Happy Thanksgiving!

Yay, my 2nd favorite holiday after Halloween!

To celebrate, and educate my sadly unacquainted-with-Thanksgiving co-workers, I decided to make pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie, like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, is something I only began to crave once I started living abroad. First, in Russian, where I convinced our program director to throw a make-a-pumpkin-pie party, and now here, struggling with a little tiny oven. They are just such American foods, living abroad brings it out in me.

So, my first attempt was actually last Friday. My mother sent me my Grandmother's pumpkin pie recipe, and I had 3 cans of American pumpkin from when she visited me. I know what you are thinking: "Lindsay, you couldn't even manage to bake cookies without burning them, how the heck are you gonna make a pie?" Well, I would be shocked and offended at your doubt in me, but since it is true, I can forgive you. As it turns out, before I started baking the pies I figured out why I ended up with burned outside/mushy inside cookies. It had never occur ed to me before that moment that my oven was actually set in Celcius... a minor culture shock error, except that it had me cooking cookies at about 464 degrees Fahreinheit. Oops.


To the right, you can see my first pumpkin pie (ever!). Sorry, I didn't think to get a picture of it until after I had taste-tested it. Yum. Actually, because I only have a convection oven, it was really more of a pumpkin-tart. Each one is only about 8 inches in diameter in a tart tray. But the intention was pie, so that is what I am going to call it. Anyway, I saved half for myself and gave the other half to Yuki. On Saturday, I made another pie and gave it to my supervisor, Sakazume-sensei. I am really on a quest to prove that American pumpkin and Japanese Kabocha are not the same thing. What are they more likely to believe than their own taste buds?

I discovered that because my pies were so small, the recipe I had actually made 3 pies worth of filling, and 2 pies worth of crust. I suddenly had a great deal more pumpkin than I thought I had. The only annoyance was buying butter. Butter is expensive! To buy a 200g pack (2 sticks) is about $4.50! Each recipe calls for 1 whole stick of butter (so, half a stick of butter in each of my mini-pies). I was able to find some cheaper butter later, but still, I ended up spending about $12 on butter! I asked Yuki about this and she said that the government actually had requested that only a small amount of butter be produced (because it is unhealthy, I imagine). She said, even a couple months ago, you would have been hard pressed to find even a single stick of butter. Unbelievable. A country that loves deep fried food almost as much as Texas, and they are afraid of butter. Huff.

Anyway, ignoring my rapidly lightening wallet, I had plenty of supplies to make lots of pumpkin pie. So I did! Last night I made 5 pumpkin pies! Actually, I even still have enough filling and crust to make 1 more, but I was so damn tired (not from cooking, just in general) that I opted for bed instead.

Thanks to my efforts, I had 4 lovely pumpkin pies to take with me to school today for my teachers. Aren't they beautiful!

Hashiba-sensei is always remarking, after I have told her about my latest kitchen-adventure, on how much I like to cook. Somehow, I feel like this is not quite accurate. My mother likes to cook. I just like to eat. and I like to surprise people with unexpected gifts. Cooking just sort of becomes a necessity, doesn't it? Does the fact that you like to be clean mean you love taking showers? or that you just don't want to be a one-man island on the subway. You decide.

In the meantime, I'm gonna have some pie. mmm pie.

Cheers,

pumpkin Baer