November is here! And that means holiday cooking and baking season has officially begun on Cooking On the Side. From Libby’s Pumpkin Pie (today’s recipe) to French’s Green Bean Casserole, many favorite holiday recipes originated from food packaging – which makes them perfect topics for this blog! So for the next few weeks I’ll be preparing familiar, traditional Thanksgiving recipes “from the side”.

For me, it’s just not Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie…

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Like a lot of folks, I look forward to making pumpkin dishes this time of year (like this incredibly moist Pumpkin Spice Cake with pumpkin cream cheese frosting, see above)  – but have you heard about the  pumpkin shortage? I’ve had such a ridiculous time finding pumpkin purée in stores! After numerous canned pumpkin hunting trips over the past two weeks, I can offer these four tips for tracking down this elusive product:

• Check the baking aisle (near the canned pie fillings) – I’d assumed it would be with other canned vegetables, but it was not so at my local Vons. If you find it, stock up!
• Beware of something called “pumpkin pie mix” - the can looks nearly identical to pumpkin purée but it contains other ingredients besides pumpkin (it’s meant for making quick pies); a store clerk was trying to help me and brought me a can of this by mistake – unfortunately, I didn’t discover it until I was already home.
• Ask a clerk for help – Despite my mishap in the above bullet, it’ll probably save you a lot of time to have someone who knows the store aisles by heart find the pumpkin for you – or to let you know if they even have it at all.
• Roast your own - I haven’t tried this myself yet but if I didn’t find the canned stuff it was going to be my next option – Elana from Elana’s Pantry offers 10 easy steps to roasting a pumpkin.

Once you’ve got some pumpkin, you’re going to want to make this amazing cake. The recipe comes from a butter company so you know it’s moist!

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