Pumpkins



Just been talking about Halloween with the eldest. Anyway he’s just stared at me in disbelief and laughed his tits off when I told him that we used turnips instead of pumpkins when I was a kid. In fact I’m sure I never even saw a one in real life till at least 1990 or summit. You simply couldn’t buy them in supermarkets over here could you? Someone back me up :confused:

Always turnips for me
 
There was some characters in those 2 streets
Loved my childhood there, no end of places to play around the pit, the pit pond, the heaps, down the blast, hawthorn dene, hawthorn quarry, what seemed like a massive field on the other side of Edith St where we had mad football games.
Haway man! How the fuck did you forget the "hotspot"
 
used to love Narkie neet ..... the hollowing out of the turnip was a good night and then came the night dressed in a black plastic bin liner with a lit candle inside a turnip held up with very thin string .... knocking on peoples doors for money !!!!

Jesus could of either cut our hands of hollowing it our or been burn alive with the mix of lit candle and plastic bag and if that wasn't enough knocking on strangers doors in the pitch black .... and we thought our parents loved us
 
No they're not, in the North East and Scotland they're turnips. If your want to use southern definitions that's your look out.

Haggis, (tur)neeps and tatties, are Brown orange and white. Southerners misname them, not the other way round.
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Turnip ^^^ ( white flesh)

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Swede ^^^^ ( yellow flesh)


Call them what you like, north or south, they are different things, taste different too.



*****

Jamie Oliver is definitely on the fence for this one :lol:

Haggis, neeps & tatties | Lamb recipes | Jamie magazine recipe
 
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Turnip ^^^ ( white flesh)

Logon or register to see this image



Swede ^^^^ ( yellow flesh)


Call them what you like, north or south, they are different things, taste different too.



*****

Jamie Oliver is definitely on the fence for this one :lol:

Haggis, neeps & tatties | Lamb recipes | Jamie magazine recipe
Great a southerner telling northerners they don't understand English.

Semiotics and that. Words are symbols, they have no intrinsic value. If a whole community, and a whole nation, say that's what something is called then that's what it is called for that community and nation irrespective of what a different community calls it.
 
Great a southerner telling northerners they don't understand English.

Semiotics and that. Words are symbols, they have no intrinsic value. If a whole community, and a whole nation, say that's what something is called then that's what it is called for that community and nation irrespective of what a different community calls it.
I have northern background.

I didn't actually say you were wrong , but what do you call turnips if swedes are called turnips? How do you differentiate [was my point really]. I never said you didn't understand English :)
 
Hollowing a turnip to try and replicate a turnip looked as hard as fuck. Total stupidity when you think about it. Why didn't a smart greengrocer or supermarket decide to actually stock pumpkins?



:lol:

Oh look a triangle nose.

Fuck off!
Using turnips as lanterns pre-dates the USA and pumpkins
 
Great a southerner telling northerners they don't understand English.

Semiotics and that. Words are symbols, they have no intrinsic value. If a whole community, and a whole nation, say that's what something is called then that's what it is called for that community and nation irrespective of what a different community calls it.

Like "Chebs" are mistaken for tits, when they are cocks?:eek:
 
Nowt like that roast turnip smell from where your candle burnt the underside of the lid.
I was just talking about that last night as one of the smells of my childhood. Armies of kids with turnips/swedes on strings walking around the doors.

I thought the use of pumpkins was because squash plants tend to die back in the autumn so you generally keep the squashes outside where it will not rot on the soil, but will harden the skin so they keep longer. (I've got some big crown prince ones sitting on my garden table, they are like a green pumpkin). Americans traditionally grew a lot of squashes and would have then drying and stored on the dry wooden front porch. People then started decorating them.

I'm not sure where turnips came into it for us. Was it as a substitute for pumpkins?

When I was a bairn, the middle of the turnip was hollowed out, cooked and would be used with only a small amount of it wasted as the outer decoration. These days, pumpkins are used, where the majority of the inside is seed and thrown away, while the bit you eat is the decoration and goes to waste. There was a grower on the radio a while back saying they think only 10% of what they grow actually gets eaten. Seems like a massive waste to me.
 
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