If you’re like me, the annual Pumpkin Carving ritual is a chore that you tend to put off until the last minute. It’s not that I don’t want to spend two hours of my life carving a perfectly good vegetable with a godawful sharp knife so that it can be turned into a potential fire hazard. I mean, you’d have to be crazy to want to miss out on that kind of fun. Actually, the truth is, I’m just plain lazy. The longer I postpone pumpkin carving, the more time I’ll have to waste on the internet likely it is that my husband will do it.
This year, I’ve succeeded in stalling the pumpkin carving until the last possible day and my husband isn’t home to save me. Below are my tips for successful pumpkin carving when you’re unable to get out of having to do it yourself:
1. Get a pumpkin. This might seem obvious, but one year I foolishly skipped this step. If you have kids at home who are counting on a carved jack-o-lantern, I don’t recommend forgetting to buy a pumpkin. Kids may be small, but their torture methods have no limit.
2. Check your health insurance. Since you’ll be working with sharp knives, what better time to make sure that your health insurance policy hasn’t lapsed? If you find out that it’s been cancelled, you never had coverage to begin with, or you learn that Pumpkin Carving is one of the gazillion and nine exclusions on your policy, you can stop right here and tell the kids it’s all Obama’s fault for not effectively improving healthcare.
3. Cover your work surface with newspaper. Or not, if you’re one of those weirdoes who enjoys cleaning.
4. Wipe the pumpkin clean and set it on the newspaper. The flat side down works best unless you’re an adrenaline junkie who likes to take risks with sharp knives and wobbly pumpkins.
5. Find a template from the internet of a design you’d like to carve. If this is your first attempt at carving, this is not the time to try complicated patterns such as all of the characters on Mad Men. The pumpkin will either rot or be eaten by squirrels within a week, so why overexert yourself by making an intricate design?
6. Gather your carving equipment. You’re going to need a large bowl for the pumpkin guts and seeds, tape to attach your template to the pumpkin, a large metal spoon or other sturdy item for scraping the inside of the pumpkin, a small paring knife, a steak knife, a permanent marker, and lots of paper towels.
7. Carve the lid and discover what a pain in the ass it is to cut through an inch-and-a-half thick vegetable. This is the part of the project where you mentally list your activities for the rest of the day and decide that you’d better cancel half of them. Yes, folks, pumpkin carving takes much longer than you’d expect. Make a mental note to buy pre-carved pumpkins next year.
8. Make sure to carve a notch or tooth on the back of the lid. This will save you from spending hours spinning the lid around and around as you try to fit it on perfectly.
9. Scoop out the pumpkin guts from the inside. Dissuade teenage son from wanting to keep the seeds and pumpkin goop for God-knows-what reason. Make mental note to have teenage son professionally evaluated.
10. Tape design template onto the front of the pumpkin. Bitch and swear when you discover that the tape won’t stick to the slippery pumpkin. Wipe the pumpkin with a paper towel and try again. And again. And again.
11. Crumple up template in a fit of exasperation and decide to draw a free-hand design instead. A typical jack-o-lantern face with two triangle eyes, a triangle nose, and a single-toothed mouth is about as easy as you can get. If you’re a masochist like me, however, decide to draw the template design you originally picked. Even if you fail, you’ll have one helluva guilt card to play on the kids later.
12. Send the kids to their rooms when they tell you that your design doesn’t look like the picture from the internet. Then you’ll have time to contemplate why you gave birth to those little ingrates in the first place.
13. Begin cutting. Swear and jump around like a maniac when the knife slips and you take a slice off of your finger tip. Vow again to buy a pre-carved pumpkin next year as you hunt for the first aid kit.
14. Push out all cut-out pieces from the inside. When you discover that this is easier said than done, recut all pieces about eighty more times in an effort to finally get them to release and pop out. Neaten up carved areas with a small, flexible knife.
15. Ground teenage son for making fun of your creation. Say a silent prayer of gratitude for hubby’s vasectomy.
16. Insert a tealight candle in a pyrex dish and put it inside the pumpkin. Light the candle and watch the pumpkin glow.
17. Receive hug from nine-year-old. Enjoy the fact that you’re now a hero to your youngest child, which makes it all worth it.
Happy Halloween!
*a version of this post appeared previously at open.salon.com/blog/Lisa_Kern
