I’ll admit it. The pumpkin push is beginning to get to me. I like pumpkin, but…
There are sixty pumpkin items on the shelves at Trader Joe’s! You read that right. Sixty!
And Trader Joe’s is not alone in its bid to promote pumpkin mania. If you look hard enough, you can buy pumpkin everything in local stores–pumpkin coffee, pumpkin O’s, pumpkin salsa (yuck!), pumpkin vodka, pumpkin bologna.
No. Wait! Pumpkin bologna?!?
OK. You caught me. I made that last one up. It was a joke–a bit of whimsy. Pumpkin bologna was the most out-there ridiculous pumpkin product I could think of.
Or, was it?
As it so often does, curiosity sent me to the Internet to see if there was such an outrageous thing as pumpkin bologna. Are you ready for this? Oscar Mayer makes a pumpkin spice bologna. Do you doubt me? See it (pictured below) with your own two eyes. Who would have believed that? I’m trying not to think what it must taste like. In my world, pumpkin usually inhabits the bakery side of the aisle rather than the deli case next to jars of Bubbie’s glorious pickles.
Then…my inner skeptic (I call her Edna) got me to wondering. Is some cyber nutcase pulling my leg? Or, put in other words, is pumpkin spice bologna another depressing example of the vast “fake news” conspiracy that is bedeviling American media?
The answer is yes. Yes!
Pumpkin spice bologna is fake news according to CBS Washington, D.C. affiliate WUSA9. There is no such thing. Nope. Never existed.
Try as I may to wrap my mind around why anyone would go to the trouble to post fake pumpkin spice bologna news and photographs on the Internet, I come up empty. If it’s a joke, it is more Larry The Cable Guy than Steven Wright or George Carlin. There are no big laughs to be had from pumpkin spice bologna gags. Corny. Corny. Corny. (We’re keeping a food theme going here, people.)
Why bother?
There must be more to it than lame laughs. A conspiracy, maybe. (If you are paying any attention at all to our current political scene, whatever side you are on, there’s always a conspiracy–or, more correctly, a conspiracy theory.)
So, in that vein, I’ve decided that at some point the Russians must have been involved in conceptualizing pumpkin spice bologna and striking at an American vulnerability.
Here’s the way I see it.
There they sat, cyber actors Anatoly and Vlad (not their real names), munching on a Russian pizza (a khachanpuri) somewhere in the remote wilds of Russia. They were working away on a beta version of software intended to infiltrate and disrupt the 2016 American elections but the going was tedious and their minds ran to things gustatory. Suddenly, the proverbial lightbulb went on–at least for Anatoly. Before going big, why not test America’s gullibility by planting an outrageous story about pizza. See if it would work. Spice it up with a little porn and Americans might well pay rapt attention.
The pizza project got a big fat NYET from Vlad. No one would ever fall for a story about pizza parlors and porn and the American elections, he sniffed disdainfully. Appealing to America’s obsession with pumpkin spice was quite another matter, though. They might just be able to make that one work.
Thus was born pumpkin spice bologna and the rest was history. “Эти американцы его съест!” (Those Americans will eat it up!) And apparently we did since the story caught the attention of the CBS affiliate.
Lest you sit there disappointed, Kraft has come up with a contestant in the pumpkin bologna wars. True. It isn’t pumpkin spice bologna. But, it has potential.
Back to reality…
So, there I was at Trader Joe’s, weak pumpkin-susceptible soul that I am, surrounded by TJ’s big pumpkin push–not quite craving pumpkin spice bologna but open to other pumpkin enticements. As I wheeled my cart toward the check-out line, there it was–a towering orange end-of-aisle display of pumpkin puree. I bought three cans. But, what to make?
Cake (of course) came to mind and I settled upon this beautiful pumpkin bundt cake with a spectacular brown butter glaze. If you only make the glaze and sit there in your kitchen eating it out of the bowl with a spoon, you will be a happy camper. Drizzle it over the moist pumpkin-spiced cake and you will drift off into pumpkin season revery. And that’s not fake news!
[mpprecipe-recipe:91]
Here is the link to the original Yossy Arefi recipe from which the recipe in this post was adapted: Yossy Arefi’s Pumpkin Bundt Cake
I can attest to the fact that this cake is yummy since our good friend Lorraine brought it to us as a”welcome home “ gift. We’ve had it for breakfast, afternoon snack & of course for dessert. She also brought us several dishes to tide us over until I could get to the grocery store.
My all time favorite is her tomato crostata which I’m sure she’ll be posting soon as I keep nagging her to. It is beyond yummy Lorraine is also the best friend one could have and her sidekick. Juliet, is my wonderful “therapist “
Thanks,Sarah. I’m delighted to be your friend. Juliet is, too. Thank you for the compliments on the cake.
I ,too, succumbed to the Trader Joe’s cans of Pumpkin Puree……and was really wondering what I wanted to make when up came this delicious looking cake recipe ! ….thank you, Lorraine, I will send you a note when I taste it….
Let me know what you do with the puree, Marion. I am looking for other great pumpkin recipes. Miss you.