Learning all about the holiday pumpkin

Today, pumpkins are a sign of fall and the coming holidays, and no thanksgiving table is complete without a pumpkin pie. But pumpkins have not always been associated with Thanksgiving.

Pumpkins were a staple, year-round diet of the indigenous people in America, long before European explorers set foot on our shores. Pumpkin seeds have been found throughout Mexico, South America and the eastern United States as early as 5,500 B.C.

Easy to cultivate and with a thick shell and solid flesh, pumpkins could be dried and preserved to help Native Americans survive the long, harsh winters — roasted, boiled, parched or baked. The seeds were eaten and used as medicine. Dried pumpkins could be ground into flour or flattened and woven into mats or used as bowls and containers for grain.

Pumpkin pie did not serve as a part of early settlers’ diets. They had no butter for a crust or an oven to bake the pie in. Instead, they would remove the seeds, fill the pumpkin with cream, eggs, honey and spices and bake the whole pumpkin in the ash of a fire. Then the filling would be scooped out with the flesh of the pumpkin to produce a tasty treat similar to custard or a crustless pumpkin pie.

In colonial America, the pumpkin was considered as a “food of last resort.” When colonists couldn’t find yeast to create beer, they turned to fermenting pumpkins to quench their thirst.

As you drive around town this time of year, notice and appreciate the pumpkins folks have put out on display to Keep Wimberley Beautiful.