-
The Great
Pumpkin
伟大的南瓜
Linus of Peanuts fame keeps a lookout
for The Great
One1)...
And
Cinderella?s fairy godmother zaps one into a magic
coach2)...
在这些可爱的童话中，南瓜都充当着一个不可或缺的精
彩角色，那么现在就来看看，南瓜在现实中的伟大意义
吧――
You probably
think of pumpkins as the scary squashes3) of
Halloween or the main ingredient4) in
Thanksgiving pies. But
pumpkins are
more than just symbols of autumn holidays. They
are thousands of years old and the
stars of folklore, fairy tales,
and
famous feasts. Here?s the whole scoop, so you
won?t be a
bumpkin5) about pumpkins!
No
one knows exactly how old pumpkins are, but we do
know that prehistoric peoples gobbled6)
them up.
Archeologists have dug up
ancient pumpkin seeds in Native
American cliff7) dwellings8) in
Colorado and in Peruvian ruins.
In
fact, pumpkins were probably one of the first
foods to be
cultivated by natives of
North and South America. For centuries,
pumpkins and other squashes were one of
the three main
foods in their diets,
along with maize and beans. The three
foods are known as the Native American
Triad9).The traditional
Native American
way to cook a pumpkin was to plop a whole
one into the ashes of a fire, bake it
until it was tender10),
scoop11) out
the soft flesh12), and dribble13) it with maple
syrup14).
Europeans got their first
taste of pumpkins soon after
arriving
in the New World in the early seventeenth century.
The
colonists called this newfangled
food“pumpion”or“pompion.”The plentiful
pumpkin kept the
hungry settlers from
starving, and they soon learned many
ways to cook it. The colonists feasted
on pumpkin beer,
pumpkin stew, and
mashed15) pumpkin. They even ate the
pumpkin flowers. In fact, the colonists
ate so much of this
squash, they sang
this little tune: “We
have pumpkin at
morning and pumpkin at noon. If it were
not for pumpkin, we
should be undoon.”
Sometime in the late seventeenth
century, the colonists
began a
Thanksgiving tradition by combining16) cooked
pumpkin with milk, eggs, and
molasses17) to make pies. In
1705,
Connecticut colonists in Colchester actually
postponed
Thanksgiving until they could
get their hands on enough
molasses to
whip up a batch of pies.
Pumpkin pie became so
popular that it was included in the
first cookbook published by an
American. Amelia Simmons
printed the
recipe in her book, American Cookery, in 1796. Her
pie included one quart of pumpkin,
three pints of cream, nine
beaten eggs,
and lots of sugar and spices.
The pumpkin was
not just a life-saving food for the
colonists. It had lots of other uses.
Pumpkinseeds were steeped
in hot water
to brew a dark tea. This powerful potion was used
as a medicine to treat tapeworm18) and
other diseases.
According to an eighteenth-
century book on the history of
Connecticut, dried pumpkin shells gave
the colonists a head
start on haircuts.
A pumpkin shell was placed on top of a
colonist?s shaggy noggin and used as a
cutting guide. People
with these
hairstyles were called
“pumpkin
-
heads.”In the
nineteenth century, “some punkins19)”
meant “really special”
in slang.
Most people think of
pumpkins as vegetables, but
they are
actually fruits. Pumpkins belong to the gourd
family
and are close cousins of melons
and cucumbers.
Pumpkins come in hundreds of varieties
to suit different
needs and growing
conditions.
“
Baby
Boos
”
are ghostly
white.
“Jack Be Little,” “Baby Bear,”
and “Spookie” are small enough to
fit
in the palm of your hand. An “Atlantic Giant” can
tip the
scales at more than one
thousand pounds and needs a crane to
hoist it out of the pumpkin patch.
These huge pumpkins don?t
look anything
like the smooth round fruits that you see at the
market. They are lumpy, misshapen,
covered with warts, and
have rinds that
are a foot thick.
More than sixty thousand
acres of pumpkins are harvested
every
year in the United States. Some communities grow
so
many pumpkins that they hold
festivals in their honor. One
Delaware
town hosts the World Championship Punkin Chunkin
Contest every autumn. The object of the
contest is to see who
can hurl20) a
pumpkin the farthest. Contestants build
contraptions such as catapults,
slingshots, and cannons to
launch
pumpkins over a half mile.
Scientists are coming up
with even more uses for the
pumpkin.
One scientist is breeding a pumpkin that has
hundreds of peanut-sized seeds inside.
When heated, these
seeds puff up like
popcorn21).
One way or another, the pumpkin has
been indispensable