Pumpkin Prep

 

Three or four hours later, I’d managed to cut the whole pumpkin, and roast about half of it. As my energy waned, I chucked the other half in cubes into the freezer to deal with later. That which I’d roasted, I pureed, and drained half of it through a muslin jelly bag overnight. The other half is draining now.

This morning I extracted the seeds from the spongey pulp, boiled them briefly, dried them, coated them in walnut oil and some pepper, and am now roasting them. (Thank you, Google…) I hope they are good enough for me to add to the granola I make for breakfast.

There were moments when I questioned my sanity for spending so much effort in treating a pumpkin to eat and store. I can buy pumpkin in cans, seeds in bags.

While working, I’ve been thinking about Thanksgiving. I’ve been feeling grateful for the indigenous peoples in America who not only shared what they had with those hungry first settlers, but who also modelled a way to live, which we’ve largely rejected, that respected creation. Although they inhabited a vast land teeming with life and richly resourced, they lived gratefully, only gathering or killing what they needed. It is shameful that the western world has developed a culture of wasteful profligacy, where we use and squander, nibble and discard, wasting many of the gifts God gives us.

God has given us stewardship of the world. We have let him down badly.

So, the tedious nature of cutting and cleaning, roasting and pureeing and drying, and then cleaning and roasting the seeds, drew my thoughts to how I can be more respectful of the world I inhabit. There was a richness almost spiritual in the manual labour of dealing with That Pumpkin.

I sense there might be some divine delight in this most basic discovery.