In my humble opinion, of course.  Truthfully, I am a pie lover, and I have eaten and baked many a pie.  I think I found, at last, my holy grail of squash pies, and Zillah so nicely asked for the recipe a while back, so here it is.

The first thing to note is that this pie is not made with pumpkin.  (Most pumpkin filling you buy at the store isn’t either – it’s sweet potato or a different squash).  If you really want, you can use pumpkin, but you’ll need to drain out the liquid – hang it in some cheesecloth overnight.  It will be nicer, also, if you puree it – pumpkin is very stringy, not at all like the smooth filling most of us expect.  I make my pie with squash – I cut the squash in half, scoop out the seeds, and roast it at 350 (or thereabouts, depending on what else I’m baking) until it’s completely soft and mushy.  Then I scoop it out of the skin, but some squash skin is delicious and you can blend it all up together.  My favorite varieties, personally, are Kuri, Buttercup, Butternut, and Sweet Dumpling.  Then again, I haven’t tried them all yet . .  .  Also, the sweetness of the squash can vary a lot – the first time I made this the sweetness was perfect, but the next time it really could’ve used a bit more maple syrup.  So taste your squash and adjust as needed.  (You can always drizzle some maple syrup on top of the pie afterward – oh darn, right?)

The big change I made to this recipe was that I left out the heavy cream.  I love cream, but when I went to make this pie I didn’t have any, so I decided to try it without, and it was amazing.  The cream really mellows out the flavor, too much for my tastes, and without it, the squash sings load and clear.

The Best Squash Pie

1 1/2 pounds roasted squash, pumpkin, or sweet potato

1/4 c butter, softened

1/4 c maple syrup

2 large eggs

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp sea salt

pie crust (I recommend the lard crust from Cooking from Quilt Country – the easiest and most delicious you’ll ever make)

Preheat the oven to 350.  Roll out your pie crust, fill your pan, and chill in the fridge for at least 15 minutes.  (This prevents the crust from falling down when you bake it.)  Pre-bake the crust for about 15 minutes, until just firm.

Meanwhile, mix together all remaining ingredients.  Pour into pie crust and bake for about 1 hour, until the filling is lightly brown and a bit puffed up.  Let it cool a bit, but this pie is at its best served warm.  Even better the day for lunch.

Here in our little world it’s a time of heavy construction, both inside and out. The bakery got some lovely renovations this week (more customer space! Photos soon at the spiffy new Wheatberry site, I promise), that wall we knocked down finally got finished up with some gorgeous timber from our land, and the biggest news of all (in my humble opinion) is that this winter we are having a BABY!
Which means that I am spending my time (outwardly) doing nothing, or as close to it as I can approximate. It is absolutely stunning how exhausted and sick you feel, until you remember that you are, you know, busy creating a person.  I read that in the first trimester, your hormones are the same as taking 100 birth control pills a day (!), and somehow that made me feel much better.  Of course I feel like a tired lunatic with demented eating habits.

I am, truthfully, feeling a wee bit better these days.  I’m re-reading Catherine Newman’s fantastic Waiting for Birdy, waiting for those strawberries in our yard to ripen, and hoping that perhaps the tiredness will lift long enough to finish my February Baby Sweater.  Or not.  Because really, I vowed to make space for this little one, and that is my main job these days.  Making a baby, and raising the girl who has already joined us.

Wishing you some lovely summer days, both busy and lazy.

We talk about everything from using draft horses, the real cost of food, and how to make your love visible.

Enjoy!

AWEtv from Seed to Scone with Adrie Lester of Wheatberry Cafe from shalini bahl on Vimeo.

Six eggs from six chickens, two days in a row.  I had to make cheesecake (Keller’s, from Ad Hoc.  It was divine, of course.)

A dog who comes in from a night on wandering, reeking of skunk. This is, apparantly, becoming a yearly ritual. (This was very helpful. And doesn’t he look hilariously embarrassed?)

Greens in the hoophouse, planted inside, and transplanted out.  Hooray!

Some color for the kitchen floor, using what I’ve got (lots of scraps) to bring in some sunshine.  (It’s the patchwork mat from Patchwork Style)
Blessings on your weekend, everyone!

After I started planning our dinners last winter, I was really excited about how well it went. How much calm it brought to my life. (Seriously, every bit helps!) So over the summer I thought to myself, why not do the same with breakfast? I think, after doing it for six months or so now, that a breakfast rotation might be even more useful than dinner.  At dinner, we’re often tired and frazzled and it’s a bad time to come up with a meal on the fly, but many of us aren’t quite with it first thing in the morning, either, and it’s definitely not a good time to discover you need to run to the grocery store for eggs, right?

Here’s what I came up with for our family – I imagine it will switch a little in the warm months, to have less oatmeal and more fresh fruit probably.

Monday – Home fries (chunks of potato pan-fried with sliced onion and any other veggies that seem tasty, such as kale or sweet potato)

Tuesday – Oatmeal, usually with some warmed fruit on top (like berries from the freezer)

Wednesday  – Scrambled eggs, sausage, and sourdough toast

Thursday – Egg-in-the-holes (also known as lamplight eggs or toad-in-the-hole; you cut out a circle from a slice of bread and pan-fry it with an egg cracked into the hole.  A favorite from my own childhood)

Friday – Oatmeal again

Saturday – Challah french toast with warm fruit

Sunday – We were doing Clafoutis for a long time (Julia Child’s recipe), but last week I made a big batch of biscuits and froze most of them.  I think biscuits, eggs, and grits might be our new Sunday breakfast.  (By the way, I love using whole grain flour for pastries such as biscuits.  When your aim is a tender crumb, whole grain flour works in your favor, since it is naturally “shorter” than white flour)

And there’s your week!  I think I may do the same things for snacks.  Yum!

