My husband and I stared at each other over our un-written shopping list for the week.
“What do you want to eat?”
“I dunno.”
“What do you feel like eating?”
“I don’t really feel like anything.”
“I know – me too.”
It’s not like we’re signing on for a week of starvation, but our tastebuds feel literally exhausted. We’re suffering from Food Ennui. Talk about a first-world problem, I know. We’re tired of food. How spoiled is that? All the selection in the world at our fingertips, from fresh cold soba and sushi, to hot and salty Thai, to TGI Friday’s Honey BBQ Chicken Wings, and we don’t particularly want any of it.
We’re going on a self-imposed chicken and salad diet. Well, chicken, salad, and pumpkin pie – because the one thing we could both agree on was that pumpkin pie sounded like a good idea. Even to our tired tastebuds.
I think this is a problem a lot of us have in this country of plenty, and I think it highlights why eating locally grown seasonal produce is not only better for the body, but better for the spirit. Because, if you eat seasonally, you can’t have everything all the time. It’s hard to get tired of a red ripe juicy heirloom tomato that won’t be here come Autumn. Maybe that’s why, of all things, pumpkin pie was the only flavor that tempted us. Today is the first day of October, and it seemed like just the right time.
Incidentally – in the course of making my own whipped cream for the pumpkin pie, I made a foolish rookie error. I used cheap powdered sugar instead of regular sugar. Cheap powdered sugar is cut with corn starch (for no good reason that I can see), and it tastes funky. Don’t make the same mistake. Also, chill the mixing bowl before you start, and follow this old-fashioned Southern recipe for fantastic fresh whipped cream!