Walking home this afternoon I noticed some pumpkins an apartment building was displaying for Halloween, which was yesterday. They were like these, only uncarved. Just plain pumpkins.

Suspecting they wouldn’t use the fruit after the holiday, I acted on a whim and asked the doorman what they did with them. He said I could come by tomorrow to pick them up.

Learning to cook from fresh fruits and vegetables doesn’t stop changing my perspective on food. I didn’t used to know how to cook a pumpkin. I still haven’t done it, but I’ve cooked a lot of squashes and loved them. I can’t wait to cook a pumpkin.

I was only a block and a half from home, but suddenly I noticed how many pumpkins people had out, not seeing them as decorations but as food. People were throwing away so much food! I never even thought of pumpkins as things I could cook. Meanwhile, this nutrition site gives pumpkins five out five stars for weight loss and optimum health! They’re low in calories and high in fiber and antioxidants.

People put them in pies, but I’ll put mine in my stews and soups, where the squashes have been incredible.

I thought for a second if I wanted to eat fruit that was out on New York City streets. But all produce vendors’ produce is out on New York City streets, even the gourmet places. Same with everywhere in the world.

I’ll post again how my pumpkin experiments go.

How to do the things you dream of

I didn’t used to do things like this. It reminds me of what I wrote in my post, How to do the things you dream of. The short answer is you do them.

The longer answer is that you do things like this. Maybe they sound odd, and I admit I paused before doing it, but what was I doing? Asking people likely to throw away healthy food if I could help them avoid throwing it away. And forcing myself to figure out how to cook it.

It also reminds me of eating a whole orange in this post, Video: Do what others fear, easy version, doing what others fear so that they could overcome their inhibitions and follow.

If getting a pumpkin someone else was going to throw away was too weird for you, keep throwing away food and doing what everyone else does. You can hear how delicious the food is, hear second-hand about the feeling of accomplishment of running a marathon or swimming across the Hudson River, read second-hand the wonderment of visiting North Korea, and so on.

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