I love pumpkin pie! I baked one today, why wait until Thanksgiving? I wanted to share the recipe I use, my process for par baking pie crust, and of course a bunch of pictures (and jiggly pumpkin pie doneness-checking gifs). I’ve been in a years long war with flour, butter, and water, trying to figure out how to get a nice pie crust with a pumpkin pie. I do this thing where every year, I have to try to remember any changes I made to the steps I follow to par bake a pie crust from the previous year, because I didn’t write anything down. I figure if I take the time to write this out, it’ll be easier for me to keep track of. Scroll to the end if you just want to see the pictures. If you have secret tips for pie crust, please share!

We’ve been eating a lot of pasta lately. For some reason, it took me quite a long time to realize pasta could be an easy dinner. I don’t need to bust out the KitchenAid with the pasta roller attachment and make pasta from scratch, I can just use dried noodles. I don’t need to buy raw pine nuts, toast them, grind them in my mortar and pestle with basil and parmesan (or however you make pesto), I can just use pesto from the store. Sure, I’ll still make these things from scratch from time to time, but that’s not necessary to “eat a meal”.