Can You Live on Pumpkin?

[digitS']

Well, I was curious if pumpkins are better nutritionally than summer squash. You see, DW likes zucchini and really, I don't. But, growing either has been pretty easy for me altho I've never grown a pumpkin, especially for eating. Still, I've found a couple of uses for the Jack o'Lanterns that didn't go out to scare trick or treaters. Last week, I made another couple of loaves of pumpkin bread using a C. maxima winter squash. Now, I'm a big fan of squash like this but the pumpkins that I was using earlier made a better dessert bread.

Pumpkin muffins, cookies, pancakes, yeast breads even pumpkin soup - it's all good. And, have you ever eaten the fresh, tender tendrils and flowers? They taste like pumpkin! I once grew a squash especially for its "naked" seeds. I wasn't happy with it. What I need to do is learn a good way to crack the seeds from any Cucurbit and take it from there.

You know, as a snack look how pumpkin seeds compare with beef jerky. Hmmm?

Steve
who, in an ideal world, would build his home from giant cucurbita

 

[Carol Dee]

Beef jerky hands down! LOL ( A batch in the dehydrator as I type)

 

[digitS']

Complete protein

... and yet, I hardly know pumpkin seeds.

Should have @Pulsegleaner review them as a snack .

Steve

 

[Smart Red]

Go figure! A pumpkin eater that lives in a pumpkin shell. Who would have ever thought of something like that?

Wait! That idea may already have been copy-writed. Hey, Peter. . . Peter! Can you hear me?

@digitS', being a carnivore in good standing, I say the jerky -- beef jerky, hamburger jerky, deer jerky, salmon jerky, etc -- takes first place. However, pumpkin seeds make a good snack while the jerky is drying.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Complete protein

... and yet, I hardly know pumpkin seeds.

Should have @Pulsegleaner review them as a snack .

Steve

Don't actually like pumpkin seeds much. I've also tried other cucurbit seeds commonly snacked upon, such as watermelon and winter melon. The actually kernels of those are a bit tastier to me than pumpkin, but are a lot harder to shell. Watermelon seeds require very good teeth to pop open and winter melon are so soft they tend to shatter so you end up swallowing the shell with the kernel. Maybe the problem there is I was making those myself and the industry standard winter melon is Canton Giant, whose seeds (unlike most other winter melons) is unridged and seamless.

A part of me is interesting in trying the Nara melons offered in the Baker creek explorer series, since those are supposed to be delicious of seed (they are conventionally called butterpips and can actually be used as an almond substitute.) though based on the pictures they would have the same shelling problems as the winter melon (the seeds look so similar to canton giant I'm actually wondering if the latter isn't really a Benicasa).

I like jerky a lot, though I now try and avoid some of my favorties (like Divine Bovine Teriyaki) because my fondness is not compatible with how expensive they are.

Actually there's a place near me that has trout jerky which sounds vaguely intriguing, but I probably won't go for it, since I haven't had good luck with fish jerkies.

 

[digitS']

Acanthosicyos horridus?!!?

Oh, I don't think I want anything like that in my garden, @Pulsegleaner ! I had to pin the snake gourd down with a forked stick before harvest, that I had in there once!

Yeah, that soft shell was what I thought when I tried the naked seeded squash. "I'm swallowing this?" Kof!

Steve

 

[Pulsegleaner]

How edible snake gourd seeds are depends a lot on which one your are talking about. I think actual Tricosanthes seeds are poisonous (I KNOW Mormordica are, so NEVER try and eat bitter melon or Gac seeds) Don't know about bottle gourds or cuccuzzi.

Another to keep an eye out for would be Oyster Nut, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telfairia_pedata.Do know of any sources yet, but there is always the chance Joe will bump into it one trip and decide to try and introduce it (one warning though, according to my books, oyster nut is supposed to require a special method to get the shell open without embedding it irrevocably in the kernel.

 

[thistlebloom]

If it's the nutrition you're after in the cucurbit seeds you could just pulverize them to smithereens in a nutribullet and drink them.

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

Now I couldn't live on pumpkin/squash completely. But through in some other stuff every once in a while, then I sure could (Can't go without beans!). I mostly just bake them in the oven/in campfire and eat them that way. I do occasionally eat the flowers but haven't tried young vines yet, would expect them to be a little on the hairy side.

Pulsegleaner - I just bought one of every variety of winter melon from Kitazawa except for the giant variety (not sure if it was Canton), so will have to remember to try the seeds. I'm also planning on using the meat for eating, as well as the layer of "wax" for experimenting with candle-making.

I would try Baker Creek's Nara melon but -
Would expect them not to produce/ripen fruits before frost hits,
And I'm thinking that they might react negatively to the relatively high moisture levels here, considering in much of there home range there main source of water is a light fog/mist. (I'm thinking Skeleton Coast-like conditions.)

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Probably was, it IS the standard as far as I can see.

You may have to get creative eating them assuming any grow (most are tropical so your season may work against you) Winter Melon tastes sort of like the white part of a watermelon. It nutritious, and cooling but not exactly the most flavorsome melon on the block. You can make winter melon soup of course, but one melon (even the smaller ones) makes a LOT of soup, like "invite pretty much everyone you know to a party" amounts (there's a reason why it is usually sold by the slice). And the vines get HUGE so you need good support (in China a lot of places throw the vines over their roofs to provide support.)