Eat Your Squash

Eat Your Squash, originally uploaded by MonicaSmoot.

For some reason, my two oldest kids love pumpkin pie. They generally do well with all the winter squashes. And when October comes around, and we start seeing pumpkins in the grocery store, one of them always asks if we can make pumpkin pie.

My husband, on the other hand, will eat pumpkin pie only with a half-disguised look of disgust on his face. He prefers pecan. My youngest doesn't like pie at all. She might be convinced to eat a chocolate pie, but that's an experiment for another day.

So I don't make pumpkin pie very often. But it's one of those things that gets me and the kids in the kitchen together and I hope we're making wonderful memories in addition to the pie.

The first thing you do when making a pumpkin pie is to walk right past the cans of pureed pumpkin. Go instead to the produce section, or your local farmers market which will have plenty of pie pumpkins right now, and get yourself a nice small pumpkin or two. I got two because I was afraid I wouldn't get enough pulp from just one. That happened last year and I ended up having to run to the store for a can of organic pumpkin. If you end up just using one, you've got an extra to use as decoration for the month. The thing I've learned from making pumpkin pie like this is to be flexible.

Next, get out your vegetable peeler and peel off the rind. It's a lot easier than you might think. Once you've peeled off the rind, take a very sharp knife and cut the pumpkin in half. Remove the guts and seeds. My youngest, even though she doesn't like pie, helped me out with this part. I saved the seeds and made pepitas later that night. One thing to note is that pie pumpkins are much easier to clean out than those huge things you get to carve. This is really a very easy process and you should try it at least once.

Now that the pumpkin is peeled and the seeds and guts scraped out, cut the pumpkin into bite sized pieces and steam it until soft, probably 15 or 20 minutes. You want to let the pumpkin cool down before you start adding the rest of the ingredients, but go ahead and puree it. You want to have about 1.5 or 2 cups. My pumpkin yielded about 3 cups so now I have an extra pumpkin for the kids to paint.

Once the pumpkin is cooled, add the rest of the ingredients:
1.5 cups sour cream
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tb molasses
dash of cloves
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup honey
dash of nutmeg
1/2 tsp ginger
2 eggs

Whip it up with your hand blender and then pour it into a pie crust. If I had more time I would make my own crust, but since I don't I'm perfectly happy using a pre-made, ready-to-bake crust. I originally had about 3 cups of pumpkin, so I only used about half for the pie and I froze the rest to make another pie later. If you don't want leftover pie filling, use a deep dish pie crust.

Bake it at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes. If you notice the edges of the crust getting too brown, cover the edges with foil. I've seen those round metal contraptions that are supposed to keep the edges from burning but I've never tried one so I don't know how well it works.

Pumpkin pie is better, in my opinion, if it's chilled for a few hours before eating. That way it has time to set and won't be runny.

What I like about this recipe is there is no sugar in it. Honey and molasses are the sweeteners. I figured out the nutritional information, using half of the recipe and given one pie serves 8. These numbers will be lower if you eat less than 1/8 of a pie. They will be two times higher if you use all of the filling in one pie.

181 calories
10 g fat
21 g carbs
1 g fiber
11 g sugars
2.5 g protein