Rumors, as we know, in part due to the inscrutable vagaries of human nature, are wont to take on lives of their own. As they circulate, accruing gravity and credibility, they’re accepted, taken for granted, and finally accepted as truth. And so it is that, in a series of ever-widening circles, it was alleged — nay, believed, taken to heart and as gospel — that I didn’t know my way around a jack-o’-lantern. Pshaw! The bigger they are, the harder they fall pertains to rumors, too.
On Thursday, October 23rd, I flew to North Carolina to spend the weekend with two of our grandchildren, Evan (12 years old) and Maia (nine years old), in Wake Forest. On the evening of Friday, October 24th, Maia, artistically inclined and having already acquired the requisite pumpkins with her mom, drew faces on two of them. On the morning of Saturday, October 25th, we constructed a makeshift surgical theater in the back yard. An overturned cooler served as our operating table. We assembled our scalpels and scoops. And we got to work.
I skillfully performed craniotomies on the two pumpkins on which Maia had drawn faces. Then I purposefully scooped out the stuff on the inside, carefully placing it in the surgical pan we’d placed on one side of the table. Next, I handed the scalpel to Maia, who painstakingly performed the delicate procedures required to create eyes and mouths. Finally, she handed the scalpel back to me to refine the edges of the incisions to remove any traces of the Sharpie with which Maia had drawn the faces.
Waste Not, Want Not
Maia and I put the finished pumpkins on the ground and put an empty dish next to the surgical pan on the table. Going through the stuff I’d scooped out of the pumpkins, we separated the seeds from the pumpkin boogers, which Maia informed me is the clinical term for the goop in which the seeds are stuck. At the conclusion of that procedure, we discarded the pumpkin boogers, and brought the newly carved pumpkins and the seeds into the house.
We rinsed the seeds in a colander to remove the residual slime from the pumpkin boogers. Then we spread the clean seeds out on paper towels to dry. Maia, in fact, took the time to separate each seed from every other seed with the concentration of a scientist and the patience of a saint. We left the seeds to dry for a couple of hours to ensure they’d be extra crispy when they were cooked.
Once the seeds were suitably dried, we put them in a bowl, added olive oil and salt, stirred them, spread them on parchment paper on a cookie sheet, and put them in the oven at 350 degrees, flipping them with a spatula every five to ten minutes to ensure even baking. After 30 minutes, with Maia’s assurance that they were adequately golden brown, we set them out to cool. Once cooled, we sampled a few, and Maia put the rest in a Tupperware container.
When we were finished, I said to Maia, “That thud you just heard was an ugly rumor biting the dust.”
“What rumor, Grandpa?” she asked.
“Never mind, Beautiful,” I said. “Some things are better left discarded with the pumpkin boogers.”
Originally Published on https://www.bizcatalyst360.com/category/lifecolumns/notes-to-self/
