You know I love pumpkins and squash. My favorite pumpkin for baking and pumpkin butter is the winter luxury pumpkin. It makes a very mild pumpkin pie similar to old fashioned squash pie. Winter luxury pumpkins don't last long--so you basically grow, process and freeze. These pumpkins can't compare to anything you find in the grocery store. When processed, they are great for low fat cooking. Pumpkin butter from these is out of this world. I use Queensland's Blue for pumpkin pie. They have a little more depth to their flavor. They are an Australian pumpkin that will last a long time in your cellar. I still have some in my basement--which is warmer than a typical cellar would be. Now if you want beauty--plant the musquee de provence. It looks like a cinderella pumpkin and is absolutely beautiful. You can cook with it--but I don't. It just doesn't compare to the pumpkins above. My favorite squash is the Potimarron. It's a French squash that has an unbelievable taste. I often wonder what it would taste like if made into pumpkin pie. We usually just eat it straight from the oven. These last a long time. Tori

Something I LOVE, but rarely buy due to it usually being sold in huge sizes for single me, is something called a hubbard squash. It is sort of football shaped, but rounder. Has deep furrows. Sort of looks like a huge acorn squash, but the colors of the rind are a little bit different. Sort of a bluish green, and perhaps I have seen orange ones. Anyway, the flesh is very orange. I have heard a rumor that it is hubbard squash that is used in canned "pumpkin." It is real tasty, but I can't eat it up fast enough to warrant buying it. I have made pumpkin pie from a fairly large, ubiquitous pumpkin. Not sure if it was a prime pie variety but I doubt it, a friend bought it. It was OK, pie tasted good, but yes, a stringier texture than what we are probably used to.

Ohhh, I was just going to use that crust from Ohiomom's cranberry-pear pie...it was so good! Now I am thinking that ginger snap crust sounds too good to pass up!! Alas, I'm just not that hungry today so I am going to make the pie tomorrow. Maybe that will give me time to find a good crust recipe and to chill it...mmm, I did go out and buy ground ginger for those gingerbread men last week...so I'm ready for trying a new crust! Wheeeeeeeeee, this is fun!

Trader Joe’s carries Pumpkin Butter in the fall. People rave about it. I bought some last year and didn’t care for it. To me it tasted more like pumpkin pie spice and not enough like pumpkin. I love apple butter and it was nothing like it. The consistency was too thin, also, more like a sauce: it would slide right off whatever you put it on. I was on a local gardening forum and someone was talking about making her own pumpkin butter from the pumpkins she grew. It looked so much better and thicker than the Trader Joe’s version that it got me thinking in that vein of how to use my pie pumpkins. (I buy a couple to use on my porch for Halloween, then eat them after. The first year I did this, it was so thin it was good only for soup.) She’s the one that cooked it down in the slow cooker to make it thicker after roasting. Using it in quickbread is far more likely than in any other form. I had a pumpkin cinnamon scone a few weeks ago that was really tasty.