Pumpkin pie & our attempt at making it

For the first time ever, probably as an unconscious attempt to become more mommy&daddy-like, Brett and I attempted to make a homemade pie. Pumpkin pie. Which is probably near the bottom on the pie making difficultly list. I seriously still have no idea what provoked this idea inside Brett’s head but while walking back and forth and down again through aisles at the grocery store, he just blurted out with the kind of delight that strikes toddlers when they get an idea, “Let’s make a pumpkin pie!” I had tried to talk him into pumpkin bars instead or even just buying pre-made, but he was dead-set on this whole making a pie deal. I mean, we just moved and are still living out of boxes, but what a great time to learn how to make pies! Such is life with Brett. He called our friend that actually knows what she’s doing for a how-to and then we continued our bobbing and weaving and back and forth aisle dipping to find what we needed. (We did cheat on the crust though, and purchased a box of Pillsbury pre-made pie dough.)

We arrived back home and immediately started preparing dinner. Yes, we whipped up both dinner AND desert, very ma & pa like, right? While dinner was cooking, we laid out all of our purchased pie-making magic and questioned why our “evaporated” milk was still very much a liquid. The whole attempt was pretty laughable, I must say. Half way through mixing the ingredients, my detail-cautious fiancé realized the recipe actually made TWO pies. Fortunately, the box of dough we had purchased came with enough for two, although having just one to ourselves already seemed a bit daunting. We figured we’d just give the other away… to someone who loved us before they tried our pie.

Then came the whole pie crust thing. Since we have both never made a pie before we were unsure of our next move once the dough was laid out in the pie dish. We knew what pie crusts usually looked like (and thankfully had a quite detailed reference on the box), but we had no idea how we were supposed to make this limp dough do... THAT. I figured it was just a matter of squeezing the edges precisely, but I’m pretty sure there’s got to be another trick to it. We were too confident in our ability to figure this whole thing out ourselves, so we decided not to look it up online or phone a grandma and just kind of pushed on it until it looked, well, pie-like. (For future reference, it might be helpful to make the edges even while you are forming it to the pie dish… or just not let afore mentioned, detail-oriented significant other do this part.)

We poured the orangey goodness into the sad little pie crusts and immediately it was obvious which pie we were keeping for ourselves and which one we would send to someone that would pat us on the back for trying and say “it’s okay, we still love you”. We placed tinfoil strips around the flawless edges (thankfully our friend gave us that little tip) and slipped them in the oven to bake.

Almost an hour & a half later, this is what we pulled out.

Apparently the recipe then says to jab a knife awkwardly into the somewhat middle, I guess, according to Brett.

We let them cool and after awhile I kindly offered to cut him a slice, to which after all that excitement and determination displayed earlier up and down the Target grocery aisles he answered with...

"It just doesn't really sound good right now."

Seriously.

And now almost two days later…

Anyone like pumpkin pie?