From Scratch

Sunday seemed like a good day to do some cooking, since we were all kind of tired and it was the kind of blah day that inspires nesting. Milo found the last of our (uncut, still fine) Halloween pumpkins and wanted to make pumpkin pie. In addition, I wanted to turn the rest of the pork stew meat into sausage, and make more fresh pasta. So I busted out my Mom's old Kitchen Aid and set up the meat grinder, adding garlic, thyme, fennel seeds, salt, pepper, and a drop of wine, then fridging the mixture until it was time to cook it. We made a super-simple pasta dough, though I used wine instead of water to adjust the moisture. Milo helped me roll it out into fettucine.

We had some pie crust in the freezer left from Friday's dinner, so we cut and steamed the pumpkin, added maple and agave syrup, 5 spice, extra cinnamon, and mashed it all together. Once cool, we stick-blended it super smooth with an egg added and poured it into the half-baked shell. After the crust was nice and brown, I turned the heat off and left it in the oven so it could evaporate a little more; one egg was enough to hold it together, but only just. It did end up with the light and velvety texture I wanted as a result. I whipped some cream, since we also had some left from Friday.

While it cooled, we boiled water and browned sausage. To the sausage, I added peas from the garden via the freezer, some tomato juice from an open can, and a splash of heavy cream. To the water, the pasta, and then tossed it in the sauce. We had it with the salad I forgot to serve on Friday, and no wine because we needed a night off.