Pumpkin Spice & All that's Nice

An ode to Trader Joe's, its fall product bonanza, and a pumpkin-apple loaf!🍁🎃🍂

Finally, after our late-summer summer, it’s officially fall—though that’s a statement I make with caution. In Southern California, summer can easily come roaring back just after you’ve said “goodbye and good riddance!” Sometimes it even shows up in December when winter holiday celebrations are in full swing!

But for now, at least, the temps are cooler. Pumpkins are appearing on doorsteps and pumpkin spice on the grocery stores. At my local Trader Joe’s, there’s suddenly a sea of orange and a seemingly bottomless supply of items with “pumpkin” somewhere in the label. When I put “pumpkin” into the search box on TJ’s site, it came up with 78 products, along with 26 recipes, mostly using TJ’s products, as you might expect.

Here are just a few of the items on offer: pumpkin spice pretzels, Pumpkin O’s Cereal, Pumpkin Spice Cold Brew, Pumpkin Overnight Oats, Pumpkin Ravioli (regular and gluten-free!), Pumpkin Spiced Madeleines, pumpkin ice cream (a recommended topping for TJ’s Pumpkin Spice Snickerdoodle Cookies), Pumpkin Spice Coffee and Rooibos tea, Gluten-Free Pumpkin Spice Bagels, even Pumpkin Spice Chardonnay and pumpkin ale, and for the pooch, pumpkin dog treats!

Then there are the non-edible pumpkin items like pumpkin hand soap, pumpkin body scrub, and pumpkin hand cream. (Warning: don’t feed them to the dog!)

And of course there are the more traditional items you would expect—the ones I’ve been seeing for years: pumpkin bread & muffin mix, pumpkin butter, not to mention pie pumpkins and canned pumpkin purée for those like me who want to make their own pumpkin baked goods.

As you can probably tell by now, I’m a huge TJ’s fan. There are two stores within a mile and a half of our house; chances are I’m in one of them at least twice a week, if not more! And yet while ever curious when it comes to food, I’m more often a spectator in the aisles, gawking at the all the new products and maybe buying one or two, then filling my cart with everyday staples. (My husband Jeff contends that my usual time spent at a TJ’s is about two to three hours, but that’s only when I’m sneaking shots of the newbie items with my phone!)

Pumpkin spice-flavored coffee, ornamental pumpkins and cans of organic pumpkin purée at Trader Joe's.

What? No pumpkin in pumpkin spice?

The truth is, though I’m a big Trader Joe’s fan girl, I’m not so fond of pumpkin spice—at least not when it’s added to everything. For instance, I love coffee, but not the flavored variety—no hazelnut, chai or amaretto in my mocha java, thank you! And no pumpkin spice either. The same goes for tea.

But for most people that blend of warm spices labeled pumpkin spice—usually some combination of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves—evokes memories of autumns (and winters) past, of cozy holiday gatherings and enticing smells emanating from the kitchen, and, in particular, baked goods—pumpkin pie, muffins and loaves, maybe a creamy soup, all with that provocative scent. No wonder everyone and his brother (and sister) wants to jump on it.

McCormick introduced Pumpkin Pie Spice in 1934. It’s used for many things other than pie, including this pumpkin martini, for which there is a recipe on the McCormick website. (Screenshot of McCormick photo)

So how did we become so enamored with a spice? I certainly don’t recall any such over-the-top pumpkin-related craze when I was a kid—but stores didn’t start selling Halloween candy and decor in August then either. In those days, pumpkins were strictly for doorsteps, carved into wide grins or grimaces, and many of the spices in pumpkin spice were folded into my mother’s gingersnaps or added to honey cake for Rosh Hashanah.

Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Pie Spice ($2.99) includes cinnamon, ginger, lemon peel, nutmeg, cloves and cardamom. Though the name seems “a bit limiting,” the marketing info says TJ’s is sticking with it because “people generally know exactly what you’re talking about.”

And once upon a time, pumpkin spice was actually called “pumpkin pie spice”—and it was associated with a pie and not much else. An article on Allrecipes.com credits McCormick with being the first to come out with the spice in 1934 and notes that it didn’t have any pumpkin in it, just cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and allspice.

That was long before Starbucks put it on the map and took the pie out of it.

