In case you’ve missed it, it’s Pumpkin Spice Everything season, and I mean everything: pumpkin spiced lattés, pumpkin crème double stuffed cookies, pumpkin spice fro-yo, double dunk pumpkin donuts, frothy head pumpkin beer, pumpkin spice candy coated chocolate, pumpkin pie spice potato chips, frosted pumpkin pie spice ala mode toaster pastries, pumpkin spice English muffins, pumpkin spice soy milk, and pumpkin spice marshmallows. Every time you turn around in retail stores, wham!, there’s Pumpkin Spice something staring back at you. While you are numb-struck in your PS glaze-eyed stupor you’ll be jostled by customers as they push you aside so they can snatch up those “for a limited time only” items. We are being pumpkinized and soon nothing will be off limits for an overhaul in a PS version. Comedian John Oliver went over the top in a diatribe about this flavor attack on society and, while his tongue-in-cheek poke at the Pumpkin Spice invasion is funny, his observations are pretty spot on about the overuse of this flavor. Frankly, there are just some things that should never be Pumpkin Spice-ized.
And if you think that everything thing with Pumpkin Spice flavor actually has real pumpkin in it, think again. As we learned with “Pumpkingate,” real pumpkin rarely makes an appearance in the ingredient label of these products. | |
Kumbha Moon Soap Company isn’t immune to the Pumpkin Spice craze either. In early September we made our first batch of Pumpkin Spice soap in response to many customer requests. As you know, our soaps and laundry powder are made with ingredients that are food-grade and we source them whenever possible from places like farmers markets, natural food stores, sustainable wholesalers, our backyard garden, and the woods around us. We did a lot of research on using real pumpkin in homemade soap and contacted many trusted and experienced “olde tyme” soap makers (listservs are great resources for making new friends) to learn from their experiences with working with real pumpkin. We are committed to using real natural ingredients and never add anything to our products that is artificial or synthetic. Our motto is Real. Simple. Soap. and we will not wiggle in our values to even consider adding fake pumpkin or fake fragrances.
Our Pumpkin Spice soap is made from organic pumpkin puree and organic vanilla bean pods straight from our pantry cupboard and we used real stream-distilled cinnamon leaf and clove bud essential oils to bring up the spice note of this soap. The real pumpkin adds an amazing and authentic pumpkin essence to the soap and also colored it a warm honey-amber color that is reminiscent of fall. We used real ground cinnamon from our pantry and sprinkled a layer right in the middle of the batch so that each bar has an interesting color line in it that also adds more real natural essence. Our Pumpkin Spice bars smell amazing on the curing racks right now and the first batch should be ready in a few more weeks. We’ve had some friends stop by to do a little “sniff testing” on some of our new batches and they declared our Pumpkin Spice soap to be a real winner.
Our Pumpkin Spice soap is made from organic pumpkin puree and organic vanilla bean pods straight from our pantry cupboard and we used real stream-distilled cinnamon leaf and clove bud essential oils to bring up the spice note of this soap. The real pumpkin adds an amazing and authentic pumpkin essence to the soap and also colored it a warm honey-amber color that is reminiscent of fall. We used real ground cinnamon from our pantry and sprinkled a layer right in the middle of the batch so that each bar has an interesting color line in it that also adds more real natural essence. Our Pumpkin Spice bars smell amazing on the curing racks right now and the first batch should be ready in a few more weeks. We’ve had some friends stop by to do a little “sniff testing” on some of our new batches and they declared our Pumpkin Spice soap to be a real winner.
As we've challenged you before, if you are going to eat it, put it on your skin, or clean your house with it, turn it over and read the label. If you can’t pronounce or recognize most of the ingredients, chances are that you are holding a product made mostly from synthetic- or chemical-based ingredients. Turn over a bar of soap from Kumbha Moon Soap Company and you’ll always be able to recognize each ingredient!