pumpkin madness

I've been making pumpkin bread a lot lately. It's called "pumpkin cake" by coworkers to get around the idea of pumpkin being used as a sweet instead of as a savory. It is well liked and earlier this week a group of coworkers literally cheered when they saw me bring it in to the staff room one morning. One of my friends at work left a giant pumpkin on my desk chair yesterday that she picked up at the supermarket-- a hint, I think, to make more pumpkin bread. Our kaitakawaenga (Maori liaison) noticed it still sitting at my desk today and said, "Hey aren't you going to do anything with this?" Meaning: aren't you going to make something to eat with this? I gestured to my colored markers nearby and said, "Well I'm going to decorate it right away!" The strangest expression passed over his face. A little while later I showed off my painted new jack-o-lantern to him and others. I got a lot of befuddled looks and comments for 1) decorating a pumpkin and 2) decorating a pumpkin and it's not even Halloween. (When handed a pumpkin, what do Americans do? Decorate it, of course!) The kaitakawaenga gave me a hard time for being so silly with my pumpkin but then later came by my desk and said, "You know what would would make that pumpkin look really cool? A knife stabbed in the top or something." "Great idea!" I enthusiastically told him. I knew he'd come around.

Later that day, I showed off my new decoration to another co-worker. As an aside, she told me that to the Maori, playing with your food is taboo. Whoops! Well, for we Americans, pumpkins aren't really even considered a food (our pumpkin comes from a can) so maybe we can have a loophole?

I know, that's terribly ethnocentric of me to think that way. So, Mr. Pumpkin is now in a bag and his comment on his top, "Don't eat me!!" hidden forever.