The Pagan Kitchen Pumpkin Pie

 

Pumpkin pie is popular in the United States and Canada, but in other parts of the world, not so much.

1621 – Early American settlers of Plimoth Plantation (1620-1692), the first permanent European settlement in southern New England, might have made pumpkin pies (of sorts) by making stewed pumpkins or by filling a hollowed out shell with milk, honey and spices, and then baking it in hot ashes. 

An actual present-day pumpkin pie with crust is a myth, as ovens to bake pies were not available in the colony at that stage.

Northeastern Native American tribes grew squash and pumpkins. 

They roasted or boiled them for eating. Historians think that the settlers were not very impressed by the Indians’ squash and/or pumpkins until they had to survive their first harsh winter when about half of the settlers died from scurvy and exposure. 

The Native Americans brought pumpkins as gifts to the first settlers, and taught them the many used for the pumpkin. 

This is what developed into pumpkin pie about 50 years after the first Thanksgiving in America.

1651 – Francois Pierre la Varenne, the famous French chef and author of one of the most important French cookbooks of the 17th century, wrote a cookbook called Le Vrai Cuisinier Francois (The True French Cook). 

It was translated and published in England as The French Cook in 1653. 

It has a recipe for a pumpkin pie that included the pastry:

Tourte of pumpkin – Boile it with good milk, pass it through a straining pan very thick, and mix it with sugar, butter, a little salt and if you will, a few stamped almonds; let all be very thin. Put it in your sheet of paste; bake it. After it is baked, besprinkle it with sugar and serve.

As for our Pumpkin Pie recipe, if you give it a try, we do hope you enjoy it.

Ingredients

Crust

¼cup butter, softened

¼cup shortening

1¼cups all-purpose flour

1Tbsp granulated sugar

¼tsp salt

1egg yolk

2Tbsp ice water

Filling

3eggs

115 oz can pumpkin

½cup granulated sugar

¼cup packed dark brown sugar

1tsp ground cinnamon

½tsp salt

½tsp ground ginger

¼tsp ground cloves

¼tsp ground nutmeg

¾cup whole milk

¼cup heavy cream

Directions

Crust

Beat together butter and shortening until smooth and creamy.

Chill till firm

Sift together flour, sugar and salt in medium bowl

Using a pastry knife or fork, cut the chilled butter and shortening into the dry ingredients until the flour is mixed in and it has a crumbly texture.

Mix egg yolk and ice water into the dough with a spoon then form it into a ball with your hands.

Don't work the dough too much or your crust will lose its flakiness. 

Flakey crust is good crust.

Cover dough ball with plastic wrap to sit until the filling is ready.

Filling

Beat eggs.

Add pumpkin and stir well to combine

Combine sugars, cinnamon, salt, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg in a small bowl.

Stir spice mixture into the pumpkin.

Mix in milk and cream.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

While oven preheats let filling sit so that it can come closer to room temperature.

Unwrap pie dough, then roll it flat on a floured surface and line a 9 inch pie dish.

When oven is hot pour filling into pie shell, and bake for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 and bake for another 50 to 60 minutes or until a knife stuck in the middle comes out clean.

Cool pie, then chill. Slice chilled pie into 6 pieces to serve restaurant size portions. Whipped cream on top is optional but highly recommended.

Here’s a conversion chart, just in case:

If you feel artsy,

you can design a moon and stars pie crust top. 

Cut your design and bake it.

Allow to cool and place on top of your cooled pumpkin pie.

Roasting Turkey Tips

For those of you roasting a turkey for any occasion, here are a few tips...

If you plan on using a brine and you want a simple recipe that will make your turkey especially delicious, here you go...

1/2 cup salt

1/2 cup sugar

1 gallon water or enough to completely cover the bird

Few peeled cloves of garlic

Sprigs of rosemary, sage & thyme

Dissolve salt in a cold or room temperature water, add the sugar and mix throughly.

Add the herbs. 

Allow to set overnight in the fridge or in an ice chest cooler (with ice)

When ready to roast, remove the turkey and throughly rinse off all the brine.

That’s it.

The Old Religion is the magic of the Earth itself. It is the essence which binds all things together

 

The Magic Was Never Elsewhere

We often talk about magic as something we bring to nature: a circle cast in the woods, a candle set beside an apple, words spoken over a bowl. 

But walk outside in early November and notice who is already doing the work.

The leaves have let go without being asked. 

Beneath them, fungi are threading through the dark, turning what has fallen into soil. 

Seeds are sleeping in the cold ground, trusting a spring they cannot see. 

Nothing here is performed. Nothing needs a spell to make it so.

This is the oldest magic we know: death becoming ground, and ground becoming food. 

Every harvest we've ever eaten grew from something that came before it. 

The cycle doesn't ask for belief. It simply turns.

Maybe that's why November feels so charged. 

The Romans opened the mundus and felt the dead draw near. We light candles and say names. 

But the threshold was never only in a ritual pit or a ceremony. 

It's in the compost heap and the rotting log, in every place where an ending quietly becomes a beginning.

We don't think our practices create magic so much as help us pay attention to it. 

The circle, the offering, the blessed meal: these are ways of saying I see you, and I'm part of this too.

So this week, try something small. Step outside at dusk. Touch the bark of a tree, or press your hand to cold soil. 

Don't ask for anything. 

Just notice that the magic was already here, and always has been.

November

Before November Was November

The Romans never meant for November to be the eleventh month. The name comes from novem, Latin for "nine," a leftover from a time when the Roman year began in March and ran only ten months. Count forward from the spring, and November lands exactly where its name says it should.

Then came January and February, added to the calendar and eventually moved to the front of the year. 

Every month after them slipped two places, but the old names stayed. Somewhere in our calendar, the ancient Roman year is still quietly counting.

We love that. A month carrying a memory of an older way of keeping time.

And November, for the Romans, was a month of thresholds. On the eighth, the mundus was opened, a ritual pit understood as a doorway to the underworld, left uncovered on only a few days of the year. 

On those days, the line between the living and the dead was said to grow thin. 

If that sounds familiar after Samhain, you're not imagining it. 

Different people, different gods, the same instinct: as the light fades and the fields go quiet, we turn toward our ancestors.

Then, on the thirteenth, the mood shifts. The Epulum Jovis was a sacred banquet where the gods were honored as guests at the table, with food laid out for them and shared among the living. 

After the doorway to the dead, a feast. After the dark, a meal.

That pairing feels right for this month: remembering the dead, and then setting a table.

This November, we will be exploring both.