A traditional Irish turnip Jack-o'-lantern from the early 20th century. Photographed at the Museum of Country Life, Ireland.
Every year I wax nostalgic about using turnips in my haunt. And every year I pick one up in the produce section and am reminded that they're basically a block of purple-white wood. I tried to carve turnips one year and I'm shocked that it ever caught on in Ireland in the first place.
Sorry, Turnip.
Hello, Pumpkin.
Image source.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Turnips
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4 comments:
Although I live in England and not Ireland, I remember carving turnips at Halloween, or rather trying to, they certainly are hard old things.
I remember when Martha Stewart featured carved white pumpkins the first year of the magazine. I went searching everywhere to find them. Finally found 2. Those suckers are hard too. I expected it to be more like a pumpkin. Took forever to carve and my hand hurt.
Even though I know it's true, old school Halloween, I've never seriously considered carving a turnip... although the one in the picture is cool looking. Kinda creepy.
It's a very non-traditional method, but you could use a rotary power tool (Dremel) with one of those special side-cutting drill bits. Those suckers will cut through just about anything.
In UK when I was a kid it was easy to get turnips than pumpkins but a lot harder to carve out ,
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