Pumpkin Splatter, Pumpkin Spice

The vandals whooped and howled as they smashed my grandparents’ pumpkins in the street. My grandfather heard the commotion and pulled himself up out of his easy chair and out the front door, only to catch a glimpse of the backs of teenage boys as they fled the scene. 

I can picture him standing on the front stoop of their little ranch-style house, holding a baseball bat, eyes wild with fury and wiry comb-over askew.

And then my grandmother joining him as they surveyed the damage: Orange chunks and pumpkin guts spread down their suburban tree-lined street. 

I’m sure he huffed and puffed and muttered with rage, and she placed her hands on her hips and shook her head.

But… what happened next?

The way my grandfather told it, the story ends here. That is, apart from a mix of Italian and English profanities, and vivid descriptions of what he’d do to those ‘worthless hoodlums’ if he caught them. 

But this is where my grandmother’s version begins. 

The way she described it, she looked out over all the destruction and decided, “They ain’t getting the last word. Oh no, they ain’t.” 

She may have even punctuated that thought with one of her trademark exclamations, probably the one that was a combination of “Hmm HMM” and a giggle. 

But unlike my grandfather, she wasn’t thinking about punishment or revenge. 

Instead, she grabbed a grocery sack and headed outside. She gathered up all the pumpkin rinds, brought them into the kitchen, rinsed them off good, and steamed the load of it up. 

After everything cooled, she scooped the flesh away from the skins, tossing big spoonfuls of it into her heavy stand mixer. 

She made epic amounts of homemade pumpkin puree. 

Then, she made pie. A whole lot of pie. 

And when we went to their house for Sunday supper, as we did every week way back then, my grandparents each told their versions of the story– one a tragedy suffered, the other an opportunity taken. And we ate pie. 

Damn good pie, too, because Grandma made it the old-fashioned way, with heart-attack-inducing amounts of butter in her flaky, salty crusts, and real heavy cream in the pumpkin filling. None of those shortening or condensed milk shenanigans.  

My grandmother’s version of the story is the epitome of a Great Depression childhood manifested in adulthood:

Waste not, want not. 

It’s also the perfect Thanksgiving parable: 

Make the best of what you have, and be thankful, because there is always someone who has it worse… and that someone may be in the exact same situation as you, but they’re suffering because they’re looking at it from a different perspective. 

I’ve thought of the smashed pumpkins story often throughout the years, and reflected on the life lessons it offers. 

And I suppose I could end this post here, it being Thanksgiving and all. Except that, this was supposed to be the anecdotal lead-in to my own pumpkin pie recipe post.

Which ended up failing.

I’ll tell you about it anyways: 

I went a little overboard with the Halloween pumpkins this year. For over a month, every time I walked in our front door I would feel a twinge of guilt seeing all the pretty sugar pumpkins I bought with the intention of making them into pie, knowing they would probably rot and get eaten by squirrels. 

So last Saturday afternoon, I decided ‘Enough with the guilt, I am turning these pumpkins into pie goddammit’. 

And man, it was not easy. Major physical effort to chop up the pumpkins, really messy to scrape out the guts, took FOREVER to steam/roast it all up, had to let it cool before I could scoop the flesh out…

At this point I had a massive bowl of chunky pumpkin and I texted my friends: 

“Guys. Next time remind me to just buy f*cking pies.”

One of my friends then helpfully reminded me that unless I wanted stringy pumpkin to get caught in everyone’s teeth, I would have to run it all through the food processor, too. 

My reply: 

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH”

But I did it because actually that’s a critical step in making pumpkin puree. I mean duh, it’s puree. 

At this point it was five hours into the project and nighttime. I hadn’t even started on the crust. 

I considered running back to the store and picking up store-bought crusts. 

Then I remembered Grandma and was like, “Oh no, I ain’t.” 

I did the chilled butter, ice water, and flour thing, made dough, and also made a massive mess of the kitchen. Pumpkin bits and puree splattered all over; flour all over me, the counter, and the floor; dirty receptacles of all kinds and sizes stacked up high in the sink…

I used up all our eggs, spent twenty minutes hunting for the cornstarch that someone had put away in a weird place, rolled and rolled and rolled (and rolled) out four crusts, poured in the custard, and got them all baked… 

By the time the pies were cooling and the kitchen was reasonably clean, it was almost 11 pm. 

All of that time and effort and mess yielded four pumpkin pies. And if they had turned out tasty, it would have been worth everything… 

But the filling was gray and mushy, and the crust was tough and flour-y. I ended up throwing most of the mess out. 

At the outset, I had been so confident that these pies would turn out so pumpkin spice-ily amazing. I assumed I would be praised and people would want to know exactly how I did it. Which would have been the perfect ending to this post: Here’s the recipe for how to make 100% homemade pumpkin pie like Grandma’s!

That ending is definitely out. I mean, I suppose I could lie and declare ‘Guys, these pies were so pumpkin spice-ily amazing!’, but that’s just not my M.O. I need to come up with a wrap-up that’s consistent with the truth.

Soooo…. Let’s identify the important life lessons illustrated by this fiasco. 

One of them might be: 

Nothing will make you appreciate someone’s knowledge and skill more than trying to do what they do and bombing badly. 

And I think it’s also fair to say: 

A real, heartfelt family story is better than a recipe post any day. 

Hmmm, anything else? Well… yes:

Next time, just buy the f*cking pies.