Meatless Monday: Joining Hands for a Better World: 12.9.13

Last Tuesday I set out on a pre-Christmas challenge — to post a tip a day we can collectively follow with the goal of making the world a better place. 

Today’s suggestion: Start with a Pumpkin. 

If you picked up a pumpkin or some winter squash to decorate your Thanksgiving table, now is the perfect time to cook it (or them—all of them) before it gets too old. You can always freeze what you do not use; it will make a tasty treat at winter’s end.

If you have a small pumpkin like this one, it’s a “sugar” pumpkin and you are in luck! These are great for making pumpkin pie. If you have a much larger pumpkin, its flesh will likely be too stringy for use in recipes. 

I halved this pumpkin, removed its seeds, oiled it slightly, and roasted it in a 350° oven until tender (about 50 minutes) the Monday night before Thanksgiving. I scooped out the pulp and stored it in a covered dish in the fridge. Tuesday night we warmed it up in the microwave to get it to room temperature, and my husband pushed it through a wire sieve. It yielded just over two cups, the amount we needed for a wonderful pumpkin pie.

The recipe came from James Beard’s classic cookbook, American Cookery. 

INGREDIENTS

• 3 eggs
• 2 cups cooked, strained pumpkin
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon ginger
• 1/2 - 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/8 - 1/4 teaspoon cloves
• 1/2 - 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 - 1 1/2 cups evaporated milk or coffee cream (I used light cream)
• Unbaked pie shell for a deep 9 or 10 inch pie or for two 8 inch shells.

METHOD

• Preheat the over to 450°
• Break the eggs into a mixing bowl and beat until the yolks and whites are combined.
• Add the pumpkin, sugar, and spices. [I used the larger amount of the spices.]
• Blend well.
• Add the milk or cream and stir to combine thoroughly.
• Have the pastry shell(s) ready.
• This is rather a sloppy mixture to pour, and it is better to dip it from the bowl to the pastry.   
• Put the pie(s) in the oven. Bake a larger pie for 15 minutes (smaller pies for 10) and then turn the oven down to 300° and bake about 30 minutes longer. [I covered my pie crust edges with foil and removed it for the final 15 minutes.] 
• The pie is done when the filling appears set when the pie is shaken gently, except for about 2 inches in the center.
• Cool the pie on a rack and refrigerate once it is at room temperature.

My artisanal pumpkin pie. Don't judge by its appearance.

The night I started my pie project, I watched Martha Stewart tell David Letterman on late night TV that canned pumpkin was OK to use. But take it from a person who has often used pumpkin from a can in the past — this pie was the best. I’m not going back.

Just make sure that your pumpkin is a sugar pumpkin, not one for carving. If you only have acorn squash, that works OK, too. 

That’s it for today. “See you tomorrow.”

“All together now,” as the Beatles once sang. Let’s see how much good we can do over the next few weeks.

Meatless Monday: Vegetarian Menu Ideas

Thanksgiving Day is almost here. 

In honor of the occasion I have compiled a list of links for some posts from the past which I hope may inspire and entertain you, and perhaps provide a welcome last-minute recipe.

First are links to a variety of Thanksgiving dishes that are vegetarian friendly:

• Acorn Squash Casserole 
• Butternut Squash with Wilted Spinach and Blue Cheese 
• Celeriac 
• Golden Beets 
• Kale Stew
• Kohlrabi
• Pumpkin Cornbread
• Vegan Gravy

Second are these on food history relevant to the day.

• Celebrating the Cranberry 
• The Challenges of an Indigenous Feast 
• The History of Pumpkin Pie 

Happy Monday! Happy Thanksgiving. And thanks for reading.

I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.”

Meatless Monday: As American As Pumpkin Pie

Once you learn the history of pumpkin pie in America, you may come to wonder, as I do, just why we don’t use “pumpkin” rather than “apple” in the phrase “as American as apple pie.” Pumpkins are indigenous to the New World and were clearly part of the first Thanksgiving feast declared by Gov. William Bradford and held in Plymouth Colony in 1621. Apples, on the other hand, came from the Old World; the Pilgrims planted apple trees soon after they arrived, but only the crabapple was native to North America.

The Pilgrims were probably not familiar with the pumpkin when they landed on the shores of what is now Massachusetts in the 1600s. But they soon learned of the many ways the Native Americans put the pumpkin to good use, including roasting of long strips of pumpkin on the open fire for eating, and drying strips of pumpkin for weaving into mats. Early on the colonists recognized the value of this fruit. Edward Johnson of Boston wrote in 1630,“Let no man make a jest at Pumpkins, for with this fruit the Lord was pleased to feed his people to their good content, till Corne and Cattell were increased."

They would soon invent uses of their own, such as stewed pumpkin. Pumpkin pie most likely evolved from the colonial custom of slicing off the pumpkin top, removing the seeds, filling the insides with milk, spices, and honey, and then baking the pumpkin in hot ashes. There was neither pie crust nor bread at these early celebrations; the first wheat harvest and flour were years away.

Thanksgiving became an American tradition. George Washington formally declared the day a national holiday in 1789. By the early 1800s, pumpkin pie (or at least a cousin to what we know as pumpkin pie) played a starring role in the day’s menu. Pumpkin pie had by now become a custard of pureed pumpkin, “rich milk,” eggs, and spices, baked in one crust until the filling had set. 

American poet John Greenleaf Whittier was so fond of pumpkin pie that he composed a long poem extolling its virtues. Here is an excerpt from The Pumpkin (1850):

… Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West, 

From North and from South comes the pilgrim and guest … 

What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye? 

What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie? …

… Then thanks for thy present! none sweeter or better 

E'er smoked from an oven or circled a platter! 

Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine, 

Brighter eyes never watched o'er its baking, than thine! 

And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express, 

Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less, 

That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below, 

And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow, 

And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky 

Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin pie! 

In his encyclopedic tome American Cookery, published in 1972, James Beard prefaced his classic recipe for pumpkin pie with these words: “In the eighteenth century this, like all one-crust pies, was called a pudding. Yankees preferred the recipe made with pumpkin, while Southerners preferred sweet potatoes. Spices were not included until clipper ships made them a more common commodity, and molasses or sorghum was used as part or all of the sweetening.” Beard's modern recipe offers a variation, the use of evaporated milk as an alternative to light cream. This substitution was not yet an option in the 1926 when the Springvale National Bank in Maine published its complimentary pamphlet What to Cook and How to Cook It, which contained three recipes for pumpkin pie, all using fresh milk.

Recipe tinkering did not end with the use of evaporated milk. The most recent tweaking of the recipe came about with the need to provide a vegan option. The most common solution involves the substitution of silken tofu for the cream and the eggs. 

For more pumpkin facts, please pay a visit to my blog post on the pumpkin from late October last year.

And for the back-story on how Thanksgiving came to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, check out this link.

One great thing about pumpkin pie is that it has just one crust, so it’s a little harder to eat too much. So enjoy a slice of a time-honored tradition. Just go easy on the whipped cream! Have fun, and have a great holiday!

I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal  health and the health of our planet.”