I always eat my jack o' lantern. Jack pumpkin is cheap per-pound, but grainy and bland compared to food-meant squash, so the uninitiated are often counselled to eat one of those instead and throw Smilin' Jack on the compost.
But ingratitude to that degree my Scottish soul hard abides. Indeed, I've been known to buy several of these giant gourds and carve just one, keeping the others in a cool dark dry place for the months beyond.
The trick to making meat of this vegetable is knowing how to draw out its qualities, and/or to use it in robust dishes where its colour, texture, and restrained sweetness add value.
Which is why I appealed to India for help.
The following simple and quick recipe coalesced in my kitchen about 25 years ago. It's a hearty and healthy Punjabi approach, vegan in its native form, with a widely available North American masala, and I look forward to it all year. (Note that I forgot to scatter the peanuts on this one before I took the photos.)
Curried jack can be served alone as a side dish or over rava, rice, or diced potatoes for a main course. Don't skimp on the spices; too much is enough. Also, I'm fairly spicy for a white guy, so if you aren't, go easy on the jalapeño, black pepper, and ginger.
Finally, like all highly-flavoured dishes, this one is markedly better the next day or later. I seldom get my act together effectively enough to make tomorrow's supper today, but if you're having guests or carrying to a potluck, this is the master stroke. Any road, the unlikely leftovers will be incandescent at next day's lunch.
CURRIED JACK
Serves 2-4 as a main dish, up to 8 as a side.
Ingredients in order:
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper
1 teaspoon powdered turmeric
1 teaspoon whole brown mustard seed, or substitute yellow
1 tablespoon neutral vegetable oil or ghee
1 clove garlic, minced or pressed
1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped onion
10 jarred jalapeño rings, or 5-7 fresh, chopped small
1 1/2 teaspoon grated fresh gingerroot
3 pints peeled and roughly diced pumpkin
1 16-ounce can of diced tomatoes
1 large bay leaf
1/2 teaspoon ground thyme
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 cup sliced celery, chopped cabbage, or frozen peas
1/2 cup peanuts (or substitute cooked pulses or meat at the appropriate time)
Rava, rice, or diced potatoes for bedding.
Take a large saucepan or skillet with tight-fitting lid and chafe it over low heat until evenly warmed.
Add the ground cumin, fresh-ground black pepper, powdered turmeric, and whole mustard seed. Move gently with the edge of a spatula until spices are lightly toasted and fragrant, about a minute.
Add the vegetable oil or ghee and stir in the spices to blend.
Add the minced garlic, chopped onion, and grated gingerroot and stir them into the masala mixture.
When the garlic and onion have softened and become translucent, add the diced pumpkin and turn carefully and well to fully distribute the spice mixture.
Turn the heat up to medium and add the canned tomatoes, ground thyme, and lemon juice, turning again to integrate. Don't worry that the tomatoes don't seem to moisten things much; the next step will take care of that.
Add the bay leaf and seal the whole under the lid, 5 to 10 minutes. Shake often to heat evenly and prevent scorching.
When the pumpkin has raised steam, add the green vegetable, lower the heat to medium-low and turn the lot well.
Fit the lid again and allow to simmer until the pumpkin is completely tender and translucent, about 20 minutes, turning from time to time.
Scatter the peanuts over the top and serve over rava, rice, or diced potatoes, if a main course.
(The 2026 Venus flytrap season is wandering to an end. It's been a rousing year: at last count mine has got 15 open and functional traps, about twice as many as this time last year. I can think of a few reasons, mostly the plant finally finding a rhythm here after a few years of settling in. We're also enjoying an unusually sunny and dry autumn this year; the region looks more like Central Canada than the North Pacific Coast.
Venus flytraps [Dioneae muscipula] are native to the Carolinas, where winter isn't trivial, and usually by this time of year mine lets me know it's ready for its winter torpor – the not-quite-hibernation it falls into during the darkest months. Then I put it in a cold room with mostly indirect sunlight, and it stops growing – without however dying back – till spring. And in fact the recent traps are only half the size of the ones it set last summer, a sure sign of impending sleep. But those smaller traps have also matured and opened for business, which is a contradictory indication.
So I'll wait a few more days before putting it to bed.)
(Courtesy of Ginkgo biloba.)
(D. coccinea.)
(Feral apples are almost always the best-tasting, and you can't beat the price. With all the former farmland around here, the scrumping this time of year is great.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
(Here's another bullfrog [Rana (Lithobates) catesbeiana], rather better lit and differentiated from her background. She's a whole handful, likely weighing about a pound; I found her sitting zazen in the middle of a local bike path on a cool autumn day.
Literally just sitting, untroubled by bikes, dogs, or walkers, as one seldom finds her kind.
Frogs play an outsized role in Zen, but I'll temper my monastic impulses and guess that my sister's equanimous demeanour was down more likely to being zombied out on incipient hibernation, and heading to a winter bed in the muddy lake some yards away.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
(Malus fusca. Native to the North Coast, in my home county it's a common understory tree, flourishing on the margins and in clearings of mature forests.
Though M. fusca's apples are only bean-sized, given the number available, they're a staple of local indigenous cuisines. Like all crabapples they're barely palatable raw, but a brilliant upgrade to other fruits, contributing depth, tartness, pectin, and rosy perfume to evergreen huckleberries, apple pie and cider, rose hips, blackberries and a great many others.
The wood is dense and hard, verging on flinty, and so good for such things as tool handles, stakes, digging sticks, and hard-duty walking sticks.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
to passing autumn
the pampas grass waves
goodbye, goodbye
Shirao
(I don't know what species this is, as I tend to ignore LBMs [little brown mushrooms], because they're hard to identify and not edible. But whatever they are, they were blanketing the ground under some pines.
(Typical on the North Coast this time of year, where you can often fill a 5 gallon bucket with large boletes in a matter of minutes. Suspect these are Suillus clintonianus
, the larch suillus.)
(Back in July I uploaded a photo of an uncanny field of green growing teasel [Dipsacus fullonum]
, encountered unexpectedly in rural country. Here's a shot of the way we usually see it: sparse, dead, and dry.)
Appearing also on
My Corner of the World.
