U.S. Campus Life Autumn comforts By Masako Yamada	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
秋のいやし ハロウィーンと言えば、カボチャのお化け。雅子さんのアパートの窓ぎわにもカボチャが飾られました。しかし、そのまま腐らせてしまうのはもったいないので、腐る前に食べることになりました。カボチャを調理するのは初めてだった雅子さんでしたが、ルームメートとカボチャのパイを作り上げました。さてお味は？

One day, one of my roommates came home with a very large pumpkin. She told me that it was a tradition in her family for all of the children to select their own pumpkin for Halloween. She displayed the pumpkin on the windowsill for a couple of weeks before we decided that it would probably be a good idea for us to cut it up and cook it. Otherwise, there was a good chance that the pumpkin would start to rot before we could eat it.

She asked me whether I could help her cook the pumpkin. We have been roommates for a couple of years, and she knew that I liked to cook. In reality, I had never cooked a pumpkin before, but I wanted to help her, so I said "Yes." My roommate procured a recipe for fresh pumpkin pie, and we spend an entire weekday evening cutting up the pumpkin, turning it into puree and mixing the puree to turn it into pumpkin pie.

The pumpkin was the sort of pumpkin one typically turns into a jack-o'-lantern. It wasn't really a pumpkin designed for cooking and eating in a typical home. The skin was extremely thick, and it took a good amount of sawing and hacking with different implements before we could cut through the skin and turn the flesh into manageable chunks. We decided to cook the pumpkin in the microwave oven so we wouldn't have to deal with soggy pieces of squash. Since the pumpkin was so large and we couldn't fit all the pieces in the microwave at the same time, we had to cook it in many batches.

I had read before that the best pumpkins for eating are in fact smaller, uglier pumpkins that are not well-suited for displaying as a part of holiday scenery. Therefore, I was afraid that our large, picturesque pumpkin would not be very tasty. I didn't reveal my fears to my roommate, since I didn't want to insult her pumpkin-selecting instinct, nor did I want to deflate her enthusiasm.

It turned out that the pumpkin in our apartment was not only handsome, but was also quite tasty. After we spent a couple of hours cutting and cooking the pumpkin, we managed to make a pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie is a classic autumnal "comfort food" that is rich with eggs and cream and spicy with cinnamon and ginger. We also took the seeds in the pumpkin and roasted them. All four women in the apartment got together to enjoy the fruits of our labor. I think we all agreed that the pumpkin pie was among the best we had ever tasted. The pumpkin seeds were a toasty brown, and were deliciously rich and salty. The following day, I discovered that most of the leftovers were gone. The pumpkin seeds disappeared within 24 hours, as well.

We had a lot of cooked pumpkin remaining, so we packed the puree into Tupperware and we froze the leftovers. We knew that we could find many uses for that leftover pumpkin. Today, I took some of that leftover pulp and turned it into pumpkin biscuits. We have also discussed making pumpkin bread and pumpkin soup. There's something very comforting about the idea of having cooked pumpkin in the freezer. Pumpkin is definitely a centerpiece in most New England autumn scenes.

In a way, it's a luxury, or even a waste, to spend an entire evening chopping and cooking a stubborn, hard pumpkin when one can just grab a can of stewed pumpkin in the supermarket to make baked pumpkin goods. I knew that my roommate had to study for a major exam and her time probably would have been better spent solving problem sets rather than trying to cut through an armor-like pumpkin shell.

However, the fact is that in times as unsure as these, one often wants to spend a few hours doing solid tasks like chopping pumpkin. And sometimes, one wants to know that the pumpkin in one's cupboard is made by one's own hands. This is especially true when the results are so much better than when one relents and uses commercial products. In the end, what has satisfied me the most is the superior taste of the pumpkin puree. I have never even liked pumpkin goods before; now, I can't help thinking of new ways to use the pumpkin puree in our freezer.

Shukan ST: Nov. 9, 2001

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