Stilettos, Stoli & Scribbles ~ Served With A Twist

Another Labor Day is upon us, and as I said last year, it’s the ” unofficial end of summer and the start of the slippery slide to the holiday season”.  I don’t need to reiterate my thoughts on that score, although I do believe that it’s getting worse and not better. A friend and I went into Lowe’s at the beginning of August (or maybe even the end of July) and were stopped in our tracks by all of the orange and black, along with a fair amount of purple, lights and glitter and other assorted decorations for home and lawn.

Halloween Town has franchised itself and is now located inside a hardware store.

The bags and bags of candy that are already lining store shelves are a given and are bad enough. But there is actually a more insidious sign of the impending autumn that each year creeps closer and closer to the edges of summer.

I’m talking about pumpkin. I don’t mean the versatile squash which is still rightly clinging to its vines out in the nominal patch. No, I mean the ubiquitous artificial flavoring that will now, up to and including Thanksgiving, be found in a version of nearly everything we choose to eat or drink … or sniff.

There must be a market for it. Why else would Starbucks spend good R & D money on perfecting and bottling a Pumpkin Spice Latte? Incidentally, they claim to have started the whole craze in the first place, back in 2002 when they were tasked with creating something that “screamed fall.”*  Their invention has been screaming in ever-increasing intensity, not to mention spawning countless imitators, ever since. Starbucks themselves comes out with no fewer than six new iterations of pumpkin spice something-or-other every year.

Okay, so maybe you want to change up your coffee routine, but what about the rest of it? Walk into any store anywhere in America and you’ll find donuts, muffins, cookies, candles, soaps, air fresheners … all assailing the senses and calling themselves “pumpkin spice”.

via WTP.com

Apparently it has something to do with making people feel “cozy”, which is the way we prefer to feel when the weather turns crisp and the leaves fall off the trees.  Like apple pie and it’s scent can conjure memories of Mom or Grandma with feelings of familial security,  Pumpkin Spice Cheerios should make us yearn for weekends spent leaf-peeping, scarecrows in the fields, a fire in the hearth and a football game on tv.

Personally, I don’t get it.

courtesy Outlander So.Cal Edition FB group

Pumpkin Spice better watch its back. According to Market Watch, maple is the new pumpkin.

There is, however, a great reason to look forward to fall – Eden’s Fall to be exact! We’re in the home stretch now. Be sure to vote for which version of the cover you prefer!

*Buzzfeed