Recipe: Pumpkin Pie

Fall makes me nostalgic for pumpkin patches, hayrides, and campfires with my family.  So I was really excited this year when some friends suggested going pumpkin and apple picking at nearby Homestead Farm!  We had a great time there and came home with beautiful apples, pumpkins, and winter squash.

When I was a kid, I never really
thought of pumpkin as a food.  Or at least, there was a disconnect between my Jack-o-Lantern carving experience and my love of Thanksgiving pumpkin pie.  This year, I decided to try taking my pumpkin all the way from the patch to the table with my own hands.   I found great recipes for fresh pumpkin pie, pumpkin pie spice, and pie crust on AllRecipes.com.  Not a vegan pie (does anyone have a good recipe for vegan pumpkin pie?), but I did use free-range, cage-free eggs, and vegetable margarine instead of butter.  The result was a hit with family and friends, and the process of making food out of something I picked from the field myself was a great experience!  There is something about creating food from a vegetable you plucked out of the dirt yourself that brings home the earthiness, the naturalness of eating.