There will be cloves.

I am grateful for made-from-scratch pumpkin pie adorned with real 100% heavy-duty whipped cream. Sorry sweet potatoes, you had your moment at the table bathed in butter and brown sugar. You were never meant to become pie.

I am grateful for cinnamon, allspice, ginger, and cloves. Sorry McCormick, I respectfully bar entry of your pumpkin pie spice that substitutes sulfiting agent for cloves into my pumpkin paradise.

I am grateful for evaporated milk--though I am not quite sure how it is obtained—but I love to imagine tiny milk clouds raining inside the can.

I am grateful for free-range eggs, brown or white—I don’t discriminate—stolen for my benefit from contented chickens as they paused to drink from a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater.

I am grateful for honey and sugar—though only one will make the cut—and to those who fought for my freedom to make that choice.

I am especially grateful for canned pumpkin and frozen pie crusts.

But above all, there will be cloves.