Okay, so my dog has Irritable Bowel Disease and sometimes gets the runs, badly. One way to treat him is by giving him plain, cold canned pumpkin. The fiber helps bind him up and he gets a nice dose of Vitamin A while I’m at it. He’s also got a powdered medicine that has to be delivered with food, so mixing it in with the pumpkin is easy and btw, both my dogs LOVE pumpkin. Love it. They start demanding it about a half hour before the meds are due.
I’ve been to my local grocery store, Publix, three times in the last two weeks looking for Libby’s canned pumpkin. No pumpkin. I was ranting about this at work the other day and a very kind coworker brought me a can of pumpkin that she’d decided not to use. The dogs have a stash to hold them over until I manage to acquire some pumpkin.
I went to the Customer Service desk and asked the girl to page a grocery manager because I thought it would be easier to just order a whole case than drive all over town once a week on the Great Pumpkin Quest. Grocery Manager tells me, at first, that there’s a pumpkin recall.
I whip out my iPhone and Google “Pumpkin product recalls” right there in front of him. :dubious: There is no pumpkin recall. Publix did recall a pecan pumpkin pie streusel last fall, but Libby’s canned pumpkin has never been recalled. That story is complete bullshit. Then he changes his story and tells me that pumpkin is seasonal and the manufacturer just doesn’t can pumpkin after Christmas. “Bullshit” I think.
I got home and went to the Libby’s website, which is actually a Nestle website. (And now you know how chocolate chip pumpkin cookies/muffins came into vogue – same company makes both.) There is no mention of “we only can pumpkin seasonally” and they list all the product recalls they’ve complied with. Chocolate chip cookie dough was recalled last year, but no pumpkin recall.
So I turn to you, my fellow Dopers, in desperation. Won’t someone think of the poor little snorty dogs? What do you know about the Mysterious Case of the Missing Pumpkin? Can you find pumpkin in your grocery store? Where did you get it? (Can you send me some?) Does anyone work for Libby; is there any truth to this “we only can pumpkin seasonally” nonsense? I’m fairly confident that my Google Fu has not failed me, so I think I can assert that there has been no pumpkin recall in the last two years.
Where does a dog-lover find pumpkin when it isn’t Thanksgiving?
We can usually find them year-round, though I’ll admit we don’t look for them all that often. Canned pumpkin keeps for a long time, so the stores just leave it on the shelves. However, if they did sell out, then they wouldn’t bother restocking until the next fall.
Is there another supermarket you can try? Or you can try buying online.
I had trouble finding canned pumpkin this fall for my feral kittens. It does wonders for digestive issues. I just googled, too, and read about the pumpkin shortage. If you don’t want to order online, ask around of baking types. We usually keep an extra can or two in the pantry.
You can freeze the extra pumpkin in small portions.
Make sure you’re looking in the right place in the grocery too (although it seems certain that you are). Sometimes my store stocks pumpkin in the veggie aisle, sometimes back in the baking aisle with other canned pie filling. It’s often a crapshoot where I’ll find it.
I remember reading back around Thanksgiving or so that a lot of extra rain last year caused much of the crop to pretty much rot in the mud. I was concerned I wouldn’t get my annual pumpkin pie fix, but I didn’t see any shortage at that time. I guess with the delay from field to can it’s hitting now.
There was a shortage last fall, because of the bad crop, but I noticed it was in stock again the last time I went to a particular large supermarket – you may need to drive around town after all.
Yes, I’d read about the shortage as well, but I had no trouble at all stocking up in November and December.
Further update: Just got a message from my grocery store, “We just ordered you a case of pumpkin and we will call you as soon as it comes in. Could be two weeks, could be six weeks; I don’t know when it’s a special order. But we’ll call you.”
Following links from RealityChuck. Thanks to all for your help so far!
Hmmm… No mention of a shortage. And you’d think if there WAS a shortage still going on, there would be something on the Libby website about it. Personally, I think this shortage story is nonsense. If we can get grapes (and just about every other form of produce) out of season from Chile, then we can find pumpkin growing somewhere on the planet…
My mission this weekend will be to go to every single store I can think of, including pestering my friends who have Costco memberships, to see what I can find. I will return and report.
Note: I just saw “sweet potatoes” suggested as an alternative. Now, those I can find. I can probably cook 'em, mash 'em down, and freeze in dog quantities. Might be a big project, but hey. Sweet potato will work just as well.
Mental note: I own a pressure cooker and canning equipment. I think I’m going to be canning some sweet potatoes this weekend!
Sure, but that’s for fresh pumpkins. The ones that grow in cans were hit very hard. Many of the cans were misshapen or rusted. They were lucky to get two cans to a vine.
troub, that article was from 2006. I’m dismissing that bit of information as old news. There’s more than one place where pumpkins grow; by that I mean, not just in this country. So they had high humidity in Missouri four years ago… that’s why I can’t find pumpkin now?
I am sure that sweet potatoes will work fine. However, what happened to other winter squash? Butternut? Acorn, Hubbard? I do not like winter squash so I did not pay attention. But if available, I imagine they would also be a good substitute.
Sigmagirl, I am guessing that my dogs will enjoy squashes and sweet potatoes just as much – that’s a good suggestion. Their little palates can’t possibly be that refined; they lick their own asses! Haha. What sucks about your suggestion is now I have to find squashes, cook 'em, and can 'em… it was so much more convenient to just pop open a can of pumpkin… I haven’t seen any winter squashes available in my produce section, but I’m not a big fan either, so it really hadn’t occurred to me to look. I will also look for canned squash. I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole, but I’m sure the dogs won’t care, as long as it isn’t packed with sodium. (They don’t care about their salt intake, but I do.)
Ooops. Damn I hate stltoday’s search feature. I know I saw the same sort of article this past fall, and I saw October 21 on the article, and assumed their search feature made some kind of sense with regard to date order.
That’s the exact article I remember reading. The important thing from your bolded quote is that they were talking about the shortage of holdover from 2008 being expected to ease in 2009, but…next page…
I just called my sister, a front end girl at one of the local Publixes. She says they are all short on Libby’s, though she doesn’t know why. She reports that her Publix does have organic canned pumpkin available, and it doesn’t cost much more than the regular stuff. (That’s the Publix way out Mahan by the interstate, by the way.) She suggests you call and ask your local if they have that. You might also call New Leaf and see if they stock it.
Our basenjis like pumpkin too, I think it’s a texture thing. We haven’t had trouble finding it, (knock on wood) but we did run out one day, and, since I had a butternut squash in the cupboard, I cubed it up and microwaved it for about 5 min. They gobbled it down, skin and all - extra fibre! No need for blending or canning, I bet you could freeze the cooked squash pretty easily too.
Why are so many of my posts here about butternut squash?
