Written by Allie Clay
I love fall. There are so many fabulous things that only happen from mid-September to Thanksgiving: bonfires, hayrides, football, cool weather, pretty leaves, county fairs and, of course, everything pumpkin.I live for pumpkin pie (and pumpkin bread, bisque, seeds, cookies, scented candles, hand soap and anything else you could ever infuse with that deliciously spicy flavor). So you can imagine my disappointment upon futilely searching the grocery store the other day for canned pumpkin and inquiring of an employee, only to be told that they didn’t have any and that they didn’t know when they would get more. Apparently the shortage from last year is still in effect.How was I going to make my pumpkin bread? Luckily, I had a plan.Last fall, I spent the semester in London. Autumn is even shorter there than it is here; they start decorating for Christmas the day after Halloween because, as it turns out, the English don’t celebrate Thanksgiving (who knew?). They also don’t sell canned pumpkin in grocery stores. Already deprived of many of my American fall traditions, I was not going to go without pumpkin bread. I remembered my grandma telling me once about roasting a pumpkin to make pie, and I decided to give it a try.I looked up instructions, roasted my pumpkin and made some cookies. It was thrilling and much easier than I expected! So I didn’t really mind that the grocery store didn’t have the canned, processed, preservative-laden kind. I just calmly proceeded to the produce section to select my own to take home and roast.While scraping the seeds out of my cute little pumpkin, I began to wonder why we buy the canned kind, anyway. Roasting a pumpkin isn’t really hard or time-consuming. In fact, it’s cheaper, tastier, probably healthier, and it’s quite fun. Has society become so used to not doing anything personally that we employ the middle man unnecessarily at times? It certainly seems so.My practical and romantic sides are constantly at war, and I’m ashamed to admit that practicality usually wins. I grew up reading the “Little House” books, and I realize how difficult that world was. I’m endlessly grateful for machines that wash my clothes and dishes so I can take naps and go to work, and to farmers in Illinois and Mexico who grow my produce while I go to class instead of tending a garden all day.Life is absolutely easier with modern technology, especially in the world of food. I get it. I appreciate it—I certainly can’t make my own clothes. But I can roast my own pumpkin. And I could grow my own garden and I (probably) could learn how to fix my car myself. I could learn to be more self-reliant. But why bother?If nothing else, doing things the hard way, even when unnecessarily so, builds character. I realize I sound like someone’s father, but I think it’s important to value the difficulty of things that we constantly take for granted. We’ll never know how much work something is until we try it for ourselves.For example, do we have a clue how much work we’re spared just by using online databases to write a research paper? Or how much time it takes to bake a loaf of bread? Or how wonderful it is not to have to kill the chicken we eat ourselves?Most of us don’t. So I guess my suggestion is to do something the hard way. Take the less-traveled path; be a producer of something. Roast your own pumpkin, even if you can’t grow one.ALLIE CLAY is a guest contributor for the Bison. She may be contacted ataclay1@harding.edu.
