pumpkins!

For me, it isn't fall without candy corn and the smell of rotting pumpkins. Let's not glamorize it. Every year, we stuff ourselves on sugar and corn syrup and revel in the aroma of a hollowed-out, slowly dying vegetable. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

I think I'll always carve a pumpkin. I did it last year, alone in LA, because I had very little to cling to that was normal, sane and familiar. I bought it at the Hollywood farmer's market, carved it with a kit my parents sent me, and let it live in my fireplace, where I normally kept my shoes.

This year, in New York, I had people to carve with. Wine, knives, pumpkins. I bought this one at a bodega, which, unless you live in New York, you can't really grasp. The bodega is part of the thread that holds it all together. They sell everything, including pumpkins in October.

This guy (pictured above) is a hefty fella, and as you can tell, my knife skills, especially after a few glasses of white, aren't stellar. But he's endearing. Even jolly. And how can you resist a pumpkin with eyebrows like that?