Growing up, my mom made delicious food. She was especially good with baking. Our favorites were zucchini bread that would come out so warm and soft it would melt in your mouth, then pot pie that would always smell so wonderful, and finally pumpkin pie made with real pumpkins, not the canned kind. I remember having a freezer filled with Ziploc bags packed full of bright orange pumpkin puree. Freezing it allowed us to make it year-round. Sometimes we even grew our pumpkins in our garden that we pureed and later made into pies.
One year in late summer, we noticed a plant beginning to grow at the end of our driveway. In the rocky, weedy soil this plant with large round leaves and thick curly vines was flourishing. We soon realized it was a pumpkin plant that must've planted itself from the year before when we left a pumpkin out on our back porch that the squirrels go into.
The pumpkin plant proliferated and was soon covering the whole area next to our driveway and even trying to grow over the driveway. Big orange flowers began to form that soon turned into little green spheres. Over a month or so these grew until they were perfect four-pound pie pumpkins. We harvested 14 of them total, and over the next weeks I roasted more pumpkins and made more pies than I could count.
Fresh pumpkin pie tastes like nothing else, store bought pie, or pie made from canned pumpkins don't even compare. The texture is moist and fresh and so rich in flavor. After this mad harvest of pumpkins, I was spoiled. When I left home and moved to Pennsylvania, I had to continue the tradition.
In October 2013 I bought two pumpkins from the store and made pies for all my housemates. My one housemate loved it so much; when he tried it, he said he could eat the whole pie in one sitting. I believed him. Of course, he wanted to save some for others, so he only ate about three slices.
Since pumpkins are only ripe for one month out of the year, October, I now make pumpkin pie every year. When I got married in 2014 my husband and I made pumpkin pies together on Thanksgiving, it was one of the first things we made together. We had a blast trying to make evaporated milk out of regular milk rather than go to the store five minutes down the road and buy more evaporated milk. We learned never to try that again, buying evaporated milk is much easier.
Every year since my husband and I have bought pumpkins and made pies, so of course, this year was no exception. This time, my husband wanted to plan, just like my mom did when we were kids, and puree a bunch of pumpkins to store in the freezer, so we could have pies to enjoy year-round.
Scooping out the seedsCorrinne Brubaker
I love the smell of fresh pumpkin that fills our house every evening. If you've never had fresh pumpkin, please do yourself a favor and try it; it seems not many people have made fresh pumpkin. Get a three to four-pound pumpkin, cut it in half, scoop out the seeds and stringy stuff with a spoon or your hand and set the seeds aside to roast and snack on later. Line an edged cookie sheet with foil and put both halves face down. Set the oven to 425 degrees and roast for 50-60 minutes. When done, let it cool then scoop into a blender, mixer, or food processor and process the pumpkin till it's a smooth puree, then you can make pies with it.
