The Great Pumpkin Mystery

The first sign of cool evening breezes and sight of changing leaves not only toll the beginning of autumn, but of pumpkin season.

I am not sure how the tradition of eating pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving began, but if wikipedia doesn’t include it in their vast database, then essentially it is unimportant. What I do know is that pumpkin is delicious.

I love pumpkin – pumpkin muffins, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin flavored coffee, and yes, even pumpkin flavored pasta (try it with shitake mushrooms and gorgonzola – amazing). So you can understand the utter panic that I experienced when three grocery stores sold out of pumpkin in mid-October (this was after my first massive round of pumpkin baking, of course). Luckily, my roommate came to the rescue and lent me a can so that I could whip up a batch of scrumptious chocolate chip pumpkin cookies.

At first, I thought that this pumpkin scare was a fluke – maybe New Yorkers just had an usually high pumpkin appetite to satisfy this past October, but when I started poking around the Internet, I really went into panic mode when Nestlé (the supplier of 85% of canned pumpkin) reported an uncommonly bad crop this year and feared running out of pumpkin before Thanksgiving. With a scant crop, the only obvious solution is to increase the prices, so that the diehard pumpkin fans can satiate their cravings. However, I worry that the revered status of the pumpkin pie parallels hot dogs on the 4^th of July, and the tradition will elevate the canned pumpkin to a nearly-inelastic state, which would only just gauge the consumers instead of distributing it based on valuation.

Unfortunately, no one really thinks about running out of pumpkin. I purchase it year-round. Pumpkin seems to be in plentiful supply. I have always thought of pumpkin as a rather hearty crop. I know that there are alternatives like baking butternut squash, but that is just not time-effective for a pumpkin fiend like myself – it is a viable option for those Thanksgiving only pumpkin bakers. So the bottom line is, if you cannot live without that quintessential pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving – buy it, and don’t expect it to go on sale anytime soon.

 

* This blog was crafted while consuming a pumpkin muffin. The crumbs in my keyboard serve as evidence.