Pumpkin Pie

I was spared the duty of having to make Thanksgiving dinner this year by Heather's invite for dinner with their family (which was wonderful - a huge thank you, Heather, for slaving away your entire birthday to feed us!!).  As it was Heather's birthday, we enjoyed some wonderful cupcakes for dessert yesterday.  Given that Isabelle is here visiting from France, I felt that I had to at least make her pumpkin pie to taste, despite the fact that we still have birthday cake left over in the fridge.

So I quickly whipped this up this morning, in the few spare moments that Logan actually let us stay inside the house today. Granted, the weather has been absolutely gorgeous for days on end now.  He figured out over the weekend how to open the screen door to take off on his own in the backyard. At least he's polite enough to close it behind him and be sure to look at me, wave, and say 'bye bye' as he heads off to get himself into trouble. We were probably in the house for all of half an hour total each day this weekend, as every time we turned around he was heading back outside to play, as the following pictures attest to.

I look at this picture and wonder what doctor has ever said that this kid isn't
putting on enough weight, lol. I suspectthat at our next visit,
they'll tell me he's doing just fine.

Glorious morning

You've gotta love that on October 10th, it was warm enough for a baby (ok, I've gotta start saying toddler...) to play outside in his diaper at 9am.

Two lessons that Logan learned while playing in the sand (aka mud pit) this morning. The first is that mom really, really, really doesn't like it when he happens to fling a shovel full of mud into the play room via the screen door Isabelle has just opened, onto the newly steam-cleaned carpet. Grr... at least it was accidental... The second is that, eating mud isn't much better than eating dirt. And using your muddy hand to scoop the dirt that you sucked off of a toy out of your mouth isn't super effective. Gotta love little guys ;)

Anyhow, back to my recipe... I really only make this once a year, if that. This year, I used some leftover pastry that Jerome's mom had left in our freezer during her visit last year. I felt it was fitting to use it with Isabelle here visiting.  Otherwise, I would have used my food processor basic pastry recipe.  I opted to use our nice decorative pie plate, which was a bit of a mistake. It was too deep for the pie, so we ended up with a super deep dish pumpkin pie, with a somewhat raw crust. Good thing we weren't having company over.  But it was still edible and the pie recipe itself is yummy. So here goes:

1 C sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. cloves
1 1/2 C cooked or canned pumpkin, mashed or pureed
1 1/2 C (1 can) evaporated milk (I used low-fat)
1/2 C milk
2 eggs, slightly beaten

1.  Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Farenheit.

2.  Line a pie pan with the pastry dough.

3.  Combine the remaining ingredients in a large bowl and beat until smooth.

4.  Pour into the lined pie pan.

5.  Bake for 10 minutes, then lower the heat to 300 degrees Farenheit and bake for about 45 minutes or until the filling is firm.