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The best autumn traditions should fill our kitchens with the warm scent of spices, not a mountain of dirty dishes. Some of our favorite fall food rituals are the simplest things we repeat year after year, and discovering simple pumpkin ideas like leaning on a reliable box mix, grabbing a jar of pumpkin butter, or roasting fresh seeds, lets you put delicious treats on the table without an ounce of stress.
There’s a lot of pressure around seasonal food. Homemade. From scratch. Farm fresh. Passed down for six generations on a handwritten recipe card. Lovely.
But sometimes the recipe on the back of the can is the one your family expects every Thanksgiving. Sometimes you buy the same pumpkin bread kit every October because everybody likes it. Sometimes the pumpkin seeds get oil and salt and that is the entire recipe. That counts.
Food becomes tradition because we make it, share it and remember it, not because we made the pumpkin purée ourselves. Here are seven very easy ways to put pumpkin on the table this fall.
1
Make the Pumpkin Pie You Actually Like
My favorite pumpkin pie is still the Libby’s pumpkin pie I make every Thanksgiving.
I’ve made much more elaborate pumpkin pies. The pies involving hand-ground spices, homemade crust decorations and techniques that require words I don’t remember. They were wonderful. I am still making this one.
Part of tradition is knowing what is coming. You recognize the smell. You know what the kitchen looks like while it bakes. Someone asks whether the pie is done yet even though it very obviously just went into the oven!
If the familiar recipe is the one everybody likes, that’s the reason to keep making it. And if refrigerated pie crust is what gets the pie onto your table? And it happens to come out perfect every time? Use the refrigerated crust.
2
Roast the Seeds From Your Carved Pumpkin
If you carved a pumpkin, you already bought the first ingredient.
Separate the seeds from the stringy pumpkin bits, rinse them, dry them reasonably well, and toss them with a little oil and salt. Then roast them until crisp and golden.
That can be the whole recipe. Or add whatever sounds good: garlic, cinnamon sugar, chili powder, pumpkin spice, Parmesan, seasoned salt. Simple. Crunchy. Delicious!
This is not the moment when you need twelve tiny bowls of artisanal spices. Salt works.
3
Pumpkin Bread From Scratch or the Box
Speaking of Libby’s, I also buy the Libby’s Classic Pumpkin Bread Kit every year. Not because pumpkin bread cannot be made from scratch. It’s actually easy and more cost effective. For some reason though, I really like this one. It’s never dry. I never mess it up. It works.
The pumpkin is already in the box with the mix and frosting, I know what I’m getting, and making it has become one of those little signs that fall is actually here. I see the box on the shelf and I buy one every year. I think it’s the reminder that it’s Fall and the reminder to make pumpkin bread. I have to – I have the box!
A shortcut can become a tradition just as easily as a complicated recipe can, and it’s a busy time of year.
Use the box or pull out your flour. Make the loaves. Make muffins. Make mini loaves and give one away. Put a slice on a plate with coffee the next morning. Just make it.
If you use a box and someone dared to say “I’d enjoy this more if you had measured the cinnamon yourself,” don’t offer them a 2nd slice. They won’t. Know why? Because box or scratch – it’s Good!
4
Put Pumpkin Butter On Your Bread
Pumpkin butter sounds considerably more ambitious than it needs to be but it isn’t. Take a Saturday morning and whip up a batch or buy a jar from your local farm market.
Either way, once it is in the refrigerator, it becomes an easy little fall addition to things you were already going to eat: toast, biscuits, English muffins, pancakes, oatmeal, yogurt, or a spoonful beside sliced apples. There’s a little celebration Fall inside that jar. Enjoy!
There does not need to be a special pumpkin-butter event. Put the jar on the breakfast table and see what happens.
5
Add Pumpkin to Something Easy
You don’t have to build an entire recipe around pumpkin. Sometimes a little canned pumpkin and pumpkin spice can take something familiar in a fall direction.
Stir into pancake or waffle mix. Muffins. Oatmeal. French toast. A smoothie. Even a bowl of yogurt with pumpkin, cinnamon and something crunchy on top. You know that dip recipe with pumpkin and cream cheese… or the one with instant vanilla pudding. Serve with broken gingersnaps, and then you need more gingersnaps because it’s that good.
Remember that baking is a science. (Cooking is an art, Baking is a science) If you are baking, use a recipe you trust for the amount of pumpkin to add, because baking still enjoys making rules. The larger idea is simple though – Start with something you already know how to make.
Fall does not require a new culinary skill set.
6
Make a Pumpkin Recipe to Share
Pumpkin food is particularly good at leaving the house.
Make the extra mini loaf. Put four muffins in a container. Take a few slices of pumpkin bread to work. Send pie home with somebody. Drop something at a neighbor’s house. It does not have to become a gift basket. No ribbon required.
You can literally say: “I made too much, Jennifer. Please take this.” Which may be one of the most believable acts of friendship there is.
Food does not have to be elaborate to create a gathering. Sometimes it just gives you a reason to knock on a door.
7
Create an Easy Fall Board
This may be the easiest gathering idea of all.
Put a few fall things on a board or platter: slices of pumpkin bread, roasted pumpkin seeds, apple slices, cheese, crackers, pumpkin butter, maybe some cookies or chocolate. Coffee, cider or tea nearby. Done.
You do not need seventeen meats folded into roses. It does not even technically need to be a charcuterie board. It is food on a board. People eat it. Everybody is happy. And suddenly the afternoon feels like something happened. That is the kind of gathering I get behind.
Simple Pumpkin Ideas Can Create Tradition
Often times the tradition is gathering on a certain day or using certain linens and plates, but sometimes it’s the smell of pumpkin bread coming from the kitchen. The same pie on Thanksgiving. The jar that appears in the refrigerator every October. Being happy you picked up that white box from the seasonal baking display.
Shortcuts don’t take anything away from the joy. If anything, the easy things are often the ones we repeat. And repeated long enough, they become part of the season.
So make the pie you like. Buy the mix. Use canned pumpkin. Put it on the good plate. Call someone into the kitchen. That sounds like fall to me. Love it.
🌿 More soon from the porch.
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