I went to an event a few weeks ago, started a conversation with an Irish farmer by the name of Steve (super nice guy) and shared with him that last year I made pumpkin pie Romanian-style (rolled in filo dough). So before I know it, I'm standing there with a pie pumpkin in my arms courtesy of farmer Steve.

So I ventured to make American-style pumpkin pie based on a recipe from pickyourown.org. I used brown sugar splenda blend and condensed goat milk instead of condensed milk. For crust I used a Whole Foods whole wheat granola crust. I added lemon and lemon zest which are not mentioned in the recipe. My pie didn't look so great but it tastes spicy sweet, a touch zesty, and like real pumpkin. Someone close to me who doesn't like pumpkin pie tried it out and loved it.

You may wonder why go through the trouble instead of using canned pumpkin. Did you know that canned pumpkin is not usually pumpkin but a puree of different kinds of squash? This is why canned pumpkin tastes sweeter, is less stringy and has a lighter color than real pumpkin puree. For the same reason, canned pumpkin doesn't taste as much as pumpkin but rather more like butternut squash.

And it was no trouble at all. It took me 1/2 hour of watching TV for my pumpkin to boil and it was a piece of... pie from there.