![]() Quickly and carefully remove hot dish from oven and immediately pour caramel into dish, tilting it to cover bottom and sides. Cook caramel without stirring, swirling pan, until a deep golden, about 5 minutes. Heat a 2 quart souffle dish or round ceramic casserole dish in the middle of the oven.Ĭook one cup sugar in a dry 2 quart heavy saucepan over moderately low heat, stirring slowly with a fork, until melted pale golden. You will need to shake vigorously before pouring as the ingredients can settle.ġ5 oz can solid packed pumpkin (or 1 3/4 cups cooked pumpkin)Ģ tablespoons golden agave tequila or bourbon.Chill for at least 4 hours and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.Pour into the bottle and shake well to combine with rum and cinnamon sticks. In a blender, puree all the other ingredients.Let sit for 1 hour or for up to 24 hours. In a very large pitcher with a lid (or two large jars with lids – this will make about 70 oz of liquid) add rum and cinnamon sticks."That's what the consumer looks for, because they like to really decorate." His most popular variety, the trademarked Daisy gourd, is a colorful, flower-shaped little thing that took him close to 30 years to perfect. "You've got to move on to better and brighter and unique things," Eckler says. When he first started, he says, his gourds were pretty plain, just like everyone else's. ![]() ![]() Larry Eckler, a decorative gourd breeder in Niles, Mich., has been doing this for 40 years. We want consistency when it comes to food, but because we choose to decorate with squash and gourds, we let them show us everything they've got. And that's something we don't see very often in our fruits and vegetables. ![]() There's a reason these plants have so much decorative potential: They're super diverse genetically, and particularly ostentatious in displaying those differences, Pyle says. "If they see something they've never seen before, they're more likely to buy it." "That's the goal: to get something stranger and stranger, because that's what people want," says Bill Holdsworth, a breeder for the major seed company Rupp Seeds. And now we're making them as pretty - or ugly - as possible, depending on whom you ask. For millennia farmers created new varieties that tasted better, or had tougher skins that enabled them to last through the winter, or resisted disease. They're among the earliest plants that humans domesticated. And there's nothing new about that: We've been manipulating squash and gourds to suit our various needs for around 8,000 years, when Pyle says people first started breeding them. These interesting new gourds, they don't just exist - people make them. That's been popular for a while, and it's been really trendy the last few years."Ĭharles Martin and his wife, Rosa, stand amidst some of their favorite gourds and squash from this year's harvest. "You have a huge demand for squash and gourds that are aesthetically interesting and different from each other. "Everyone wants to have the new, really cool gourd that everyone wants to buy, that Martha Stewart posts on her blog," says Adam Pyle, a horticulturalist at the United States Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C. As the weather turns, the Pinterest-loving sorts among us increasingly look for odd, eye-catching pumpkins, gourds and squash to decorate homes and offices. In the last 30 years the amount of American farmland devoted to pumpkins has tripled, and most of those big fruits aren't filling pies. These colorful gourds aren't just a hobby for Martin: They're big business. It's a new variety a seed company is toying with, and it doesn't have a name yet - it's Experimental 133. "It's supposed to resemble a bloodshot eye," Martin says, laughing. A few feet away there's a white-and-red-striped pumpkin called One Too Many. Today he grows 55 varieties of gourds, squash and pumpkins, and he's always looking for something new.Īs he walks through his half-harvested patch, Martin points out an orange pumpkin covered in green bumps - the Warty Goblin. When Virginia farmer Charles Martin first got into the pumpkin game a decade ago, he started small, with a half-acre plot of traditional round, orange jack-o-lanterns.
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