Having grown pumpkins in my garden for years, little did I know that one could blanch the tender young green pumpkin tendrils and sizzle them over high heat with a healthy dose of fish sauce and crushed garlic.
Once, a young man said, "Pumpkin".
The evening meal consists of a dozen small plates, including spicy curries made from whatever was freshest at the market, such as young jackfruit, okra, pumpkin or bitter melon, and the Rawana speciality, a rich garlic curry simmered in a pressure cooker until soft and creamy.
Delicately browned Stonington scallops, stippled with cubes of bacon, English peas and horseradish honey; duck rillette accompanied by sour cherry jam, pickled onion and crostini; pickled beet salad, coupled with goat's milk feta, young lettuce and toasted pumpkin seeds in an orange vinaigrette — all were super.
In this uneasy mixture of satire and sentiment, Ms. Ricci plays Carolyn McDuffie, a Southern California sorority sister who risks everything -- the respect of her peers, her tennis-star boyfriend, her very sanity -- to pursue a love affair with a young retarded man named Pumpkin (Mr. Harris).
The film stars Anna Margaret Hollyman, Hank Harris (Pumpkin), and Damian Young (Californication, The Comeback).
The pumpkin pies at Youngs are made from cheese pumpkins grown within sight of the counter where they are sold, and peach pies are filled with fruit from trees on the hill behind the farm stand.
The Harbeses were among the first to replace their dwindling potato farming livelihood with not just fresh produce but the now ubiquitous, and potentially more profitable, attractions like corn mazes, hayrides and pick-your-own pumpkins, geared for young children.
To say that Michael Meads's trio of photographs documents a young man interacting sexually with a pumpkin hardly does justice to its casual, raw explicitness.
