Day 9: Pumpkin pie!

This is why we can't have nice blogs: I got busy for a while, got behind on the blogosphere and then got overwhelmed by the amount of blogging I didn't do. Here's a flurry of catch up posts:

The leftovers from both the chicken crock pot meal and the carrot dill soup got better with age, so many meals were had by just eating leftovers of those things. In the mean time, I decided to make a pumpkin pie. This process was spread out over the course of days 6 though 9 of this month, but I'll put it all here:

Day 6: Roasted the pumpkin at 400'C until it got all soft along with the squash. I then scooped out the meat and put it in a bowl.

Day 7: Mulled whether to make said pumpkin goo into a pie, cookies or bread. Researched pie crust

Day 8: Decided to pull the trigger on making a pie. Started the dough for the crust. Typically, I use a food processor to make pie crusts, but they never really live up to my dreams of buttery flaky crust. Evidently, that's because I let the food processor mash the frozen butter into dust and flaky pie crust requires PEA SIZED CHUNKS. And pea sized chunks require a pastry blender. Imagine that a whisk and a potato masher had a baby, and you have yourself a pastry blender. I used the crust recipe linked under pea sized chunks but halved as I only wanted a bottom crust. I left the dough ball in the fridge overnight.

Day 9: I made the filling as a bastardization of several recipes. Here's my best recollection:

3/4 cup agave syrup, for low glycemic action1 tsp cinnamon1/2 tsp salt1/2 tsp ground ginger1/4 tsp ground cloves2 eggs, beaten1 15 oz can of pure pumpkin1 cup 1% milk (because evaporated milk seems totally counter to this exercise. but apparently the guy who wrote the rules thinks milk might not qualify. I have to disagree, perhaps out of desperation)I mixed all of the things together in my kitchenade mixer and then proceeded to make the crust. 

I also rolled out the crust, with my trusty marble rolling pin i had stuck in the freezer to chill. Finer points:
- keep everything really well floured and cold. butter melting into the flour before it hits the oven is death.
- to keep thinks round, rotate the crust a quarter turn between rolling. trust me it works.
- the crust recipe said to cut it into a 12 inch circle, but that was a little shallow for my pie plate.

I linked the pie plate with the crust and filled it with the filling and baked it at 425 for 20 minutes and then 350 for another hour or so, until it set. I also used the remainder of the crust to make adorable ghost cutouts for the top (I put them on about 20 min till the end of cook time)

The pie was really good, a lot more spicy than sweet. But it went bad really quickly. I guess there is a big downside to no preservatives :)