’s like a nice activity. Most of us get our pumpkins at the grocery store, but you can also go pick your own Halloween pumpkin.

How big is a Halloween pumpkin? They come in a variety of sizes. There are small ones that go on tabletops as decorations. Those might be twice the size of your fist, say. You don’t carve those, but you pick them up for a dollar or two at the store and leave them around your house.

The traditional pumpkin size is about a foot tall and might weigh 25 pounds. But of course you can buy really big ones, too. Some can be over 100 pounds.

You get the pumpkin home and that brings us to number two: you can carve it. You’ve seen the jack-o-lantern pumpkins, which are carved and lit up from the inside. This is a very, very common thing to do here in the weeks leading up to Halloween—so, mid-October. First, you carve a circle on the top of the pumpkin with the stem in the center and remove the lid. Set this aside, but don’t throw it away—we’re going to want to save the lid for later.

Next, you’ll look straight down into the cavity and see the fruit and seeds inside. This is when you need to be strong. You reach in—I recommend doing this with short sleeves—you reach in and clear out the flesh of the pumpkin and the seeds with your hands. Fair warning: this is a slimy, disgusting texture. You’ll want a bowl nearby so you can put the guts of the pumpkin in something.

You’ll use your hands for most of this, but when you’ve gotten most of the flesh out, you’ll want to go in with a spoon and scrape all the remaining material out, so you’ve just got the husk—the thick outside part of the pumpkin left. It’ll be a strong, hollow pumpkin at that point.

Now we get to the fun part. You’ll want to take a black marker—it can be any color, just not orange—take a marker and draw a face on the front of the pumpkin. Don’t get too fancy at this stage, especially if it’s your first pumpkin because you’re going to have to carve this with a knife. So I would recommend sticking with triangles for eyes and the nose, and then a wide mouth, maybe with a few big triangle teeth.

And now from the outside, you’ll use a knife to carve the shape of the face that you’ve drawn. The triangle eyes will pop out quite easily. I should mention at this point that you’ll want a special pumpkin-carving knife. You can try this with a kitchen knife, but I don’t recommend it. You need a thick, serrated metal blade. You can buy pumpkin-carving knives on Amazon that are just perfect for this purpose.

Okay, so now you’ve got a hollow pumpkin with a face carved in the front and a removable lid. The one and only thing left is the candle. Buy a few cheap wax candles at the store. Make sure the base is wide enough so the candle can stand up on its own. You’ll put a candle inside the pumpkin and light it. You can put the lid back on top of the pumpkin—the part with the stem. Just leave it a little askew so the candle doesn’t blow out.

And voila, you have a lighted jack-o-lantern pumpkin, perfect to display in your window or on your front porch or just in your living room.

What else can you do with a pumpkin?

So those are two things you can do with a Halloween pumpkin: you can pick it yourself and you can carve it up. On Thursday, we’ll talk about three more things you can do with a pumpkin. I’ll tell you two of them. You can eat and drink pumpkin—but the final thing is going to be a surprise.

I live in America’s pumpkin heartland: the state of Illinois, my home state, is the largest producer of pumpkins in America, though most of them are for canning.