Autumn Salads: Butternut Squash! Brussels Sprouts! 🍂
But hold the nostalgia.
AUTUMN DOES THINGS TO HUMAN BEINGS. For instance, the boys in the lab claim they’re not nostalgic. But every year, the minute the first crimson leaf spirals out of the sky and lands at their feet, these two grown men become so overwhelmed by autumnal, coming-of-age dreaminess that I end up doing all the work here at the Department of Salad.
I spin the lettuce and reorganize the spice cabinet and wonder what exactly I pay them for—while they lounge around the kitchen snacking from my pantry’s expensive dried fruit and toasted nut shelf and skipping down what seems to be an extremely burnished Memory Lane.
For most of us, the combination of cooler weather and a single small memory can transport us suddenly and sweetly: buying new school supplies, the last day at the pool before it closed for the summer. But the boys go big—and as much as I love them, their Friday Night Lights version of autumns past has always sounded just a bit too perfect. There they are, high-school football stars, running onto the brightly lit field in the crisp night air. The marching band is playing, the crowd is cheering from the stands, and everyone is admiring them. No crushed skulls or bruising defeats. Just a golden flood of glory upon them.
Can it be that it was all so simple then, or has time rewritten every line for these two chuckleheads? And does it even matter, Barbra? I mean, I’m actually all for rearranging the furniture of the past a bit if it makes life in the present more agreeable. My only worry about gilded nostalgia—and all its corresponding baggage—is that it can really, really get in the way of life here in the present. You don’t want to end up like someone in a Tennessee Williams play.
Plus, quite frankly, it can be expensive, thanks to the Pumpkin Spice Industrial Complex, a racket that preys on the nostalgic among us, who will often do practically anything to recapture the wonderful, poignant wistfulness of autumns past. This is how we got pumpkin spice coffee creamer, pumpkin spice meal replacement shakes, pumpkin spice collagen peptide powder, pumpkin spice lip balm, pumpkin spice Oreos, pumpkin spice Air Wick Plug-in air fresheners, pumpkin spice flushable wipes for men, pumpkin spice Cheerios, the pumpkin spice Boo Pals Body Buffer, pumpkin spice chewing gum, pumpkin spice moisturizing body lotion, pumpkin spice bath bombs, pumpkin spice dishwashing soap, pumpkin spice natural deodorant, and pumpkin spice massage oil? (I didn’t make any of these up. I couldn’t.)