Surreal thought for Halloween

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02:10 1st November 2007

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			Surreal thought for Halloween - helen-louise

baratron


	Surreal thought for Halloween
	I was cycling along the road today observing many carved pumpkins in house windows, and it struck me - the pumpkin isn't native to the UK, is it? Of course, they now grow them here, but we don't eat them, they're just for carving! Really, we should use a native squash. That would be the marrow. For North Americans, this fruit is popular in Wallace and Gromit, and you get it if you leave your courgettes or zucchini for too long. So instead of having round, orange, American import jack-o-lanterns, we should have long, fat, green & yellow ones! I now want someone to carve me a marrow jack-o-lantern so I can enjoy it :) This surreality may have been inspired by: http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/marrow/ - video, with silly, repetitive song like many Weebl toons. Tags: h-l is weird

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	Comments

From: hattifattener	Date: 1st November 2007 02:51 (UTC)		(Link)

I thought the original jack-o-lantern fruit was a turnip.

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	From: xiphias	Date: 1st November 2007 03:16 (UTC)		(Link)

According to a Welsh person on my friends list, when she was a girl, they carved swedes, which, in the United States, are called rutabegas. Some people call them "yellow turnips", but, while they're related, they are not that much like real turnips, such as the purple-top. The swede/rutabega is sweeter, has slightly less bite -- and is the size of a softball at the SMALLEST. A largeish rutabega is the size of a smallish pumpkin.

Given that they're SOLID, they're also a bitch and a half to carve, which is, I suspect, why everybody switched over to a squash as soon as they encountered one which was carveable.

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	From: nmg	Date: 1st November 2007 10:17 (UTC)		(Link)

While the English call them swedes, the Scots and the Irish call them turnips (that is, the large yellow-fleshed root vegetables), and it is from them that we get the custom.

I carved our turnip lantern from a medium-sized specimen (about 15cm across) last night. Took me about fifteen minutes to hollow it out (or rather, whittle it out) with an apple corer and a spoon and cut features with a kitchen knife. Pumpkin carving is for wusses.

Also, turnip's much nicer to eat than pumpkin

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	From: nmg	Date: 1st November 2007 10:21 (UTC)		(Link)

One from a couple of years ago:

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	From: baratron	Date: 5th November 2007 14:59 (UTC)		(Link)

Wow, yeah - turnips or swedes are like all root vegetables and only really go soft once cooked. The question has to be, though, why pumpkins? Who decided that orange went well with Halloween?

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	From: clawfoot	Date: 1st November 2007 03:01 (UTC)		(Link)

My parents came to Canada in 1967, and when my mother first saw a pumpkin patch, she very nearly drove off the road. She was thrilled to find them in grocery stores in October. Up until then, she thought they were fictional! She'd never seen a real one before, and thought they had been invented for Disney's Cinderella (1950).

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	From: aardvarkoffnord	Date: 1st November 2007 07:30 (UTC)		(Link)

This is the first year I *haven't* carved a marrow. Did a watermelon instead. I like my Jack-o-Lanterns green.

I have a piccie somewhere of one I did a few years back. Will try and find it for you tonight. In the meantime, check my LJ for a piccie of a melon one.

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	From: baratron	Date: 5th November 2007 14:57 (UTC)		(Link)

That is, quite possibly, the coolest jack-o-lantern EVER!

Hope you find the marrow pictures :D

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	From: aardvarkoffnord	Date: 5th November 2007 18:01 (UTC)		(Link)

I must admit that I was inspired by a web-comic to do a water melon for a change, but it came out rather well.

Tempted to turn it into an LJ icon.

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	From: bfo	Date: 1st November 2007 08:32 (UTC)		(Link)

we used to carve turnips in Scotland, I feel so sorry for my poor dad having to carve then it wasn't an easy job.

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	From: baratron	Date: 5th November 2007 15:06 (UTC)		(Link)

Yeah - when I was looking, I found this BBC news site about a Scottish Halloween festival that had banned pumpkins... somehow I failed to understand that "turnip lanterns" meant carved turnips! Doh.

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	From: ruth_lawrence	Date: 3rd November 2007 00:05 (UTC)		(Link)

I'm afraid I would carve along marrow into something Ruuude.

:::hangs head:::

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