This beauty resembles a sun’s deputy on Earth - it’s so life-loving, bright and round. But people decided to “assign” it as a symbol of the most terrible night of a year - Halloween

This beauty resembles a sun’s deputy on Earth - it’s so life-loving, bright and round. But people decided to “assign” it as a symbol of the most terrible night of a year - Halloween. But during rest nights and days they call it a “garden’s drugstore” and eat its seeds in unrestricted quantities. Of course, this is pumpkin. By the way, it’s not a vegetable at all, it’s a berry, like water-melon.

There is still no information about a pumpkin’s origin. Although it is considered, that this berry is from Central and South America. But, considering the fact, that pumpkin is mentioned in Sacrum texts of many religions, we can make a conclusion, that this magic berry was known and honored very long time ago. In some Eastern religions pumpkin was considered a plant, which Gods came from. Probably, pumpkin really plays some mystic function in our world - people chose it for Halloween not without reason.
 
Facts from life of pumpkins
 
Gardening
 
- There’re winter squash, China squash, hidebound, calabash and even fig-leaved pumpkins. A fig-leaved pumpkin has white pulp and black seeds.
 
- Marrows, zucchini and squash - are bunchy subspecies of pumpkin.
 
- If you want to amaze your friends, put ovaries of a calabash in wooden molds made according to your own draft, and they will be filled with a growing fruit little by little.
 
- One of pumpkin sorts, sugar-plum, can regenerate - if you cut a piece off a young growing fruit, it will keep on growing further.
 
- you can eat fresh pumpkin during whole winter - it’s enough to find a ventilated frost-resisting place for it and put about 10 pumpkins there.
 
Mystical
 
-          Feng Shui followers use calabash to make talismans. It harmonizes relations between parents and children, rehabilitates lost passion in married people and is considered as a protective and medicinal remedy.
 
-          Pumpkin - is the main Halloween symbol. According to one of versions, traditional Halloween lamps ”Jacks” were invented by Druids, Celtic priests, to conjure away fiends, flooding our world on the night of November 1.
 
 
According to another version, pumpkin lights, wandering in the dark, symbolize souls, lost between heaven and hell. Third version tells about some drunkard Jack, who managed to trick Devil Himself, according to a legend. Of course, he was not allowed to paradise after death, and was dismissed from hell. And Jack was doomed to eternal rambling in the dark, having only one small piece of coal to illuminate his road. He put it in an empty turnip - to make it burning longer. Descendants started using pumpkin for these purposes.
 
For the last bit:
 
-          Pumpkins, like water-melons, bring biggest fruits. Press informed about pumpkins weighing 284 and 287 kg, cultivated by Canadian farmers, and several years ago in USA they cultivated a giant weighing 302 kg. Last year a Bavarian student held a European record, he cultivated a huge pumpkin weighing 559,5 kg.
 
-          Some time Indians made rugs of a jerked pumpkin’s lags.
 
-          In past it was considered that pumpkin is a good remedy against snakebites and freckles.
 
-          In Austria people celebrate a Pumpkin Day every year.
 
About pumpkin’s use
 
For alimentary canal: it’s an irreplaceable product, useful while problems with liver, gall-bladder, gastritis, colitis. Pumpkin’s pulp with almost neutral medium contributes to gastric ulcer and duodenal ulcer healing.
 
Pumpkin diet brings a good effect while obesity, metabolic disease. Pectin substances provide egestion of toxic metabolic-waste products and excesses of cholesterol from organism.
 
For pregnant women: pumpkin is used to cure toxicosis.
 
For nervous and cardio-vascular systems: pumpkin juice calms down nervous system. Juice is also used as diuretic while cardiac edemata and kidneys diseases. While insomnia you can take 1/3 glass of pumpkin decoction with honey before going to bed.
 
For general tone: yellow-orange color of pumpkin’s pulp is explained by big content of carotenoids, they synthesize vitamin A and flavonoids - vegetable antloxidants, reducing risk of pathologic transformation of tissue cells of organism. Besides, there’re also vitamins of groups ?‚, ?‘, ??, ????, ?… in pumpkin.
 
It is considered, that these vitamins plus flavonoids slow down ageing and help keeping normal sexual activity. Besides, pumpkin is also considered a champion among vegetables as for iron content, it also contains much copper salts and phosphorus.
 
For men: zinc, contained in seeds - is a wonderful remedy against prostatitis: eat 50-60 seeds per day and it will be enough. And biologically active substances, contained in pumpkin-seed oil, increase potency, activate immunity and slow down the process of augmentation of prostate gland’s tissue cells quantity, contribute to urinary discomforts and pain syndrome while prostate gland adenoma and prostatitis cure.
 
For children: seeds are considered a good antihelmintic drug since recent time. They have no toxic influence on organism, that’s why doctors offer this very remedy to children and pregnant women in case of necessity.
 
