Baking pert seven million

The year I turned thirteen, my mother let me cook a dish for Thanksgiving. I guess she figured that pumpkin pie was kinda irritating to make but absolutely essential. I was thrilled. You might say I got a little bit obsessive about it.

I bought pumpkins, roasted them, peeled off the fragile sticky skin, and mashed them. (I always ended up with either 1.75 cups, or 6.33. The recipes call for 2) I made the crusts with the ice water theory. I grated the spices myself. I did this every Thanksgiving for... Jesus... ten years. The pie was not very good.

Then a couple of Thanksgivings ago, I got home late. There was no innocent pumpkin waiting to be slaughtered. There was no heavy whipping cream. There were no whole spices. There was a can of pureed pumpkin, a can of condensed milk, a frozen crust, and a jar of pumpkin pie spice. The pie was fantastic.

So now I use canned pumpkin. It contains one ingredient: pumpkin. It's always just enough for the recipe. I make my own crust, but I use the play-doh theory. I use ground spices- I know they lose flavor, but an unexpected fragment of nutmeg can be a landmine. The pies are pretty good.

(Of course, when I started making pumpkin pasta I learned that roasting squash is the worst way to prepare it for pie. I have a tip for whole squash idealists: peel the pumpkin while raw. Cut it up, boil it, and mash it. Easy.)

However, the "the hell with it" theory of pie making is taking its toll. The recipe calls for five brownish spices- and while I'm trying to find the damn cloves, pretty much anything looks plausible. A spoonfull of hot chocolate mix might not sink a pie, but I'm not so sure about my roasted ancho chile powder. And I have so many spices! Also, for some reason the cinnamon is empty. (Oh yeah, Turkish lentil soup) I'd just depend on the other things, but when I rely on nutmeg everything tastes like I threw in a half bottle of Coke.

So I added a couple of good shakes of Garam Masala. It has four of the five, as well as a bit of cumin, black pepper and coriander. It can't be any worse than the other pies my family's choked down over the years.