More favorites from here. Outside, winter doesn’t seem to know yet that its last days are here. The freezing rain and mud puddles have their own beauty, as my little girl in rain boots would happily tell you. Inside, I finished this applique for our down comforter cover.  I cut out the pieces last winter when I first read Sew Liberated, and began to work on it at last in January.  (She does two layers of petals, but I decided to keep it a bit simpler.)  A great way to use cheerful scraps.

The ability to wash and dry my laundry (seriously, after nearly a month of being too exhausted, it was a treat to do this quickly and easily). Especially with some new thrift store finds drying on the rack – looking forward to wearing that skirt in warm weather!

Locally grown Mandan Bride corn, cooked and spread out to dry, ready to be ground and made into fresh tortillas.  The simple joy of cooking and cleaning up in my kitchen.  The butcher block you see underneath so many of my kitchen photos – made for us years ago by our dear friend Rob.  There was at least one year where Rob always managed to show up at our house right as dinner was ready; in return, he built us a butcher block.  The joy of friends.

Salad greens, growing under lights inside, ready to be moved out to the greenhouse as soon as the sun peeks back out again.  (The hose that runs from the bathroom sink into the pantry to water these greens is not my favorite, but worth it.)

Loving hot tea from fancy cups (thank you Nana!).  I’m loving Shannon’s post about living mindfully this year.  Wishing you lots of simple joys this week.

Insulating, insulating, insulating. (Yes, that’s wool I’m stuffing into the crack, and we’re covering it with caulk.) Our little helper spent this time playing dress up and pretending to nap (do you see those scrunched up eyes?)  “I’m snoring away!” she declared.

Feeling sick to our stomachs about Monsanto’s new GMO alfalfa being approved for release. If you don’t know, please head here to Food Democracy Now’s petitions, and add your voice to keep this dangerous seed out of our land!  (Alfalfa is open pollinated, which means that if a farmer next door is growing GMO sterile alfalfa, their seed can blow onto your crop and contaminate it.)

Spending a lot of time in the kitchen, enjoying every recipe from last week’s menus with Cooking from Quilt Country (this custard cornbread was so easy and outrageously good!).  Making Oatmeal Bread from the Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book, making these Butternut Squash Brownies at last.  Ben threshed out our amaranth, and look at these beautiful red grains!

Welcoming February.  I never would have expected it, but this is one of my favorite months of the year.  The intense cold demands that I wake up, pay attention, and start moving.  A certain bearded fellow in our house has a birthday today, and we’ll also be dipping beeswax candles to celebrate Candlemas. It may be cold, but the warmth from the sun is also beginning to touch us.  No matter how many times during the summer I think we must be crazy to farm while, say, trying to plant an endless row of potatoes with an extremely cranky toddler), when January and February come, I get the itch.  We’re starting cold-hardy seeds already to put out into the hoophouse, and I am so excited for the growing season to begin!

So this week,  I’m Cooking from Quilt Country. (The only exceptions are Monday, Mexican Night and Sunday, pizza night – no Mexican or pizza recipes among the Amish!) The other big shift in our eating these days is that I’m trying to make our midday meal our big meal, and have dinner be lighter. So many of the meals listed below are being served at lunchtime, with a salad and leftovers for dinner.

(don’t you wish your pantry looked like that?)

Monday (Mexican): handmade flour tortillas (the awesome recipe is from Cocina de la Famillia), beans cooked from scratch, and pan-fried Delicata squash
Tuesday (casserole): Pork and Beans, Custard Cornbread
Wednesday (leftovers)
Thursday (soup) Country Potato Soup
Friday (Shabbat) Roast Duck with Saurkraut & Apple Stuffing, Baked Onions with Sour Cream, and Oatmeal Pie (how awesome do all of these sound? I’m very excited.)
Saturday (soup with meat) Split Pea Soup with Ham
Sunday (Home made Pizza with Veggies)

Have a wonderful week everyone!

On Saturday, we got up extra early and loaded both bread decks full of Local Loaf goodness. We filled our racks with cookies, scones, and local bran muffins, and drove with many helpers to enter the fray at the Northampton Winter Fare, put together by CISA. We had a 2010 grain share on display in glass jars, the electric stone mill and oat roller (which are usually on the counter at Wheatberry for customers to use), and bags of grains for folks to buy and mill (or take home to cook whole of course!). It was a great time, and we made lots of new friends. If we didn’t see you there, never fear – there’s a Winter Farmer’s Market in Greenfield on February 5th at the Greenfield High School, and we’ll be there, scones and Local Loaves hot from the ovens, and fresh grain ready to be milled!

* * *

Monday (mexican) Flat Enchiladas Sonoran Style (from  Cocina de la Familia) using local dent corn, with garlicky greens on the side

Tuesday (soup with meat) French Onion Soup and steak

Wednesday (leftovers)

Thursday (casserole) Broccoli Pot Pie with lard crust (I made my first lard crust [above] last week – it was so easy and so delicious!  After Nicole pointed me to this article, I knew it was time to start using the leaf lard waiting in my freezer, and I’m so glad I did!  I used the crust recipe from Cooking from Quilt Country, a book I love.)

Friday (shabbat) Warm French Lentils with Sausage, Celeriac Puree, Baked Apples

Saturday (soup) Butternut Squash Soup

Sunday (homemade pizza) Pizza with Sweet Potato, Cheese, & Onions

Hope you have a delicious week ahead of you!