the pumpkinization of october

Have we gone plum-kin crazy?!

I love the fall.  It might be my favorite season (Although I say that about every season when it's at the cusp of it's glory.  Just ask me about winter on New Year's Day.). 

But for today, I'm restricting my praises to autumn.  I am drawn throughout the year to it's deep colors, choosing purple, orange and red for all manner of things from dish towels, to sneakers, to the color of my bike.  Then there are the fall vegetables.  Forget those fragile sissy spears of scallion and asparagus I raved about in April.  In October, I want the thump of a butternut squash and the heft of a box of sweet potatoes to celebrate cooler weather. 

When I made my first pan of roasted vegetables in September, Olivia came into the kitchen and said, "It smells like school!" (Meaning, it smells like the time of year when school starts, not, it smells like that horrible building in which I'm held prisoner for 6 hours a day 5 days a week!).

These little things - a side dish for dinner that we haven't had in nine months - help us notice and celebrate the year's transitions.

So what's the gripe? 

Retailers, eager to exploit the pleasures of a new season, can really drive the thing into the ground if you let them.  And pumpkin is the flave-o-fall extraordinaire.  In October, I can drink myself into a stupor on pumpkin ale then wake myself up with a pumpkin latte. For breakfast I can smear pumpkin cream cheese on a pumpkin bagel, or if I'm not in the mood for a bagel, I could whip up a batch of pumpkin pancakes from a boxed mix instead.  While I'm in the baking section, I may as well snag some pumpkin bread, or pumpkin muffin, or pumpkin scone mix so I have something to go with my pumpkin soup for lunch.  And if I don't want soup, I could lather the bakery with pumpkin butter for a special treat! 

I can't help but wonder: is there also pumpkin jerky? pumpkin quiche, or perhaps salted, gingered, or candied pumpkin nuggets? None of this is to mention the pumpkin seeds --do they sell them in pumpkin flavor?  

When you shop for these pumpkin products, you will notice piles of real but mostly inedible pumpkins posing in Halloween pyramids about the store. How ironic that when I asked the clerk if the pumpkins were edible he looked at me in surprise, "Oh!  I don't know!" he said, as if it had never occurred to him to eat a pumpkin before.

Could it be that we are surrounded by pumpkin simulacra?--representations of pumpkin-flavor so prolific that we have forgotten that the flavor of our October coffee (which tastes more like cinnamon and allspice than pumpkin if you ask me) derived in the first place from a vegetable shockingly called: a "pumpkin?"

After surviving the pumpkin pandemonium at the grocery store this morning, I'm thinking again about lessatarianism.  I didn't even eat any of that pumpkin flavored stuff, but I still feel a little ill--as if I did.  It must be the power of pumpkin-persuasion.  Whatever it is, it's got me screaming "less is more!"

As in less pumpkin-flavor.   I have nothing against a bounty of actual pumpkins.  Here are my pretties for the season: 

notice the not-dead-yet plant in the background!

Even after the grocery trip, I don't feel remotely ill when I look at this pair of squash.  One is a little pie pumpkin from my co-op, the other is a Cinderella pumpkin - as good to eat as it is to look at. 

If you're in the mood for a real pumpkin too, stop by your local farmer's market--they have the kind you can eat! It's not that the traditional pumpkin patch pumpkin will poison you or anything, but it might bore you to death with its flavorless, skimpy and stringy self. 

Instead, get a beautiful, bulgy, knotty orange or green sensation--a Fairy Tale (or Musquee de Provence if you want to be French about it), a Cinderella (pictured above), a Jarrahadale (blue/green/gray that will shock you with its orange flesh), or a Hubbard (big or little, bulbous, orange). 

If you want to have fun with it, pick one out for its pumpkin personality rather than for its perfection.  Let it cheer your kitchen or family room for a bit, then, when the day arrives, slice the thing open and roast it.  You know I'm not a food blogger, so here are the details if you need step-by-step instructions with pretty pictures.

