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Happy Halloween!
Did you carve something fun? My husband thought up a Tram of Death for his pumpkin, while I followed a Spooky House pattern for mine. It was, as always, a lot of fun to carve pumpkins and we got a huge bowl of seeds out of it to roast. (Don’t forget to roast your pumpkin seeds.)
Now, as I mentioned yesterday, it’s taken me a while to make my own pie completely from scratch, pumpkin and all. To be fair, my go-to recipe for years has been the recipe on the back of the Libby’s pumpkin can. It’s a great recipe, with excellent color and texture, but it just wasn’t quite what I wanted this time.
This version of pumpkin pie came out beautifully, but I’m not sure it’s the best it could be. I have some ideas that I’ll play around with this holiday season, some tweaks I want to make. But this recipe is an excellent “Everyday Pumpkin Pie” and quite fast and easy to put together. It’s certainly a pie I could whip up on the spot for a potluck or an unexpected family dinner, as long as I had some pumpkin puree tucked away in my freezer.
It’s almost Halloween! Do you have your jack’o'lanterns ready? We have two that we’ll carve later this afternoon (I don’t like to carve too early so my pumpkins look good on Halloween).
Don’t forget: Don’t throw away those seeds. Roast them up with some salt or spices for a great treat. (Read more about roasting pumpkin seeds and two ways to flavor them here.)
So, today, I’m going to talk about how to make your own pumpkin puree that can be used in making pumpkin pie, instead of using stuff in a can. Tomorrow, I’ll post a recipe for making an excellent pumpkin pie using it, along with an easy pie crust.
Winter is finally here.
But that doesn’t mean that I’ll give up salads, like the fantastic warm spinach, chicken and mandarin salad below. Warm salads, along with soups and stews, will become everyday staples again, now that it’s cold and running the oven becomes a pleasure.
In any case, this warm salad is a wonderful dish to eat while baking or watching the snow or leaves fall. I hope it brightens your gloomy day as much as it did mine.
The trick was coming up with a recipe that wasn’t too sweet. Many pumpkin breads and banana breads suffer from being tooth-rottingly sweet – I’ve seen recipes call for 3 cups or more of sugar for ONE LOAF. Way, way too sweet. And believe me, if it’s too sweet for me, my husband won’t make it through a bite. Since he’s Latvian, he grew up loving sour foods, not sweet. Most of the commercial and restaurant desserts in America that he’s tried are simply too sweet for him.
After a few revisions, I came up with this recipe which I feel has a good balance between sweet and spicy, with just the right amount of savory nuttiness.
