So I have an abundance of pumpkins so trying to use them. Today was my A Taste of Old Colony History zoom. We made mini pumpkin pies while learning their history.
Here are my pies. Some of the crusts are thicker than others, but they are tasty. I did use our pumpkin rather than canned. Plus I used our lard instead of shortening in the crust.
Then I made Soup Joumou. I didn’t realize it while I was cooking it, but “it has a powerful story behind it. This traditional Haitian soup, made with a Caribbean pumpkin called Joumou, was once a delicacy reserved for white enslavers but forbidden to the enslaved people who cooked it. After Haiti won its independence from France on January 1, 1804, Haitians made a tradition of eating the soup each Independence Day (which also happens to be New Year’s Day) to celebrate their freedom.” So I made it early. But I was able to use a lot of our farm’s foods including pumpkin, chicken, rutabagas (I used instead of potatoes), scallions, corn, parsley and thyme. I have a stash of dried scotch bonnet peppers because I cannot find them here fresh.
It is good, and I like a tropical soup after a nasty rainy day. Plus I used up some pumpkin!
Your soup sounds good! I’ve never heard of it before. That’s quite the history about it.
Your little pumpkin pies look yummy!
History and tasty soup & pies. What could be better?
The soup was lovely, and the pies yummy. Good uses of pumpkin in my mind.
Yeah, pumpkin is good. I LOVE pumpkin no-pie, as we call it, since we make it without a crust! It’s difficult to make crust when you can’t use wheat flour.
I have been making crust less pies and quiches. They are perfectly good. Crusts are tasty though.
One thing the food historian mentioned is that crusts were developed as a way of eating food before many utensils were available. She talked about them reusing crusts for multiple meals. And there wasn’t pumpkin pie at the first thanksgiving as they had no flour. More likely pumpkin stew which was common in the local tribes at the time. Also common we’re roasting a whole pumpkin over the fire, slicing pumpkin and drying it like jerky, and making pumpkin powder for adding to the equivalent of energy bars. Fascinating stuff to me anyway.
And the first known pumpkin pie recipe was French. It was sliced pumpkins, sliced apples, currants and other dried fruits. The pumpkins grown in Europe at the time from American importation we’re not that sweet so they added other fruits to help.
Thanks for all that information! Very interesting! Except for the thought of re-using the crusts!! Marlys said “Yuck”!