One of the best things about pumpkin season is watching these viny fruits decay after some spooky face has been carved into them. If you haven’t thrown out your smelly pumpkin sitting on the front porch yet, chances are the facial features you so painstakingly carved have collapsed into the middle, leaving some hideous facsimile of the original. Given that the themes of horror and frightfulness are popular at Halloween, your pumpkin’s face may now look even better than when you carved it.
It amazes me how much mileage we get out of the pumpkin during its one month visit every year. We stack them around hay and scarecrows to make our house entrances feel like fall, or we bake the flat seeds and pile enough salt on them to create a hypertensive nightmare. I admire the creative vampire freaks that scoop out the scariest part of the pumpkin, the orange slimy pulp, and put it in Halloween jars labelled “Frankenstein’s brains.”
However, when it is time for dessert, I can’t wrap my taste buds around a triangle of pumpkin pie unless it is hosed down with a mountain of whip cream and a huge dollop of vanilla ice cream. That is because pumpkin tastes like nothing to me. Neutral. I can’t even describe how nothing it is, and that is saying a lot for a writer. I would rather finish off my Thanksgiving meal with a small bowl of gravy than eat pumpkin. While dinner sees me loading up on carbs like mashed potatoes, dressing, and broccoli casserole, I believe I am holding my taste buds hostage to yet another helping of vague, odorless comfort food when pumpkin pie tries to bring closure on another holiday meal.
I try to eat a piece every year. It’s my salute to good manners and neighborly hospitality, but secretly, I feel I am subjecting my taste buds to cruel and unusual punishment, like solitary confinement. They sit in my mouth all day long, poor isolated little buds with nothing to look forward to, nothing stimulating and no hope for contact with the outside world of flavor. In fact, I begin to feel their pain as soon as they see that fork of pumpkin coming down the pie hole. It’s a food crime I tell you, and it ought to be reported.
Quotes from Mr. Pumpkin
Collage on handmade paper
That is why I have compiled for you some quotes from one recovering pumpkin, Mr. Pumpkin, who underwent year after year of sadness, loneliness, and public embarrassment and humiliation. Silenced into submission by voracious and rampant holiday consumption, this pumpkin wasn’t going to sit on the edge and take it anymore. No, siree. No more sitting by the side dishes. Mr. Pumpkin’s time has come, and he is laying it all out on the table.
Relax in your favorite armchair but hold on to your arms. Grab a pumpkin spice latte and hear the incredible story of one furious pumpkin. He is not holding back anything. Will his quotes blow the pumpkin lid off our limited set of emotions, our tired and wrinkled ways of looking at things? That’s the cliffhanger, folks. He’s revealing it all in my next eye-opening exclusive interview. Stay tuned for my next blog, the sequel to Quotes from Mr. Pumpkin.