Driving around I see farm stands with pumpkins for sale. This one is also selling roosters.
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Friday, 3 October / Wednesday, 8 October / Thursday, 16 October 2025
Driving around I see farm stands with pumpkins for sale. This one is also selling roosters.
Stores offer a plethora of pumpkins. Shoprite, Wal-Mart, Costco have boxes of them.
Boxes of pumpkins, and not just orange, smooth skinned pumpkins for carving into jack o'lanterns.
There's 'One Too Many' with delicately orange netting on a white rind.
and like slate gray stone, 'Musquee de Provence' with a few fog like patches of orange.
A man at Wal-Mart had a shopping cart piled with pumpkins, not just orange but also
paler to deep orange 'American Tondo Pumpkin' with green stripes, delicious when cooked.
I asked what he would do with so many pumpkins. Smiling, he said that first, he'd enjoy them
for holiday decoration. And afterward he would break them apart and put them out for all
the animals to eat. Deer will come, raccoons and other critters, even birds such as turkeys.
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Of course people eat pumpkins too. Some are better suited for eating than others. Their texture may be somewhat watery. And taste - so often embellished with so called pumpkin pie spice – cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and allspice. August through November, it seems that everything becomes available flavored with pumpkin spice.
Products such as pancake mix. Quick bread mix. Pumpkin spice chai latte mix.
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Perhaps you want to be more involved than a boxed ready mix, just adding milk or water, perhaps an egg.
But starting with a whole pumpkin is more than you want to face. In that case, there are cans of pumpkins
peeled, prepared, and ready to be sweetened and spiced, then baked in a pie shell for your holiday meal.
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Another seasonal item now found on store shelves is pumpkin butter.
Use as a spread for toast, pancakes, and waffles, as a dessert topping.
Corn on the cob, vine ripened tomatoes may be gone until next summer but pumpkins and winter squash are not the only seasonal produce options.
Chestnuts. Labor intensive to peel,simmer, puree but fabulous. Or simply, roasted chestnuts.
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Available year-round, purple and orange cauliflower typically have their peak season in the cooler fall and winter months.
Halloween is weeks away. Thanksgiving is even a month further out.
But we can be prepared, as the stores already have cranberries for sale.
Options and possibilities: either simply sling the bag(s) as purchased
into the freezer. Or make a cranberry chutney and process in canning jars.
And then on Sunday, 19 October 2025
Of all the really stupid seasonal pumpkin spice bandwagons on which to leap - ready for this? - pumpkin spice wild bird seed. The mind boggles. Chile is added to bird seed to keep squirrels away, and birds pay no attention. So I have my doubts, not even sure if our feathered friends can taste the spices. And I have no intention of eating bird seed, myself, spiced or not.
If you have any comments or questions, you can e-mail me: jgglatt@gmail.com
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