PITY ANTARCTICA:

'Emperor of the Garden': The great pumpkin is a superfood that rules (Lisa Ryckman, October 25, 2005, Rocky Mountain News)

Carve them, bake them, smash them on the sidewalk.

Bowl with them. Launch them from a catapult. Grow them from a tiny seed into something the size of an elephant - then turn them into boats.

Pumpkins, also known as Cucurbita maxim, are supremely versatile and likeable produce. The Chinese called them "Emperor of the Garden" and considered them symbols of health and well-being. And they are a true superfood, with nutrients that can do everything from improving night vision to preventing cancer.

Some people -- perfectly nice, seemingly normal kinds of people -- consider pumpkins objects worthy of passion, capable of becoming ever so much more than mere jack-o'-lanterns or desserts or satisfying splats.

That's because pumpkins possess the potential to grow - hugely freakishly enormously large. The current world heavyweight champion, a Pennsylvania pumpkin tipping the scale at 1,469 pounds, was a guest on Martha earlier this month.

"In the late 1980s and early '90s, a lot of giant-pumpkin growers didn't know if the thousand-pound barrier would ever fall," says Bob Matthews, a self-described pumpkin fanatic who created www.pumpkinnook.com."Now we're sitting at 1,469 pounds and growing. Fifteen hundred pounds is a cakewalk."

Speaking of pounds and cake, pumpkin has all the right stuff - low in fat, sodium and cholesterol but chock-full of fiber and vitamins A and C, plus manganese, magnesium and phosphorus.