Pumpkin Chemistry

So Hallowe'en is over, what to do with all those pumpkins rotting on your doorstep?

(Via Pexels / CC0, Public Domain)

Regardless of where in the world I’ve lived, the morning after Hallowe’en is remarkably similar: the streets are covered with flattened, flambéed or fragmented pumpkins, being picked over by raucous flocks of crows. When I was a kid, the objective was to merely destroy as many of these outsized vegetables as possible, bu…