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Does Everything Have to be Pumpkin Flavored?

Posted on October 12, 2022 by susanrray

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread and a cup of coffee taste good these cool fall mornings. That’s black coffee, not flavored, and I learned to like the bread when I ate it with my Grands at the Great Harvest Bread Company last fall.  They called it The Pumpkin Bread Store and were disappointed when Cookeville’s Great Harvest closed this spring.

            Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread took me out of my food comfort zone because I’ve always liked plain pumpkin, as in pie.  I’m almost appalled by the many foods and drinks flavored with pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice. 

Nothing tastes better than pumpkin pie, topped with real whipped cream, after a Thanksgiving Day turkey and cornbread dressing feast.  Even now, I look forward to baking a pie using Mom’s recipe, which she tore from a Libby’s Pumpkin can label.  And that recipe doesn’t include pumpkin pie spice. 

Libby’s recipe was probably created before the spice was bottled, which proves to me that pumpkin pie spice is totally unnecessary. It’s simply a concoction of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, and depending on someone’s tolerance of allspice and ginger, one or both can be added.

When the calendar turned to September, store shelves magically filled with all things pumpkin and coffee shops promoted pumpkin lattes.  A Facebook friend shared pictures of her fall shopping haul, and while all items weren’t pumpkin flavored, many were. Pumpkin Spice Trail Mix.  Pumpkin Spice Coconut Granola.  Pumpkin Chipotle. Pumpkin breakfast bars. Pumpkin yogurt.  Pumpkin spice craft soda.  

I can imagine most of those tastes, but pumpkin chipotle?  Smoked dried jalapeno chili peppers flavored pumpkin?

As I shopped for groceries recently, I noticed several favorite year-around foods were featured on the end caps to entice impulse shoppers, except these items were the flavor of fall.  Honey Nut Cheerios make a good snack eaten hand to mouth or with milk for a meal, but I won’t buy Pumpkin Cheerios.

Chocolate marshmallows make double chocolate s’mores; I’m almost certain that pumpkin marshmallows would taint milk chocolate Hershey bars. I really like the sweet and salty combination of yogurt covered pretzels; I’m not sure about pumpkin yogurt pretzels.

I’ve tried pumpkin recipes.  When I ate a warm pumpkin sugar cookie, I wished I’d baked chocolate chip cookies, and pumpkin cheesecake bars are a poor substitute for pumpkin pie.

After Great Harvest closed, Daughter began baking Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread and it’s really good, but on a recent trip I spotted a Great Harvest Bakery and packed a loaf of my Grands’ favorite bread in my carry-on flight bag. I had to do some fast talking to explain to the airport security officer that my Tennessee Grands would be so disappointed to not get pumpkin bread from the real Pumpkin Bread Store. 

When my Grands and I ate the bread, I decided it’s best eaten with people you love.  And who knows, maybe pumpkin yogurt pretzels are worth trying.  Just don’t mess with my coffee.

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A Fun Halloween Surprise

Posted on October 28, 2020 by susanrray

What’s the most unusual thing you’ve received in the mail?  When Daughter was a college student, she sent a shoebox filled with leaves.  Colorful fall leaves from Berry College in Georgia.  Why would she send this when our yard and driveway were completely covered with leaves? 

            As teenagers, Daughter and Son teased me about my Leaf Reports.  Beginning when they were very young, I talked about leaves.  “Look, the trees have big buds.  In a few days, we’ll see leaves,” I said in the spring.  During summers, we identified trees by their leaves.  My children said I gave daily Fall reports: the changing colors, falling leaves, and the crunch of dried leaves.  Daughter’s box of leaves was a happy surprise, and I kept that love gift for years, stacked with other shoe boxes in my closet.

            Last week the mail carrier delivered an even more unusual gift.  Our 15-year old Grand was visiting and said, “Look what you got in the mail, Gran.”  He pointed to a small pumpkin, about seven inches tall and six inches in diameter.  It has a jagged-tooth smile, a triangle nose, and smiling half circle eyes drawn with a black marker.   

            “What?” I said, “This was in the mailbox?”  My Grand explained that the pumpkin was delivered to front porch.  “Where’s the box it came in?” I asked.

            “There wasn’t a box.  Look, your name is on it,” he said. There’s a hand-written address label secured with clear packing tape and a United States postage label showing the mailing cost, $8.70.  Another postal service label gives the tracking number. 

            “You mean it came through the mail like this?” He looked at me with the look that only a teenager can give.  I’m glad he didn’t say, “Duh, Gran.” 

            There was no return address so the person who sent Happy Jack wanted to remain anonymous.  The only clues were the hand writing looked familiar and “Mailed from zip code 38501” was on the label.  But who’d spend $8.70 to mail a pumpkin?  Why not just deliver it? 

            Maybe it was the person I’d talked with a few days before and she and I agreed that we love a good mystery and love solving it.  Maybe it was the friend who left a foot-tall yellow rubber duck on my front porch a few years ago.  Maybe it was the friend who likes to play jokes and knew I needed a good laugh.  All three of them responded to my text inquiries, “No, not me.” 

            I sent pictures of Happy Jack to Daughter and Son and they shared them with their families so we all laughed about this surprise and tried to figure out the sender.  After many guesses and sending many texts of inquiry, I received this reply: “Yes! I thought it’d be a fun thing to show all those Grands!”  

            Happy Jack sits on my back door step, and he is fun for all of my family.  But I’ll not tell who sent him because, after all, he was sent anonymously.             Happy Halloween!

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It’s Pumpkin Time!

