When I started this column, I had a very clear goal in mind.
I had just lost the pumpkin love of my life, and I was set on moving on. I was looking for my pumpkin fix around every corner, from Jack in the Box to Wal-Mart, all the way to the bottom of the bottle.
Nothing I tried was quite right. All of my reviews became negative, even though I genuinely enjoyed many of the pumpkin items I tried — too many to include in a weekly column. Pumpkin candies, pumpkin drinks and pumpkin seeds all lost their seasonal novelty and became just stops on the seemingly endless autumnal hunt.
But then I had a moment of clarity. Why was I stressing so much over finding one complete and total fix?
One morning earlier this week, at least three people made the same suggestion to me for my next column: pumpkin soda. The multiple suggestions, along with my renewed passion for the search, seemed to say that this soda was the right direction to go to begin the hunt again.
While I know there are at least two different types of pumpkin soda, Maine Root made the one I found. According to its Web site, the soda won an award for being the best new product at a natural products expo in Boston.
Like the Jack in the Box shake I tried in October, the soda is a pumpkin pie soda, not just a pumpkin soda, which means it has the added sweeteners and spices to make it delicious and more than orange pulp.
With 40 grams of sugar, it’s as sweet as pumpkin pie, and the natural flavoring helps give it a taste of real spices, not the chemically developed ones found in the Jack in the Box shake.
Maybe it was just the timing, just after my pumpkin epiphany, but the soda hit the spot.
The ratio of pumpkin to spice was as close to perfect as the pumpkin spice latte I used to love so much. The only real way to bring it any closer the ideal pumpkin-drink fix would be to warm it up — which I did not try, but can imagine would not actually be a good idea.
I’m not saying I’ve found the final stop on the pumpkin-search express, but I definitely liked where I visited this week.
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