Thanksgiving Round One

Starting in college, my boyfriend and his friends made Thanksgiving dinner every year before going home for break. This tradition has continued on after college, and this weekend was the third annual pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving. I was in charge of making the pies.  We made pumpkin and strawberry-blueberry pies.
 
Pumpkin Pie (from a pumpkin)

The first step in making a pumpkin pie from a pumpkin is roasting the pumpkin. We cut it in half, and then roasted it in the oven for about 45 minutes--until we could easily stick a fork into the flesh.  Then, we used a fork and hand mixer to create a puree out of the pumpkin. 

After that, making a pumpkin pie is just like following the directions on the can of store-bought pumpkin.  You mix up the ingredients, pour it into a pie crust, and bake. However, we did make our own  pumpkin pie spice.  Rather than spending 4 dollars on the store's pumpkin pie spice, we combined spices that we already have in our own version, using nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves. We made extra so that we can use it again next year, or at Christmas time. 

We decided to use a graham cracker crust instead of a traditional dough pie crust this time. This seemed like a great idea at the time, but it turns out that my boyfriend's oven is not level.  The pie filling set so that more of the crust was exposed on one side than the other.  The exposed side burnt a little.  It was easy to cut off though, and tasted delicious! Unfortunately, I do not have a picture of the finished product.

Blueberry-Strawberry Pie

The blueberry-strawberry pie was a bit simpler to make.  We used store-bought refrigerated pie crusts and canned pie-filling.  I don't always make everything from scratch.... We had to make it special somehow, though.  We used the second pie crust to create a criss-cross pattern on top. This looks really impressive (I think at least) and is not too hard to make.  You cut the pie crust into strips.  Ours were about 1 inch wide.  Then, you weave them over and under on top of the pie filling.  After that, you pinch the edges of the crust, like you normally would, and then bake!

 

  

Turkey                                                

Finally, you can't have Thanksgiving without a turkey.  Here are some pictures of our turkey (made by Brandon--cooking meat is not my specialty):