I found out several days ago that, for our big family Thanksgiving gathering, I was assigned pies. I'd never made a pie in my life! ... But that's not surprising as I really only began cooking a year ago off and on...
Fortunately, I had been obsessing with pumpkin and still had a lot of the puree left. I quickly began the hunt through my mom's recipe box. My dad is actually the pie maker of the family so I knew I was probably looking for his handwriting of my grandma's recipe. I ended up finding it in a really cool notebook my mom put together years ago with random old recipes from various places (mostly my grandpa's, I think). Here is what the pumpkin pie recipe looked like:
It even has splattered pumpkin on it!
I got the full story from my mom later - apparently they finally got tired of calling my grandma for 25 years every November, so a couple years ago he scribbled it down and kept it! In case you are wondering what "MOLA" is, as I did at first, it means Molasses. heh.
So, I made my first pie. It looked like this:
By the way, start getting used to the dark dreary pictures for several months because I have no natural light to work with. Welcome to dark and dreary Eugene, Oregon. *sad face* I brightened these pictures with the free program that came with my computer. Sweet.
So my first pie maybe wasn't the prettiest but tasted as wonderful as pumpkin pie can taste! I must say I do prefer my family's way of including the molasses... could be because I grew up with it or could be because it's just better!
Okay, so all that happened last week. Now I am in Idaho for the big day and I made my 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th pumpkin pie over at my grandma's this morning. They were a lot prettier. I forgot to take a picture of all 4 but here are a couple of them.
Oh, thank the Lord for wonderful blessed sunshine in the great state of Idaho! Makes me happy and it also makes my photos look better. :)
Last but not least, my grandma (who doesn't have actually written recipes for most things) talked me through my first apple pie!
Mike would like to think the "M" is for him (and we'll just let him keep thinking that), but it was really for Mitchell - my family's last name. That's how super creative I am. :)
I can't believe I was once intimidated by pies. Easy Schmeasy.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!