Adventures in Jarrahdale Butchery

he hath fought valiantly and well

As i mentioned in my earlier entry, Scavenging for Squash there are some huge  differences between carving pumpkins aka Jack-o-lantern varieties and eating pumpkins.   Carving pumpkins have been bred to be large in size, have hollow insides with thin, watery walls of flesh and soft skins, making them simple for the average person to hack away at into a variety of festive designs.  Eating pumpkins on the other hand, have hard rinds, and thick walls of flesh, a delicious aroma reminiscent of melon and lots of tightly packed seeds.  At the end of the fall season, both carving pumpkins and edible heirloom pumpkins, such Jarrahdales, are readily available fresh and ready to eat at suburban curbs with the rest of society's so-called trash. 

The noble jarrahdale is a difficult beast, so be sure to sharpen your knife well, and keep a steady hand while dispatching this fellow.  your patience will be rewarded and once you have at least cut him in half, the rest of it gets progressively easier.  I say  again, good knife skills are a must in this venture.  unless you don't mind the knife slipping and cutting yourself.  If you haven't skill with a blade, you will learn it while parrying with this foe

roasted jarrahdale w/ onions and cranberries

once you have cut and peeled this behemoth into bite-sized pieces, i recommend putting it in a roasting pan with oil, salt, black pepper, red pepper, turmeric, thyme and lots of garlic.  add some aromatic vegetables to the party, in this case i went with quartered onions and a few handfuls of raw cranberries to complement the natural sweetness of pumpkin.  roast this melange until the the vegetables have caramelized.  the leftovers of this dish (and there will be lots of leftovers) can be frozen used at a later day to make a fine bisque, especially with venison stock, but that, dear reader is for another entry. 

jarrahdale pie fresh from the oven

Of course only two thirds of the pumpkin was actually used to make a huge tray of a roasted vegetable dinner.  the other third was made into a dessert course.  take again, peeled chunks of jarrahdale, or any eating pumpkin and boil them until tender.  i added a few cinnamon sticks and a dash each of ginger, allspice, and nutmeg to the cooking water to infuse the pumpkin with more flavor.  Once it is fork-tender, remove the pumpkin from the water and mash it until smooth, add sugar and more spices until it tastes right.  A splash of cream and one egg added to the mixture will give you a pumpkin custard ready to be made into pie.  make a crust of your choosing, for simplicity's sake, i made a cracker crust, but pie puritans would probably make a traditional crust. Bake until a toothpick comes out clean from the center and then let cool. 

jarrahdale slice, ready for eating

Vanilla would have been a good additive to this, but i couldn't find my bottle of it.  even without vanilla this was still a pumpkin pie to be reckoned with and took very little time to make.  in little more time than it took to open a can of pumpkin i had made pumpkin pie not only from scratch, but a perfectly edible gourd which i saved from a fate in a landfill.  I think what i liked most about this variety is the bright color it keeps, even after cooking, which i think makes it look just as appetizing as it tastes. 

So if there is any moral to be found in the lines of this entry it is that there is free, fresh and good food to be found even in the trash.  i hope people will become wise enough not to discard these noble gourds, and make meals of them instead.  and if they are still not convinced, then they can give their unwanted "ornamental" pumpkins to me so that i may never go hungry.

Thank you for reading :)

Scavenging for Squash

one of my favorite things to find this time of year is discarded pumpkins.  not all the pumpkins people buy end up getting carved, many an ornamental pumpkin is purchased simply to sit there and look pretty, only to be tossed once the fall holiday season ends and the winter season begins.

Jarrahdale and a little Lumina

 through the whole month of november its very easy to find perfectly good gourds left at the curb with the rest of the yard waste (which of course is not waste, but excellent compost waiting to be!) and so every trash night i go out hunting for them. Here's what i found yesterday.

the stars of last nights garbage harvest are the two Jarrahdale pumpkins, which have the unique gray-green flesh and a superb eating pumpkin. there was also a Lumina Pumpkin (the small white one) and two normal Jack-O-Lantern varieties.   the larger orange colored pumpkin is a cultivar im unsure of.  it looks like a Boer pumpkin, but the wrong color. so perhaps its some kind of hybrid, perhaps with a Cinderella pumpkin (yes that is the actual name of the variety)

Jarrahdale, mystery cultivar, and a teeny tiny baby one

being car-free for the most part, bringing these prizes home is an extra big challenge.  Have you ever transported pumpkins on a bike?  I have, and last night i brought home 37.5 pounds of free food home.  cargo trailer not included.

it was a lot more secure than it looks

It took two trips to get everything home;  at first i just went with the initial Jarrahdale and Lumina in my backpack, dropped them off at home and continued my rounds with heavy artillery.

i strapped the mystery cultivar to my rear-rack since it was the flattest and the deep grooves allowed my bungee cords to get a good hold and keep it still.  Although i still went very carefully over bumps and even dismounted to walk the bike when going up and down hills.  Better safe than sorry,  i wasnt feeling like scraping pumpkin guts up off the sidewalk that evening.

the second jarrahdale went into my backpack and the two [uncarved] Jack-o-lanterns went in a cloth shopping bag, cleverly rigged so it wouldn't flop all over the place while biking.  the strap of the bag went over my shoulder and at the base of handle straps i fixed another bunge cord and wrapped it under my other arm and then hooked it to the other strap.  not the most comfortable way to transport heavy cargo, but it worked!  the bungee cord was tight and made my arms feel a little numb, but nothing i couldn't bear with.  also the large pumpkins in the bag kep flopping in front of my leg which made pedalling difficult but not impossible.  point is, I did it!

so "why" is probably the question forming in all of your minds, dear reader and the answer is because i hate to see anything wasted.  Pumpkins, squash, melons and pretty much all cucurbitacea are heavy feeders, and require massive amounts of water and fertilizer to grow their gargantuan fruits

my whole collection of rescued pumpkins

why should this just go in the trash when its perfectly edible?  Jack-o-lantern varieties for sure, do not taste good.  they have been selectively bred to favor a large overall size and thin skins to make them easier to carve.  the flesh of these pumpkins are watery and insipid, but by no means inedible; the seeds at any rate, are an excellent snack.  However many of the 'ornamental' pumpkins are heirloom varieties bred for eating, and have no business in the trash

one of the Jarrahdales i reclaimed weighed 9.75 pounds, and though difficult to carve, yielded a sweet and firm flesh, with a summery aroma and a light buttery taste.  and that dear reader, shall be the subject of my subsequent entries:  how to deal with carving cooking an eating a nearly 10 pound vegetable

thank you for reading :)