Friday, October 27, 2017

It's National Pumpkin Day, Charlie Brown!




October 26th is National Pumpkin Day! You may have even celebrated without purposely doing so; it is hard to escape this gourd in October. Maybe a candle, lotion, candy corn, Jack-O-Lantern, or latte? I don't have class on Thursdays, so I enjoy extra time at home and sat out in the sun and leaves for a little me time, followed by Mom and Dad gone to the construction site (aka our new house--it is a house now, not just dirt!), I had dinner with me and watched the movie, too.
I didn't eat pumpkin this meal (but I did with breakfast!), but I roasted a butternut squash, and they're cousins. On that note, I learned all kinds of things about pumpkins over the past few weeks as I prepared for my informative speech in one of my classes! We were told that a good topic should be relevant to our audience, the time of year, society, etc., important to us, and interesting in general, so considering it is October and I am a young person, what more relevant that pumpkins!?
 My favorite kind of school work is the kind that is applicable to real life, so I thought it would be interesting to share with others, too! I hope you learn something new about this plant today!
This time of year there is one fruit that is especially popular. It shows up everywhere from ice cream shops to nursing homes, it’s eaten, displayed, and even played with. Who has any guesses what this fruit is? ……  Yes! Pumpkin is a fruit!
                I may not have a pumpkin patch in my back yard, but I was the star in my first grade class play as “the littlest pumpkin,” and now I have done my research to really know more.

                So now I will tell you about the history, uses, and popularity of pumpkins.
HISTORY:
                Like we just learned a minute ago, pumpkins are technically fruits, not vegetables. They are part of the gourd family along with cucumbers and squash. The name pumpkin comes from the Greek word “pepon” which means “large melon.” They are native to Central America and Mexico, but are now grown on 6 continents. Over 90% of the processed pumpkins in America come from Illinois, according to the University of Illinois’s website.
                Native Americans were the first people in our country to make use of pumpkins by weaving them into mats and slicing strips to roast over a fire to eat.
                Colonists created the first pumpkin pies, though quite different from what we bake today. They sliced the top off, took the seeds out, and filled it with milk, honey, and spices, then baked it in hot ashes.
                Today’s Jack-O-Lanterns also have an interesting evolution from long ago in an old Irish myth. A man named Stingy Jack was drinking and made a wager with the devil over who would pay for it. Because the devil vowed not to take his soul, but God wouldn’t let him in heaven either, Stingy Jack was left with only a light to guide him as he wandered the earth ever since, referred to as “Jack of the Lantern” which was shortened to today’s Jack-O-Lantern. Traditionally, these were carved from turnips or potatoes to scare away evil spirits, but when Irish immigrants came to America, they realized pumpkin are the perfect plant to use.

                America gets pumpkin fever when fall rolls around, but America can’t take the credit for this plant.
 
USES:
                Now that we know how pumpkins got here, let’s talk about what they are used for.
                Not only are they tasty and trendy, they’re healthy, too!
                Pumpkins contain more potassium than bananas, which helps balance electrolytes.
                Vitamin C and zinc help your immune system.
                The fiber in pumpkins helps keep you full and your heart healthy, and the large dose of vitamin A enhances your vision.
                If you have some pumpkin with your turkey on Thanksgiving, all that tryptophan may put you right to sleep!
                Pumpkins get their orange color from beta-carotene, that, along with other antioxidants, help fight certain diseases and cancers.
                You can even eat the seeds, which provide magnesium and copper, and their protein and healthy fats combined with the carbs in raw pumpkin basically make it a complete meal by itself.
                Over 40 varieties exist, but Autumn Gold is usually considered the best for being the stereotypical orange gourd. Other types and their best uses are usually labeled at the store.
                Beyond the plain pumpkin, they are displayed for looks and used as the model for all kinds of home décor. I mean, have you ever walked in Hobby Lobby?
                Carving Jack-O-Lanterns is one of the seasonal traditions, and more recently, simply painting them is, too.
                Even bath and body brands utilize pumpkin in seasonal air fresheners, candles, and lotions.
                One of the first things people think of now with pumpkin season is the plethora of food. There’s pumpkin doughnuts, muffins, pancakes, oatmeal, cereal, milk, and coffee for breakfast; yogurt, cream cheese, bread, and peanut butter for lunch; salsa, chips, popcorn, crackers, granola bars for snacks; soups and casseroles for dinner; all the way to cake, ice cream, cookies, cheesecake, and milkshakes for dessert. Shoot, you can even get pumpkin flavored chewing gum, cough drops, and beer. Basically, if you want pumpkin, you can find it in any food form this time of year.
                People today also use pumpkins for a source of entertainment, as there are pumpkin patches, festivals, and competitions across the country.
                So if you ever thought that pumpkin was simply a plant, now you see there is almost nothing a pumpkin cannot do.
POPULARITY:
                Now the simple pumpkin has basically gained the popularity of a celebrity. It is an icon of the fall season. But it has not always been that way. The popularity of the pumpkin as we know it today rose thanks to social media.
                The famous drink, the pumpkin spice latte, has been promoted so heavily by Starbucks, that it has been personified on Twitter and Instagram with the handle @TheRealPSL with over 114 and 37 thousand followers, respectively.
                And as of the middle of this month, #PumpkinSpice has well over 1 million posts. Caramel apples have less than ¾ of that.
                According to BusinessInsider.com, pumpkin spice foods and drinks provide over $500 million in annual sales.
                The grocery store Trader Joe’s takes one of the leading roles in producing and selling pumpkin products, many that people will go especially to that store to get, myself am guilty.
                Outside of eating and drinking them, growing and celebrating them is even a huge activity now, culminating at many fall festivals around the country. Can you imagine growing a pumpkin that weighed 1810 pounds? History.com announced that is the weight of the heaviest pumpkin on record right now, grown by a man in Minnesota.
                But the largest pie beats even that. Recorded by the World Record Academy, it was 3699 pounds!
                This visual from Google Trends can help you see how much we glamorize this gourd during the few fall months. You can see the sharp peak the week of Halloween, then a sharp decline afterwards with a smaller peak the week of Thanksgiving.
                The top related searches are squash, pumpkin patch, recipes, pie, and Jack-O-Lantern, but to my surprise, the famous PSL was #17.
                Interest by region shows that the pumpkin craze is highly westernized, as America, Australia, and Canada are in the 100th, 99th, and 87th percentile.
                So if you feel like pumpkins are everywhere you go right now…they are.
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Now we know more about the pumpkin beyond that it is a trendy fall food; we know where it came from, what it is used for, and how popular it is.
                Sorry to break it to you, but you can’t get your daily servings of fruit from your morning latte, but you can from a can.

Strava