Last fall I had a pumpkin. It grew in my garden to an unanticipatedly healthy size, and, once picked, sat on my counter for a solid six months, during which time I sat nearby, gnawing my fingernails and waiting for it to turn into a solid gold carriage...i.e. to magically slice itself open and toast its own seeds into crunchy yumminess, and roast its own flesh to a state of luscious, pie-ready perfection. This never happened. Instead, in April or May of the year following the pumpkin’s birth and subsequent harvest, I placed it in my yard, still perfectly sound and wholesome, and wished it away, being sick of the sight of it. This time, the magic worked, and in a matter of days the entire pumpkin had more or less vanished, leaving the earth slightly more enriched and slimy than it had been. The moral of this story is: If you possess only one small, underly serrated steak knife with a disreputable past, you’ll probably never be in the perfect mood t...