Halloween Countdown: Pumpkin Trivia!

It's way too early for my family to start selecting pumpkins for our annual Duffy Pumpkin Carving Event—but I couldn't help but notice when Dad and I went to the grocery store last night: pumpkins are everywhere.

I actually did buy one of those mini ones to put in my room, and I might draw a face on it, but it's too small for me to carve. For me, the bigger the better!

But of course, seeing those pumpkins got me thinking about them, and since you all know I love fun facts almost as much as I love Halloween, here are 10 cool facts about pumpkins you may or may not already know.

10 Cool Facts About Pumpkins

1. Pumpkins are fruits. Not vegetables. (What gives it away? The seeds! Mmmmm...roasted pumpkin seeds...)
2. Speaking of seeds, the average pumpkin contains about a cup of them. Next to popcorn, roasted pumpkin seeds are my favourite movie-watching snack.
3. There is such a thing as a blue pumpkin. I had to look it up because there was one in my dream. Pumpkins can also be red, green, yellow, white, multi-coloured, and of course, orange.
4. We are definitely having Grandma's special pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dinner this weekend, but did you know that pumpkin pie was not served at the first Thanksgiving meals? Apparently it was more of a custard. Thank goodness it's pie these days.
5. My family carves four pumpkins a year (and sometimes Dad and I do an extra one), but in the early days, Jack-O-Lanterns were actually carved from TURNIPS or even POTATOES. No thanks—I'm a pumpkin kid. How about you?
6. Pumpkin is actually pretty good for you. One cup has under calories and about two grams of protein, plus a lot of important vitamins. Grandma says it's the sugar that's added to things like pie, cookies, cheesecake, and muffins that makes it unhealthy—but that's the same for almost all baking, right?
7. The largest pumpkin ever grown weighed 1,810 pounds. Can you IMAGINE the amount of seeds? Or how long it would take to carve a spooktacular Jack-O-Lantern face? <grin> I wish! I think the heaviest pumpkin Dad ever brought home was about 25 pounds...
8. Did you know that 90% of the pumpkin is water?
9. People used to think that pumpkins had the ability to remove freckles and cure snake bites. I get why you'd try it for a snake bite, but who would want to remove freckles? My friend Sophie has them and they're cute!
10. Pumpkins are grown across all continents except one—Antarctica. No surprise there!

How many of those facts did YOU know?

Gotta jet! Have a spooktacular today.

~ Chase Superman Duffy