Happy Halloween!
It's been a long time since I carved a pumpkin, so I was happy to see one for sale at a "michi-no-eki" roadside farmer's market in the middle of September. Large pumpkins are difficult to find in Japan at a reasonable price, so I felt lucky.
When I was a child, my father would scoop out the inside of a pumpkin with a serving spoon, draw a face on the pumpkin freehand with a marker, and then carve it with a kitchen knife. These days, fancy pumpkin carving kits with stencils, special pumpkin scooping tools, and mini-saws are sold in America. I have found that carving a pumpkin is much easier with a kit.
Here's how I carved my pumpkin:
- First, I cut out the bottom and scooped out the insides with a special plastic tool. It's important to take the time to do this well.
2. Then I taped the stencil to the pumkin.
3. Next I traced the stencil with a black crayon. There are many holes in the stencil, so black crayon dots were drawn on the pumpkin.
4. Then I used a special tool to poke a hole on each dot.
5. After that, I used a mini-saw to cut the pattern by connecting the dots. After cutting, I gently pushed out the cut pieces from the inside of the pumpkin. Then, I wiped down the pumpkin with a soft cloth.
What a mess!
6. Finally, we put an LED light in a small jar to light up the pumpkin. Traditionally, you would use a candle, but an LED light is much safer.
When I showed the students the jack-o-lantern, they kept asking me, "Is it real?" I hope they have a chance to make their own jack-o-lantern someday.
I often get asked if people make pumpkin pie out of a jack-0-lantern. First of all, a jack-o-lantern rots after about a week, so they just get thrown away. However, making a pie out of this kind of pumpkin is challenging because of its high water content and the seeds and stringy fibers inside. Most Americans make pumpkin pie using canned pumpkin puree!