Starbucks pumpkin beverages touted at our local Ralphs supermarket.

According to a little research I did, it seems that Starbucks may have been largely responsible for sparking the spice’s wild popularity when it introduced its Pumpkin Spice Latte in 2003. Still the company’s most popular seasonal beverage (though they’ve added a host of others), it’s often abbreviated as PSL and gets a lot of attention on Instagram. But the love isn’t unanimous—there are always a few PSL contrarians in the bunch as evidenced by the following post:

It got 10,000 likes—and one comment: “Now you did it. Pumpkin spice whiskey—somebody is going to do it.” Undoubtedly somebody will.

Do you shop TJ’s?

One of two Trader Joe’s near us.

Are you close to a Trader Joe’s? We’re completely spoiled in California. The state has 171 of these iconic groceries with their distinctive red signs and selective product lines. That’s one-third of the total number of stores in the U.S., 547 in 43 states.

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Perhaps that’s not so surprising considering the first Trader Joe’s opened here in 1967 in Pasadena. It was the brainchild of Joe Coulombe, a convenience store owner who saw an opportunity to appeal to increasingly well-traveled, college-educated folks with an appetite for a broader array of food and drink but limited means.

Trader Joe’s founder Joe Coulombe in 1975 at one of his stores. (Photo by Leroy Watson via the Los Angeles Times)

Observed Los Angeles Times columnist Mary McNamara in a 2021 article about the posthumous publication of Coulombe’s memoir, Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys:

“It’s hard to think of any other market that holds so much sway over its customers, especially a chain with problematic parking and such a frankly bizarre inventory. How did a store that sells 15 kinds of dark chocolate and zero kinds of aluminum foil, a chain that proudly advertises popular items with limited availability, even come into being, never mind becoming wildly successful?”

You might actually have to read Coulombe’s memoir to learn the answer to that one!

Trader Joe’s is famous (or infamous) for its Fearless Flyer, filled with puns and wordplay, along with fun and funny product descriptions and graphics. Pumpkin products are joined by other fall favorites like maple, apple and butternut squash.

Pumpkin Apple Bread

My three pumpkin-apple mini-loaves—the perfect fall treat.

Meanwhile, I decided to make one of my favorite fall treats—pumpkin apple bread from The Gourmet Cookbook, edited by Ruth Reichl, whose excellent blog you can find right here on Substack. The combination of these two fall staples strikes a chord for me. Here’s a link to a blog with the recipe.

After making these loaves for years, I’ve changed a few things:

• I add a handful of chopped nuts (usually pecans, walnuts or hazelnuts) to the streusel. I’ve been known to add some homemade granola.

• The recipe calls for cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and allspice. This time, as I had some TJ’s Pumpkin Pie Spice, I subbed some for half of the cinnamon, then added the other spices. You could easily just use PPS, but I really do prefer the individual spices. (Don’t forget to check the expiration dates!)

• I often halve the recipe, which makes two large (9-by-5-inch) loaves, and put divide the batter among smaller loaf pans (5 1/2” x 3” x 2 1/4”). The loaves are done in less time—usually 35 to 40 minutes—and they do make great gifts!

• Leaving out the apples and subbing chocolate chips wouldn’t be amiss—nor would turning some or all of the batter into muffins! For something more decorative for the holidays, use a bundt pan!

And Pumpkin Chili too!🌶

If you prefer chili seasoning to pumpkin spice and savory pumpkin dishes to sweet, here’s another idea for you—pumpkin chili! After throwing together a turkey-sausage chili the other night, I added a cup of leftover canned pumpkin, and voilà! Magic! It’s super simple, and, if you’re a total pumpkin spice addict, you could add that too or just a pinch of cinnamon. I didn’t, and it was pretty darn good! The pumpkin added a warmth and creaminess and complemented the tomato perfectly. If you’d like the recipe, please message me.

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And that’s it for recipes and this edition of RuthTalksFood. Please let me know in comments or via private message if you have thoughts on pumpkin products, pumpkin (pie) spice, Trader Joe’s or the fall marketing blitz in general. I’m all ears.

Thanks as always for reading. I’m off to Japan to visit family for 10 days. I’ve been told to expect a lot of fall flavors and products—and very little pumpkin spice! I’ll let you know what I find after I return.

Ruth 🎃