Mixing pumpkins, bread could create cross-cultural nirvana

Two unrelated, food-related stories caught my attention recently.

In California, organizers of the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off logged a new North American record. A pumpkin grown by Travis Gienger, a horticulture teacher in Minnesota, came in at 2,560 pounds. That’s only 143 pounds shy of the world record, set by a squash in Italy just last year.

I’ve always had a soft spot for pumpkins, even if the quintessential Thanksgiving pie made from the gourd isn’t my favorite. (I prefer apple or cherry.)

Each year, my wife and I gawk at the size of pumpkins at the Canfield Fair, usually in the 1,500-pound range. This is still large enough to warrant an appreciative whistle and, despite signs that admonish visitors not to touch, a fond caress.

Oh, and a selfie.

Why I need a picture standing in front of some anonymous farmer’s accomplishment is something I haven’t analyzed too deeply, but I snap one every year.

The first thought I had when I heard of Gienger’s prize-winning effort was how I could get my photo with it. Isn’t that weird? I mean, I don’t scamper around snapping pictures of myself with other produce − man, look at the size of that cumquat, I gotta get a picture with that! − or holding up gigantic ears of corn. Well, just that once.

Seriously, though, I’ve always been into David and Goliath-like size differentials, where the natural order of things is upended. I love movies where giant bugs stomp on hapless humans. Or where people are reduced to the size of your average under-the-bed dust bunny. To this day, “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” who battles a housecat and a spider among other normally inconsequential trappings of suburbia, is a favorite.

So super-sized pumpkins? Yeah, I like those.

I once thought of raising my own giant pumpkins and bought seeds that promised larger-than-average results. But I never got around to planting them. I was probably too busy watching “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.”

Anyway, I gave the seeds to my in-laws. If they shepherded any pumpkins bigger than a Volkswagen Beetle, they didn’t bother telling me.

The other food-related story, also in California (imagine that!), involves a bakery in San Francisco. Workers there created a 6-foot bread sculpture of Han Solo encased in carbonite.

For those who need context, Han Solo is a Star Wars character played by Harrison Ford. In “The Empire Strikes Back,” Solo is captured by the bad guys and freeze-dried before being carted off to Jabba the Hutt’s palace, where he’s displayed like a deer’s head. Later, he gets better.

Anyway, “Pan Solo,” as the bakers christened their sculpture, is composed of “wood and two types of dough, including a type of yeastless dough with a higher sugar content that will last longer,” according to the Associated Press.

A mother-daughter duo, Catherine Pervan and Hanalee Pervan, worked on their masterpiece after regular business hours for several weeks as part of the Downtown Benicia Main Street Scarecrow Contest.

As Homer Simpson might say, “D’oh!”

Imagine living within driving distance of the world’s largest pumpkin and a bakery that displays a Star Wars character made from bread. The mind boggles.

Then I realized the two events are almost cross-curricular. What if the giant-pumpkin people dressed up their offerings to look like members of the Hutt family, those large, sluglike beings in Star Wars with fat tongues and excess saliva?

Heck, Hutts are practically begging to be pumpkin-fied.

Far off in the background, so faint nobody else can hear it (I understand there are meds for this), I discern the drumbeats of destiny, calling me to organize a cultural mash-up between horticulture and geek culture, jack-o’-lanterns and Jabba, Squash Wars and Star Wars.

And me, out in front, taking a selfie with it all.

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig.