Tag Chewing Gum

Pump It Up

Michael 3 Comments

PumpkinFor the last few years I’ve publicly marveled at the extent to which each fall pumpkin has invaded our daily lives. Please understand that I am the last person on earth who would turn down an extra slice of pumpkin pie for dessert. I have my very own self with my very own hands fashioned a pumpkin cheese cake. I will wait with rapt anticipation for the once a year release of Reese’s pumpkin shape peanut butter cups. (Yeah, I know they’re not pumpkin flavored and barely look like a pumpkin but it’s my post in my blog and I happen to like peanut butter cups, or didn’t you read “Caution, Falling Pump(kin) Ahead” last year?) But I am not ready for pumpkin soap! That’s right, soap, not soup. Soap!!!

I thought that when we saw pumpkin flavored chewing gum three years ago we saw the most extreme pumpkining we were going to see. (You didn’t miss that one too, did you? Ok, go refresh your memory at “It’s The Not So Great Pumpkin.” We’ll wait for you.) Since then, pumpkin flavoring pretty much has been kept food based. Granted there have been some expectedly unexpected choices. Pumpkin salsa to go with your pumpkin chips, and pumpkin cream cheese to top your pumpkin bread are a couple of the newer fall flavor offerings. The newest pumpkin food that I’ve seen this year is the pumpkin flavored chicken sausage. A double feature at the “What’s Wrong with this Food Film Festival” but not so wrong that I couldn’t be talked into tossing a couple on the grill and see what happens when you cross a spring chicken with a fall gourd.

SoapBut up until this week’s grocery store ad, pumpkin chewing gum was the most extreme pumpkin offering out there. So extreme it was that after that one sighting in 2014 it didn’t even show up in the case load buy outs stores. But this week we might have stepped over the edge. This week we might not be coming back from. This week, somebody, somewhere, for some reason…..is going to actually buy…..pumpkin pie liquid hand soap in a convenient pump dispenser.

Oh, for sure, it’s not the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

(Oh, in case you’re wondering, I still haven’t seen any pumpkin tea. Have you?)

It’s the Not So Great Pumpkin

Michael 2 Comments

According to the gardening section of our local paper this was a banner year for pumpkins.  Around here you don’t need a reporter to tell you that.  Pumpkin harvests are far ahead of any recent year and they are still growing.  Pumpkins are everywhere!  Grocery stores have them by the crateful; pumpkin patches are overflowing; backyard gardeners actually grew usable pumpkins this year. On a trip to a drug store He tripped right into a crate of fresh pumpkins right there in the front aisle between the cell phone cases and the “as seen on TV” end cap.  Truly, pumpkins are everywhere!

Homes are filling with plans for pumpkin pies, rolls, cakes, cookies, and custards.  All of the good things that pumpkin has to offer when fall rolls around are going to be as everywhere as the pumpkins themselves are today.  And that’s good.  That’s great.  Usually fall means canned pumpkin for some pies and a pumpkin roll.  But it’s only in the years where there are so many fresh pumpkins that home bakers become more adventurous and try their hands at some of the great pumpkin offerings usually paged right on by in their cookbooks.

Unfortunately, “adventurous” is not limited to the merry home cook.  The commercial world has also caught on that there are a lot of pumpkins this year.  For years we’ve dealt with the pumpkin shaped peanut butter cups and the pumpkin shaped marshmallow “peeps” and the chewy pumpkins that you find on the shelf next to the candy corn and keep hoping they taste like the candy corn but they really taste more like the cob.  And that’s usually it.  A few things that look like pumpkins and taste like something else.  Well, not any more.

It must have started with the coffee shops.  Every year they all come up with their own version of pumpkin spice coffee.  Not bad if you like pumpkin and coffee.  Sort of like eating a piece of pumpkin pie while speeding down the highway on your way to work.  (Not really but those guys from Seattle spend a bazillion dollars wanting us to feel that way and who are we to burst their bubble?)  But now, things are out of control!  Just in yesterday’s paper, in one advertising insert for just one mega-store chain, it said that you can go in and buy pumpkin flavored ground coffee, tea bags, latte, oatmeal, yogurt, Oreos, Toll House chips, and chewing gum.  Pumpkin flavored chewing gum?  Really?

We think maybe someone is carrying this pumpkin thing a little too far now.  Pumpkin flavored chewing gum.  Hmm.  That will show up at the discount houses soon.  Now if you’ll excuse us, we saw a recipe for pumpkin pie rice pudding we want to try.

Now that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you.