"pumpkin pie" news and stories

Whether you make it from scratch, from a can or you buy it from a store, no Thanksgiving dinner is complete without a pumpkin pie.

This one, from Flickr user maggiejane, is a little bit store bought, a little bit from a can and a little bit homemade. On her blog, Pithy and Cleaver, she writes that while she uses a premade frozen pie crust, the filling is canned pumpkin mixed with eggs, sugar, molasses and spices like cinnamon, ginger and clove.

Sounds to us like a little bit of work for a whole lot of Thanksgiving flavor.

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First there was the Halloween pumpkin shortage and now this.

Nestlé, the parent company of Libby's Pumpkin, said Tuesday that it might not have enough canned pumpkin for the Thanksgiving holiday.

"Our calculations indicate that we may deplete our inventory of canned Libby's pumpkin as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday," Paul Bakus, vice president for Nestlé's baking division, told the New York Times.

I've never met a pumpkin pie that I didn't like. It's hard to really screw up this Fall staple. However, getting it just right is also a challenge. One of the more bizarre incarnations of pumpkin pie that I've experienced was when I dated an extremely health-conscious pumpkin pie lover who would make pumpkin pies using soft tortilla shells as a crust. I am not endorsing that variety of "pie," although I had no problem eating it!

My least favorite pumpkin pies are the ones that have so much sugar that you can't taste the pumpkin. I experienced one such pie the other night from Sam's Club. Hopefully, the people who served me that pie are not Slashfood readers.

If you are in the mood for an easy pumpkin pie that has a real crust and actually tastes like pumpkin, I would highly recommend the frozen pumpkin pie from Wholly Wholesome. Check out the ingredient list: pumpkin, water, organic cane sugar, organic wheat flour, vegetable oil (palm oil, soybean oil), milk, eggs, organic whole wheat flour, sea salt, cinnamon, ginger, cloves. I didn't feel too bad about putting those things into my body. Well, I did feel a little bad after I ate a quarter of the pie in one sitting.

You can tell that we here at Slashfood are knee-deep in autumn: some of us are swilling pumpkin beer and mixing pumpkin cocktails; some of us are making comfort food from soup to pot pie; and no few of us are stuffing Halloween candy into our mouths. So what better time to share a slim, marvelous volume devoted to recipes and techniques for autumn's centerpiece ingredient?

Yes, a pumpkin is a squash (and squashes, by the way, are gourds), and so are crooknecks, acorns, butternuts, zucchinis, chayotes, pattypans, carnivals and all of the summer and winter squashes that take center stage in A Harvest of Pumpkins and Squash. The book begins with cookbook author Lou Seibert Pappas' thoughts on squash, from their history to their purchase and preparation, followed by a wonderful and useful squash glossary (squashary?). From there we proceed to squash recipes (squashipes?).

With the holiday's just around the corner, we'll soon be digging into the wonderful world of pie. Do you have a perfect pie crust recipe, but when you put the filling in, the bottom seems to get too soggy? No problem. We've got several solutions for you!