Posted on October 20, 2018 by susanrray

Now that fall has arrived, pumpkins are everywhere. Porches are decorated with all sizes and not just traditional orange pumpkins. Shades of orange range from muted tangerine to vibrant red-orange. Green pumpkins are colored deep forest hues and soft mellow sea green. And some are creamy white and bright eye opening white.

I remember when I was a kid, Dad and I carried pale-colored pumpkins from the garden that were either carved into simple jack-o-lanterns or cooked for Thanksgiving pies. But what’s most surprising today is the many recipes for foods and beverages made from pumpkins. When Mom roasted the seeds, we thought we’d eaten all things pumpkin.

While turning the pages in a magazine that featured the savory side of pumpkins, it occurred to me that I could serve pumpkin for breakfast, lunch, and supper, and offer pumpkin snacks in between. Then searching online, I discovered enough recipes for pumpkin menus for a week, and never repeat, but that might be pumpkin overload.

A quote from Country Living magazine states, “The only thing better than fall mornings are fall mornings with pumpkins.” I’ll start the day with pumpkin spice flavored coffee and serve eggs baked in a mini pumpkin with bacon and roasted squash. I’ll bake maple pumpkin scones and offer pumpkin bread, to replace boring banana bread, for those who would turn up their noses at scones. And pumpkin butter will up the flavor when spread on scones and bread.

For a mid-morning energy boost, how about a pumpkin protein shake topped with spiced pumpkin whipped cream and cinnamon?

Soup, the savory side of pumpkin, for lunch. In less than fifteen minutes, I can make traditional pumpkin soup with chicken broth, onion, and garlic. Two other recipes are tempting: Pumpkin Chili and Coconut Curry Creamy Pumpkin Soup made with coconut milk.   What’s better than cornbread with soup? How about pumpkin cornbread?

Afternoon snacks have to be roasted pumpkin seeds. Just like Mom made with the pulp wiped off the seeds, but not washed. Seasoned with butter and kosher salt and roasted about 25 minutes. But I’m tempted to try Rosemary-Parmesan Pumpkin Seeds or Taco-Lime Pumpkin Seeds.

            Husband likes pasta so I’ve narrowed the dinner choices to ravioli or fettuccine or lasagna. Pumpkin Ravioli with Sage Brown Butter or Pumpkin Goat Cheese Fettuccine Alfredo or Cheesy Pumpkin Lasagna. All can be served with Roasted Pumpkin-and-Baby Kale Salad and Pumpkin Butter Brie Pull-Apart Bread.

The recipes for pumpkin desserts are limitless. Cakes, tortes, cookies, bars, rolls, cobbler, crème brulee, mousse. But I really like plain pumpkin pie, like Mom made using a recipe she tore from the wrapper of a can of evaporated milk sometime in the 1950s.

So many pumpkins. So many recipes. But I have an orange one and a couple of white ones on my porch, and I really won’t serve or eat pumpkin all day long. But I’ll venture beyond roasted seeds and pie. There are just so many choices.

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It’s Pumpkin Time

Posted on October 19, 2014 by susanrray

search-1 “What happened to that pumpkin?” my young Grand asked. She pointed to what looked like a normal pumpkin to me so I asked what she meant. Why did she think something had happened? “It’s a funny color. Did it fade?” she asked.

No, it didn’t fade. It was a tannish-orange colored pumpkin like the ones that everyone cut to make jack-o-lanterns when I was a kid growing up in Pickett County. A plain pumpkin. The same kind of pumpkin that Mother cut up, scooped out the meat, and used to make a pumpkin pie. A field pumpkin.

Field pumpkin – an apt name. Dad grew them in a field, usually close to or in the cornfield. He and I would walk among the dry corn stalks, which scratched and scraped my arms, searching for a perfect jack-o-lantern pumpkin. It had to sit flat and not tip over. The skin had to be smooth with no ugly bumps, at least on one side. I liked a tall, skinny pumpkin. Then there was plenty of space for a face to be cut out. Triangles for his eyes and nose and a mouth with jagged teeth. And we’d dig out a place inside on the bottom to stand a tall, maybe a six-inch tall, candle. A real candle.

My Grand’s questions made me notice all the many varieties of pumpkins available at Farmer’s Market that Saturday morning. So how many kinds are there? A website for seeds (http://www.johnnyseeds.com) lists 67 pumpkin varieties. Looking at the pictures, I counted 45, almost 70%, bright orange ones. Only one was the color of every jack-o-lantern my daddy helped me cut.

The seeds available on the website promise to grow pumpkins in many shapes and colors, and all sizes! Most are traditional round shapes, but some look like gourds and one like a banana. Most are bright orange, but some are green or blue-green or white or speckled with orange and green splotches. The Marina Di Chioggia variety is the size of a softball and has a “blistery, bubbled, slate blue-green rind.” A five pound Bliss has a “mottled appearance that resembles a frog’s skin.”

The Dill’s Atlantic Giant variety commonly grows to be 100 pounds and can be up to 1500 pounds. I wonder if the 1405 pound pumpkin that won first place for giant pumpkin at the Great Pumpkin Festival in Allardt, Tennessee a couple of weeks ago was a Dill’s Atlantic?

While my Grand and I wandered through Farmer’s Market that day, I told her that she could choose a pumpkin to take home. One that would be all her own. She chose a tiny one – bright orange of course – that just fit in her small hand. I’m pretty sure it’s a Wee-B-Little.

And I bought two pumpkins for fall decorations, although my Grand said they probably weren’t real pumpkins because they weren’t the right color. A soccer ball size white one and a green and white striped one that looks like a big gourd. And we bought a tall, bright orange one to cut for a jack-o-lantern. Why choose a faded pumpkin when you can have a bright orange one?

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