Pumpkin Shortage Strikes Close to Home

This year our Thanksgiving has been disrupted by The Great Pumpkin Shortage of 2009.

This year, it turns out, our grocery stores do not look like this:

Photo by flickr user ann-dabney

Instead, where the canned pumpkin should be, there were pre-made pies. Because while there is a shortage of canned pumpkin, apparently the bakery had enough to make pies. I find this to be highly suspicious... Anyways, after searching high and low for pumpkin and finally asking only to find that I was stupid and should have bought my pumpkin a month ago, we thought we'd trick them and go to the organic section.

The organic section of Kroger's felt like home. Or as much like the Wedge as Kroger's can possibly feel like. With still no pumpkin in sight, we bought frozen sweet potatoes. (Ironically, the same brand that we would have bought at the Wedge.) The thing is, at my house we are weird. (Previously established here, here, and here.) We don't eat pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. We eat pumpkin cake. It's like pumpkin pie met yellow cake and they had a baby called pumpkin cake. It is delicious, especially with cool whip and/or whipped cream on top. Yum Yum Yum. So we couldn't just buy a bakery pie.

Once at home, we went to two gas stations thinking that maybe they'd have pumpkin. Ok, that's a lie. Really we went on a walk to several gas stations, bought a paper, and coconut m&ms and also happened to peruse the shelves where they'd keep pumpkin, but no pumpkin was in sight.

So our pumpkin cake this year is a sweet potato cake. Mom's eaten a slice already and claims it tastes no different. The true test will be tomorrow. The northerner in me says it just can't be the same, but the southerner in me tells me to give it a try. Now I know though, pumpkin purchases cannot be put off til the last minute.