Pumpkin Bread and Thnaksgiving

I chose Pumpkin bread because it has been a family tradition to have it every year as part of our Thanksgiving dinner.  Since it has been a family tradition, I have grown up to enjoy pumpkin bread.  Not only as food (taste, texture, etc) but also culturally, as a symbol for family.  The actual reason is because I always wondered how other people viewed it.  I wondered if it was for family gatherings, like how I am accustomed, or just for pleasure or something else.  This project allowed my to see pumpkin bread from another perspective and it gave me a newer understanding overall.  In order to make Pumpkin Bread someone will need eggs, vegetable oil, water sugar, flour, and pumpkin puree.  The rest of the ingredients are all in small amounts but it includes baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/downeast-maine-pumpkin-bread/).  The pumpkin puree is the most important ingredient to make it taste like pumpkins and the flour is used to help the texture be more like bread.  It is not that nutritional for you other then having a lot of carbs and fats.  Pumpkin Bread does have 3% calcium and 5% iron (http://www.fatsecret.com/calories-nutrition/generic/bread-pumpkin).  I did not find information on the history of pumpkin bread but I did find a lot of information on the use of pumpkins.  The English first used the term pompion to describe pumpkins and this term was first seen in 1547.  Indians living in the new world primarily used it. The pilgrims discovered when they came over.  Pumpkin was originally dried and used for mats but the English liked the taste and started incorporating it into foods (http://homecooking.about.com/od/foodhistory/a/pumpkinhistory.htm).  The colonization of the English in the New World created pumpkin dishes. Originally mashed pumpkins were added to normal bread dough to produce pumpkin bread (http://britishfoodhistory.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/pompion-pumpkin-bread/). 

            Currently, adding pumpkin puree to dough makes Pumpkin bread.  It is then put in the oven to cook.  It is offered in a lot of places: restaurants, bakeries, cafes, stores, and cooked in the home.  It is still a staple for Thanksgiving, and because of that is seen a lot in American diets.  While there are slightly different ways to make pumpkin bread, there is no real variety from place to place.  The biggest time for Pumpkin bread is the fall when pumpkins are ripe for picking and the holiday of Thanksgiving; which is where the biggest meaning of pumpkin bread lies. 

            Pumpkin symbolizes our colonial past when agriculture was big.  Thanksgiving reinforces that because it is in the fall when it is harvest time. 

However, it is not the pumpkin itself, but the foods that we cook and infuse pumpkin in.  I think this symbolizes colonial times and the colonization of the new world.  It is a sweet reminiscence of our past.