The Great Pumpkin Race: Other Uses for Your Pumpkin

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Other Uses for Your Pumpkin

So, Hercules has 1 baby and no other female blossoms in sight. I decided to make use of all the beautiful big male blossoms that keep popping up - and EAT them!

I collected some one one day - the ones that had just blossomed on that day - and put them in the fridge overnight. Then I collected some more that blossomed the next day and 2 that were just about to open. Paolo's mom said that they do not keep for more than one day so I had to eat what I got. Which was plenty.

I prepared the batter - 1dl water whisked with 1 dl flour. Put a generous amount of oil in the frying pan (in hindsight, using a pot would have been smarter - I got hot oil in my face!), and dipped the flowers in the batter and then fried until slightly golden. Then I put them on some kitchen paper to absorb the excess oil and sprinkled on quite a lot of salt. Lovely. It tasted great and I am waiting for more flowers.

Highly recommend!

If more flowers appear Paolo also promises a pasta sauce recipe! Waiting for sunshine....

-Gerti, team Hercules

2 comments:

AnonymousJuly 28, 2011 at 12:48 PM
this is soooo great to know that the flowers are eatable! to bad didn´t know it before , hope to get some more flowers to try the recipe out.

Gerti with what did you eat it? bread rice meat potatoes?
anna
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GertiJuly 28, 2011 at 2:27 PM
Just as a snack/ starter. Enjoy!
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What is this?

This blog is to document the hard work, vision, courage, perseverance, and devotion of the amazing participants of this distinguished competition.

Who are we?

We are an international group, currently residing (and often times bored) in Luxembourg. We represent many countries: Estonia, Mexico, Iceland, Georgia, South Africa, and the United States (USA! USA! USA!). We may be diverse in nationality but we all share a common passion to grow the BIGGEST damn Pumpkin that we can, using any means possible.

The Rules?

There are only 2 ...

1. No buying a new pumpkin (we will all have to provide photos prior to "harvest" to prove that your plant indeed produced your contestant pumpkin)

3. You must disclose ALL details of what you did to grow your pumpkin (if asked...we may not want to know)

The PRIZE for the biggest pumpkin?

Besides the respect of your peers and a great sense of pride and accomplishment, you will get something very American and worthy of your feat. In other words, I don't know what the prize will be yet. But it will be GREAT!

Racers, tend to your pumpkins!

Growing Tip: Milk Feeding

Some say that the only way to get one of those crazy, multi-hundred pound state fair prize-winning pumpkins is to feed your pumpkin milk. How?
The easy way: pour some milk around the pumpkins for some extra nourishment.
Or, if you really want to "go big" then try the following:
Clear all the smaller pumpkins off the vine and choose the one you want to nurse to greatness. Next get a bowl of milk and sugar and place it near the fruit. Then carefully make a small slit in the stem where the pumpkin is growing from the vine. Soak a cotton wick in the milk and sugar and insert one end in the slit and the other end in the milk and sugar mixture.
Keep the bowl filled with fresh mixture until your pumpkin reaches the desired size.

Some blogs even suggest adding ground up fish to the soil. I would skip that, we all have neighbors living sort of close by.