Great Pumpkin Thoughts

A few years ago I came across a delicious pumpkin soup recipe and made it from the giant decorative pumpkin that had been on the porch for Halloween.  (Not made into a jack o lantern.) 

This year we did not have a pumpkin on the porch, so I went to Freecycle to see if anyone had a spare.  Lots of people did, so I will be making my soup again.  (It's a lot of work, but the result is worth it.)

After being overwhelmed with pumpkin offers, near and far, and thinking about yesterday's post on the gift economy, (I had commented on the original article that inspired the post with some thoughts on The Guthrie Center's community lunch program) I got to thinking about the idea of having some kind of organized post Halloween pumpkin collection and soup dinner.  It would keep those pumpkins from going to waste, bring people together, and be a great community event.  A church or community center could do something like this fairly easily by letting members know to bring in their pumpkins on a certain date.   

I would love to hear your thoughts on this idea.

Photo credit:  Mike McCune issued with Creative Commons license.

Reasons to Be Glad You Can't Afford Luxury Food

The rich may get their pick of the most desirable food, but it hasn't always been the best thing for them. Consider the effect of finely polished white rice on the Japanese diet as explained by Trevor Corson in The Zen of Fish:

"... rich people in Japan and other countries preferred the taste of bright white rice, and so they paid extra to have their rice polished. Sadly for them, the Japanese diet contained little besides rice bran to supply vitamin B1. People who ate polished rice condemned themselves to emotional disturbances, impaired sensory perception, weight loss, heart failure, and even death-- the results of beriberi, or vitamin B1 deficiency. About 350 years ago, as more Japanese acquired wealth and and moved from the countryside to cities, the consumption of highly polished rice increased. So did recorded instances of beriberi. One food historian reports that for a time, it was considered Japan's national disease."

Hurry Up and Eat!

If you start to feel like an under-achiever, and to go over your to do list, when you drive past the golden arches researchers say you are not alone. Here's the skinny (as it were) as reported in healthzone.ca:

...according to new research from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, the very sight of the McDonald's logo might make him hurry up.

When people are exposed to fast-food logos, even momentarily, they're reminded of the need to save time, says Chen-Bo Zhong, a professor of organizational behaviour and the paper's co-author. In three experiments, participants were found to be more impatient and hasty after seeing logos such as McDonald's, Subway, KFC or Wendy's.

"It's the goals that you associate with these symbols," says Zhong. "They really are a very prevalent part of our culture that (remind us) we need to be time-efficient, we need to be able to save time."