highlyeccentric stands up for pumpkin's right to food performativity

[kayloulee]

Although pumpkin is readily available in many countries, Australia is the only one to consider it seriously as a vegetable.



- The Women's Weekly Cookbook, 1970-something.

We not only consider our pumpkins, we consider them *seriously*. Not like the Americans, who clearly take their pumpkins lightly, appropriating them as a source of festivity and jokes.

And just in case you thought we might consider pumpkins as meat, starch, dessert, or even furniture, let us make it clear: we consider pumpkin seriously as a vegetable. Pumpkins in this country are secure and widely affirmed in their identity as vegetables!

[...]

As my LJ has pointed out IT'S BIOLOGICALLY A FRUIT! In Australia, we affirm pumpkin in its desire to cross food-genre boundaries! Pumpkin's identity as a vegetable is performative and we do our best to help pumpkin adopt the role of vegetable in our kitchens, without restricting it to normative vegetable functions - some might say that its popularity in scones belies its origins as a fruit, but we in Australia believe that vegetable is as vegetable does, and sometimes, vegetable does as fruit!

Context takes its pumpkin with a side of Judith Butler.