Making a Pumpkin Soup Turine for Your Thanksgiving Dinner

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you see a pumpkin?  Is it Halloween?  Pie?  How about a new and unique idea for your Thanksgiving dinner?  Well, get ready to impress and be impressed yourself with this great idea complete with the recipe!

Now is the time to plan for your Thanksgiving dinner.  As somebody who loves food and cooking, I plan during the time I'm eating my Thanksgiving dinner every year.  Really!  I do my dinner myself every year, all of it from the turkey to the sides to the desserts.  I enjoy the challenge of putting out a huge mulit-course dinner.  Every year I think of ways I can improve on my techniques, ways I can make things more interesting and appealing to the eye.  There are things that simply cannot be messed with though such as the timing of the dinner to correspond to the day's football games.  Many families, including my own, have that in our traditions.

Enough about that.  Let's get on to the facts and history of the pumpkin itself.  It's amazing how much information there is on anything and what's even more amazing is utilizing that information in your menu.  Use these little known facts as a teaching tool for your kids or look really smart at your next dinner party.  

1.  The name pumpkin originated from the Greek word for "large melon" which is "pepon." "Pepon" was nasalized by the French into "pompon." The English changed "pompon" to "Pumpion." Shakespeare referred to the "pumpion" in his Merry Wives of Windsor. American colonists changed "pumpion" into "pumpkin." The "pumpkin" is referred to in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater and Cinderella. 

2.   Native Americans dried strips of pumpkin and wove them into mats. They also roasted long strips of pumpkin on the open fire and ate them.

3.  The origin of pumpkin pie occurred when the colonists sliced off the pumpkin top, removed the seeds, and filled the insides with milk, spices and honey. The pumpkin was then baked in hot ashes.