Gourds...

Gourds at the Kilauea Cultural Festival waiting to be put to great utilitarian cultural use...

You have to get rid of all the vegetative stringy guts just like a pumpkin at Halloween. You can use sand as an abrasive to scrub away the material...

Of course another method is to get a spoon and scrape away the guts and eat it. Don't forget a bottle of water nearby to wash down the stringy stuff. I highly recommend the sand scrub method...