There may be a pumpkin shortage again this year.

I survived an earthquake, a hurricane, and my husband’s obsession with America’s Got Talent

but I can not survive without pumpkin.

I made sure to stock up.

I apologize to the seven customers waiting behind me to get their stake on the claim, but I was there first and desperate times call for desperate measures.

Try the baby food section.

Maybe you can buy 50 of those little jars and use that instead.

And don’t think I didn’t report your little threat to throw down at the cart corral to the store manager.

I turned around to grab several jars of pumpkin pie spice just in time to see grandma molasses dropping the very last jar into her cart.

Time stopped.

I thought about punching her in the kidney and running like a bat out of hell to the checkout

but I didn’t really have time to get arrested and go to jail.

I mean, my husband would be pretty peeved if I just showed up to his work like that.

I would just have to make my own pumpkin pie spice at home. That should be easy enough.

Except there are about 27,000 variations of pumpkin pie spice.

I don’t know why I thought there would be some sort of universal recipe.

There were some with three, four and five different spices.

Some had nutmeg and some had none.

Some had cloves and others didn’t.

Some made a huge batch and some made one pie.

I know nothing about spice combinations.

What the nut, Meg?

After trying about seven different recipes and accidentally using allspice instead of cinnamon in one horrific batch,

I finally came up with this blend.

PUMPKIN PIE SPICE

1/4 cup cinnamon

2 tablespoons ground ginger

1 tablespoon ground nutmeg

1 tablespoon allspice

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves

Mix thoroughly and store in air-tight container.

Makes about 1/2 cup or enough for 8 pumpkin pies.