Driving around

2 Jul

A few days ago I was driving back to town with a couple of friends after a visit to Porto Alegre. Along the road connecting Rio Grande and Pelotas (more or less at GPS 31.972338 Lat. S, 52.299728 Long. W) we found a couple of farmers selling some home grown products we just couldn’t resist, as they looked incredibly tasty and fresh, specially a nice variety of pumpkins.

Pumpkins are the fruit of plants belonging to the genus Cucurbita, natives to the New World. They are abundant throughout the Americas, being consumed in the region for more than 5,000 years. The Spanish explorer Francisco Pizarro discovered them in Peru in the XVIth century, and took some seeds back to his homeland, from where it spread all over the world. Stems and seeds dated from 7,000 to 5,000 BC have been found in the Tamaulipas mountains in Mexico.

Take a look at the pictures below and tell me if you would resist buying a couple of them (sorry, but I was unable to find the variety names in English, as the genus Cucurbita encompasses 10 species with several dozens of varieties). The price? Around US$ 0.50/kg.