Thanksgiving Week: Old Fashioned Pumpkin Pie

This week I'll be experiencing my first ever Thanksgiving.

Last month I became engrossed in the pumpkin culture prevalent in the USA. Not only are pumpkins for carving, but they are also for picking, chucking, flavoring beer, and also for flavoring other questionable consumer products.

And, of course, they are also for pie. As I already learned several years ago it's this week of the year that Americans really need their tins of pumpkin for pie.

Since I wrote about the history of pumpkin pie and pumpkin spices, I've been fascinated knowing that the basic recipe has barely changed in hundreds of years.  I was determined to find out how to make it like the Native Americans may have made for the settlers for the first American Thanksgiving.

As I said before, they filled their pumpkins with milk and spices. Was this the first pumpkin pie, or the first pumpkin spice latte?

I wanted to find out. Lo and behold, I found this recipe from Rural Spin! It's for pie in a pumpkin, so I had to try it!

The recipe itself is fairly simple:

And the result?

Erm, it was okaaay.

The pumpkin was baked wonderfully and was a treat to eat. The spices were familiar and sweet. A spoonful of pumpkin, spice and sweetness tasted pretty good.

But my 'pie' did not rise at all, not like the one on Rural Spin. I do have to confess I used a mixture of whole milk and half and half, not cream. And after a few spoonfuls it tasted sweet and cloying. I could understand why the colonialists weren't too keen on it and ended up with scurvy.

It was super fun to try though, and I would try it again to attempt to perfect the recipe. But for my first Thanksgiving here, it'll be pie in a crust for me!

It's my first ever Thanksgiving and I'm very excited about it! Tell me some of your traditions, and stuff I should try out!