Food: Pumpkin Pie

It’s that time of the year, when pumpkins line the roadside and canned pumpkin filling flees the grocer’s shelves. Some holidays just aren’t right without the appropriate foods, and Thanksgiving isn’t right without pumpkin pie for dessert.

Pumpkins are native to North America, and their innards have been used for desserts all the way back to – yes – the Pilgrims. I’m not sure if they had nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger to give it the right flavor. For us, Libby’s has figured that out just fine.

Of course, you can build your pumpkin pie from scratch, if you prefer. Because heaven knows, there’s plenty of time during the holidays, especially while preparing fifteen dishes for eight people, to cook a homemade pie. If you do, I salute you.

Way back in the nineteenth century, poet John Greenleaf Whittier had this to say about the humble, but delicious pumpkin pie:

Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West,
From North and from South come the pilgrim and guest,
When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board
The old broken links of affection restored,
When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more,
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before,
What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie?

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