Carving the Wrong Squash

in #funny6 years ago (edited)

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It's Halloween, so I'm making an extra post this week. I won't post much next week.

Alert readers (all 3 of you) might remember that I posted during the summer about summer squash. We call them zucchini here and the garden produces a LOT of them. Now that summer has turned to autumn in our hemisphere, my children get excited about Halloween. They get to dress up in costumes, collect some candy, and carve pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns.

So we found some nice looking orange pumpkins.

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And my kids picked out the ones they wanted.

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They started carving. In previous years, I’ve helped a lot with the carving, but now they are old enough to do most of it themselves.

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I left it to them. So I decided to use the time carving my own squash…a summer squash (a.k.a. zucchini) I’ve been saving all these months! Astute readers (all 3 of you) may recall that I posted about summer squash during the summer.

Upon seeing me carve up a zucchini, all my kids could say was, “Dad, you’re so weird. If our friends saw that, they’d think we were weird, too.”

“They’ll think you're cool,” said I.

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First, I hollowed it out. That’s simple, because these are much softer and wetter than pumpkins or winter squash.

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Next, I began making a design with no idea what it would become.

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Even the waste product from pumpkin and zucchini carving looked good enough to eat. In a good year, we’ll roast some pumpkin seeds, which are quite nutritious. Other years, we don’t bother sorting through the squash trimmings to find and separate all the seeds.

My squash ended up like this.

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I had one of those ‘ice cube’ LED lights, which fit well in the carved out space.

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Behold the finished product. I don’t know what the design is, but I’m pleased with how it ended up.

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Not sure what it is, but I like how it looks. My kids told me privately that they think it looks cool also. But they warned me not to display it outside publicly, since their friends will think it’s strange to have a carved zucchini on the doorstep. Reputations are so important these days.

So I told them if they’re not home early on Halloween night, I’ll carry this around the neighborhood and show it off. I might even put a leash on its neck, strap it to my shoulder and have it start talking like Long John Silver’s ventriloquist parrot. But more likely, my kids will plead with me to keep it at home and well out of sight. It’s still served a purpose because I had a lot of fun carving this year. At least I can entertain myself.

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Here's something you can do with them:

You get no love.

Hello Sir @donkeypong, you can cook squash with condensed milk and margarine and you can create a very delicious dessert from it. Can be made as a bread filling. :P

Oh wow @cryptopie, I will have to try that. Amanda buys squash all the time and we generally just sautee it.

Yes Sir Just boil or steam the pumpkin, grate, add condensed milk 1:1 ratio by weight, add food color if you wanted, plus it tastes better with margarine (not butter) and lime rind extract. (grate rind from the lime, mix it with a bit of sugar and a bit of water then filter the juice to be added to the pumpkin-condensed milk mixture.

Cooking: Cook in non-stick pan preferably until smooth and not runny.

Thanks, I will try that. I'll send you a picture when I do :)

Is there a name for this dish?

I'm pretty sure it's in the Dad Handbook of Proper Behaviours and Other Necessary Knowledge's to embarrass the kids as much as possible, whenever possible. At least it was in the one MY Dad got when he signed up for us. I say do it anyway, as GOOFY is about as cool as it gets. Too bad kids don't get it, until they've much taller.

I'm all in on the carving of alternative row crops too. If whoever's in charge didn't want us to carve the other veggies, they wouldn't be so...carve-able. Plus it's all the rage. And SO much fun.

Great job on the Zuke. I love your special carving knife too. Is that made just for this purpose? Gotta get me one of those.
Happy Halloween, and I'll give you a dollar if you do the Long Pirate Parrot'ing thing and put out a post about it. Gotta love it. Cheers

We live in Indonesia don't celebrate Halloween and I don't understand why Halloween is identical with pumpkin. However, I know Halloween and I know the music group that I like, especially the song Forever and One. Young people all over the world now know Halloween and celebrate it.

I hope you and your family get the most beautiful Halloween this year @donkeypong.

Well this gave me some much needed laughs!! And also an idea...my daughter would have been mortified too, but since she's no longer here and my son is a much better sport, I may get away with displaying a carved zucchini! It really does look cool, I promise you! (Though I think putting it on a leash would definitely edge over into the weird lol!)

Halloween is about trying to be weird. :) Once the sun goes down and you put the light inside, people probably won't know what it is anyway.

True on all counts :-)

That's a pretty good idea. Carving zucchini. I'll suggest that in Asia where it's harder to get pumpkins. I love roasting the pumpkin seeds though. That's my favorite part.

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Pumpkin seeds are good and very nutritious.

All people have their own ways to bring children in a positive direction, but here you teach us in a way that is not usually done by parents in general.

Anyway, in our country there are no two seasons like there.

Seasons are nice, but when it gets too cold or too hot, then I'd wish to have a climate more consistent like yours. A lot of things I do aren't done generally, which may or may not be a good thing. If you see people carving green squash next year, then you'll know I've set a trend, but probably not.

hahah maybe next year people will follow your trend ...
there will be lots of pumpkins carved.

@donkeypong
I loved reading this blog and I really liked all the pumpkins that Ray Villafane had carved. It made me laugh when you wouldn't let Ray see your pumpkin. I wish I could carve pumpkins like Ray because they look amazing.

Thanks for sharing this amazing work
Keep moving forward
Have a good day
Steem on...!

Thanks. That guy is a master, so it's hard to compare, but perhaps that skill can be learned to some extent! I'm an amateur, not an artist. :)

Lovely squash light ^^
I remember your zucchini post, a lot of recipes haha.
Happy Halloween and enjoy pumpkins!

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Thanks and Happy Halloween to you also!

A cool and different take on carving a "pumpkin". Came out cool looking @donkeypong. Happy Halloween!