For those who suffer from thirst and dehydration: 90% of pumpkin consist of water.
 
While burns and skin diseases (eczema, inflammation): use fresh pumpkin’s gruel topically.
 
Grocery pumpkin
 
  

The first thing you remember - is millet gruel with pumpkin and pumpkin seeds?
 
Another variant - is baked pumpkin. Try to refer to beginnings and cook it the way first American settlers did: they cut out a pumpkin’s top, removed seeds, filled a fruit with milk, spices and honey and baked pumpkin in hot ashes.
 
You can add pumpkin seeds in dough: you will receive very tasty bread.
 
Those who like healthy tasty nutrition will find these recipes useful:

Pumpkin salad with apples
  
You should better choose hidebound pumpkin for such salads. Winter squash’s fresh pulp has a specific flavor, not everybody likes it, although such pumpkin is more valuable as for its nutritional qualities.
Peel a pumpkin, remove seeds, cut small and pour over with boiling water twice. You can grate pulp and then you will do without boiling water.  Salt pounded pumpkin slightly and add honey or sugar. Cut apples in cubes or grate, mix with pumpkin, pour with lemon juice. Add ground walnuts, lemon or orange peel, sour cream. For 250 g of pumpkin - 150 g of sour apples, 100 g of honey or sugar, 1/3 glass of walnuts, 1/5 glass of sour cream, 1 lemon, salt to your taste.
 
Cosmopolitans will like pumpkin, cooked according to a Greek recipe
 
Cut pumpkin in pieces and fry for 2 minutes in olive oil with salt and paprika. Pour with tomato paste, add some garlic and basil and stew on small fire, until pumpkin becomes soft. Serve both as an independent dish, decorating it with ripe tomatoes and green, cut small, and as a garnish for stewed meat.
 
Children not always like eating this useful product as it is. What if you cook fritters? Mix 1 table spoon of kefir with 1 beaten egg, salt, 250 of flour. Add 150 g of grated pumpkin, mix everything carefully. Put paste on a warmed-up oiled frying pan and fry from two sides.
 
What about men? They like meat for supper. There’s an answer: stuffed pumpkin.
 
Mix 500 g of ground meat with 100-150 g of chopped onion and fry. Add 1/5 glass of boiled rice, some parsley green, black ground pepper and salt to your taste. Stuff a small ripe pumpkin with this paste, cutting off its top and removing seeds beforehand. Cover a stuffed pumpkin with a cut off top, fixing it with pointed matches. Pour some water in a pan and put pumpkin there. Cover with a lid and put in an oven, warmed up to 150-1800, for about 1 hour. Then put a pumpkin on an oiled frying pan carefully, pour with sour cream and bake in a hot oven (2000).
 
Cosmetic pumpkin
 
It’s so good, when you can nourish your skin with natural products. Pumpkin is the most seasonal cosmetic, as it ripens in September-October.
 
Face pack for tired and senescent skin
 
Grate 3 table spoons of pumpkin without peel, mix with 2 spoons of starch, to receive a homogeneous paste, apply a face pack for 15-20 minutes. Rinse with acidulous water. You can use all sorts of pumpkin: both feeding and sweet. This face pack is especially good for senescent skin.
 
Tonic for all types
 
Soak a thin layer of cotton wool in pumpkin juice, put a gruel on a gauze tissue or face. Put compress on face for 15-20 minutes, then remove and wash face with cool water. Do this procedure 2-3 times a week, length of course is 15-20 compresses. It’s better to alternate compresses of juice and gruel.
 
Refreshing emulsion
 
Remove peel from seeds, pound them and put in boiling water in proportion 1:10, boil until you receive a homogeneous paste. Smear face with this emulsion and rinse with warm water in 15-20 minutes.
 
Cosmetic for pores contraction and acne cure
 
To cleanse face and narrow pores, just wipe your face with pieces of pumpkin. By the way, if you have greasy skin and acne, it’s very good to tale pumpkin.
 
Face pack for dry skin
 
Whip 2 table spoons of boiled pumpkin carefully and mix with a table spoon of olive or other vegetable oil. Apply face pack for 20 minutes, then rinse with cool water.
 
Face pack to remove freckles and pigmentation
 
Remove peel from raw pumpkin seeds, grind carefully with equal part of water. Mix received liquid with honey in proportion 2:1. Apply this face pack every day for 30 minutes to gain desired effect.
 
Cleaning face pack for greasy skin
 
Whip raw pumpkin with an egg-white, put on face for 10 minutes. Rinse with cool water.
 
There’re very few seasonal autumn berries. But pumpkin compensates human need in vitamins, minerals, clean skin and some mysticism with interest. And yet, if you remember, you can make a coach of pumpkin and go to a ball on it. And you can break the clock. Just by accident.