You can scoop out your cooked pumpkin and use it as is, but I like to throw it in a colander and forget about it for an hour to let excess water drain out (unless I'm using it for soup). 

I also puree it because some of us are funny about texture around here and don't like any "strings" of pumpkin to show up in our soup or pancakes, but that step is only necessary if you're family is texturally challenged. 

If your pumpkin is big, freeze the puree in 1-cup portions so you can pull it out for various recipes.  Add it to bread, pancakes, soup, cake and pie, but for god's sake, don't stir it into your coffee or drop dollops into your beer--pureed or not!  

We usually cook a pumpkin or two each fall, making sure to save enough puree for a thanksgiving pie.  And that's about enough, because as you know, less is more.    

Happy Halloween!

teens, trash and tolerance

When the kids are little, you're all "small house, big picture."  You imagine you're changing the world because the family is a mini nation and it matters if you feed your kids organic homemade granola bars instead of nutri-grain bars, or fresh fruit instead of fruit snacks.  It matters that you kept Disney out of the house because you resented the way that corporation pioneered advertising to young children, that you limited screens to one hour or less a day, that you sent up a feminist rah! rah! when your bullish daughter clobbered the unsuspecting toddler boys on the soccer field while wearing a pink tutu, that you taught your son to carry ants outside in the name of world peace, that you taught them both to pick up trash, conserve energy, walk instead of ride, and to forever hold love over hate.

Then you find yourself in the checkout line at the grocery store, your cart overflowing with individual-sized GatorAid and water bottles, paper and plastic dining products, fake-flavored chips, big-ag ground beef, white flour rolls, processed cheese and unnaturally blue frosted cupcakes because, just for this one day, for this one end-of-year party, couldn't our family please please be normal, Mom, PLEASE!?

Dejected, and even embarrassed by the the wagon-load of pure and unadulterated shit that you find yourself suddenly responsible for, you quickly and furtively stuff the plastic crap and the styrofood into your van, hoping no one, especially a reader of this blog, has seen you.  You quell the anguish in your thumping little eco-friendly heart by telling yourself it's just one day, that your family will return to it's green and healthy routines the very next morning.

But when you arrive home, you remember that things in your small house have taken a turn.  You find every light in every room glowing bright, two TVs blaring (why do you have two TVs?), the Xbox, YouTube, Instagram, Vine and unlimited text messaging all operating in tandem.  When you forget your indoor voice and demand to know who belongs to the pile of junk-food wrappers on the end table, your son swaggers through the room cradling an entire box of Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies that he purchased after his newly-licenced buddies drove him the quarter mile to 7-11. He shrugs and says he'll pick it up "later." 

You turn to your younger daughter for reprieve only to find her Instagramming herself as she dips gluten-free pretzels into a bowl of melted chocolate chips while watching Hannah Montana reruns out of nostalgia for the Disnified childhood you didn't know she had.  When she sees you, she leaps out of her chair because she's so excited to tell you that her new favorite line to her new favorite song is: "She's the hottest bitch in the house!" which she sings for you with unexpected "hottest bitch" know-how as she gyrates about the kitchen. 

You despair that the "big picture" you so hoped to change with your little family is something so relentless and impenetrable that it will instead swallow your children despite your greatest efforts.  You wonder if you should even write about it anymore.

Until your niece sends you a music video.  When you watch it with your kids, your son says, "cool," and your daughter adds it to the short list of songs she overplays daily.  Their reactions ease your worries. On the surface, the video doesn't have anything to do with food, or plastic, or screen time.  It's about sexuality.  But in your moment of despair, it struck a chord anyway because for you, these things are all connected: Whether for the planet, the self, or the Other, you've tried to teach your kids about love and respect and justice. You've tried to teach your kids that it's all the "same love."   When someone else stands up with that message in a culture that wants to squash it, you are reminded to do so too.