"What's the American man's favorite dessert?"

Happy [American] Thanksgiving! I'll be eating Thanksgiving dinner with my parents and some of their colleagues later today. It's a little disappointing that I couldn't invite friends over like last year -- what fun we had spending most of the day in the kitchen, preparing the whole Thanksgiving spread! But I guess this year won't be quite as much work.

But I will get to contribute something to tonight's meal. My mom was given the responsibility of bringing pies, and I offered to help her with a regular pumpkin pie, and my favorite experiment from last year: a pumpkin cheesecake.

So I set to work this morning, soon after I got up. For the pumpkin pie, I used my mom's trusty circa 1969 Betty Crocker cookbook.


I decided to make the crust first, and soon found crust recipes at the beginning of the pie section, right underneath this very nice introductory paragraph. Definitely worth a read. I think my favorite part is: "If you care about pleasing a man -- bake a pie. But make sure it's a perfect pie. "


So as Betty suggested, I spent some time with the chapter, and tried one of her family-tested recipes. I've done my best to "make sure it's a perfect pie," and now it'll be up to those eating it.