Fall is great! The seasons G.O.A.T, if you will. What’s not to love? Sweater weather, pumpkin flavored everything, cooler temperatures, football season, one of the two best Reese’s shapes reappears, corn mazes, apple picking, lumberjack fashion is in style, there’s a pair of boots for every outfit, the leaves change colors, your A/C bill becomes negligible, you can run at any time of day and not have to wake up at 4AM to beat the humidity, and holidays centered mostly around food are right around the corner – to name a few. 

It’s also one of the only times where it’s acceptable to play with your food. No one will yell at you. No one will scold you. No one will take away your dessert. No one will lecture you about not playing with your food. No, instead they will actively encourage it. What a fun twist of fate that is! All year long you’ve been carving pictures in the butter container, decorating your pancakes with syrup art, rearranging your peas and carrots into a sad face to no avail. Only an extra helping of vegetables and an indefinite suspension of your knife privileges. 

There’s whole businesses dedicated to selling the one food not intended to be consumed after picking. Entire block parties where people come together and compete for the best designs. Food Network shows where professionals show off their skills. Pause. How does one become a professional? How many practice attempts were needed? How do they have endless time to slice, dice, and create next level designs in a food? How does one get into this profession, and why? At what point do you wake up and decide that your next hobby will be food mutilation? How much money does this cost? What am I even talking about?

Pumpkin carving, of course! Every kid’s food dream. And, apparently, some adults’ as well. What happens if you carve a beautiful piece of art into the side of a pumpkin? You probably get some candy as a celebratory treat. You definitely get bragging rights over your siblings, friends, co-workers, neighbors – whoever is judging their artistic abilities against yours. This fall tradition is hilarious to me. So many interesting choices for an “activity” and I have questions on how it began.

Think about this for a second: at some point, someone was bored (I’m assuming) and decided to take a knife and carve a design into the side of a pumpkin. After cutting the top off and removing all of the pumpkin guts, of course. Then, they decided to put a candle in it at night to show off the disturbing jack-o-lantern to everyone within a visual radius. Wut? If a friend came up to you today, handed you a jagged knife, and asked if you wanted to hollow out a watermelon and carve a design in it you’d probably smell their breath for traces of liquid influence. Or question your taste in people. To clarify quickly, cutting the top off a fruit and filling it with liquor is not the same as mutilating it for strictly visual entertainment.

Such a fascinating experiment in human decisions when left alone for too long, don’t you think? Makes you wonder what new “traditions” we may see when COVID finally decides to go back to its spaceship and travel to a different planet. Of all pastimes, I usually avoid ones with sharp objects. As a general safety rule. I’m more of a go to the pumpkin patch, pick out a perfect small to medium sized pumpkin, and use a modern decorating approach to simply place it on my porch. If I’m feeling crazy, I might draw on it. Feels more humane.

Alright, jumping off my pedestal for now. If you know someone who would enjoy this post and want to share it with them, that would be awesome. Sharing is caring, after all. Don’t forget to subscribe to get these in your inbox twice weekly and follow TRP on Twitter for frequent musings. Thanks for reading!

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