I think it comes largely from apples and cheese. I cut up a fuji into chunks and started eating it, and the thought occurred to me that some sharp Tillamook would go well with this. So I cubed up some cheese and alternated a cube of cheese with a chunk of apple. It was really good.
I was planning to make my peaches and pork chops tonight but pretty hammered by the second shingles shot so perhaps I’ll wait.
I’ve made pumpkin pie (or butternut squash pie) from scratch many times when I lived in places where canned filling was hard to come by. I found it completely pointless and a waste of time as it tasted no better — to me — than the canned version. I’ll never bother with roasting pumpkins for pie again except maybe as a culinary exercise to show my kids how it’s done from scratch.
Since you’re open to suggestions, this is the best apple sauce I’ve ever had with either roast pork or pork chops:
It’s many years ago now (so no cite) but I saw a video where they made pumpkin pie using canned pumpkin and they made it from actual pumpkins.
The blind taste testers could not discern any difference and the made from actual pumpkins was loads more work.
(I think it might have been “America’s Test Kitchen” but I forget.)
I don’t roast pumpkins for pie, I steam them. It makes processing for pie a snap. I don’t peel beforehand, just remove the seeds and pulp that come out easily, then place in the steamer. The peel then comes off easily and I can remove any straggling seeds and pulp. Process the meat in a food processor until the texture is smooth as silk. Drain the processed pumpkin in a strainer lined with cheesecloth.
The flavor isn’t different, but the texture… oh, my. So much better!! The trick is to use small, fine-grained Sugar Pie pumpkins. If all that’s available are regular pumpkins, don’t bother.
It has to be really good cheese for it to work properly. The sort of cheese that hurts your face when you eat it.
I’ve found some variations with the pumpkins we use. Canned pumpkin always tastes the same. Plus I just enjoy the process.
I make sweet potato pies for my gf’s family’s thanksgiving table (by popular demand). One year I was making the filling for three pies in a huge bowl. I used up all of our hen’s eggs and grabbed one final egg from a carton our neighbors gave us.
That final egg apparently got lost in a nest for months. It was hideously rotten. I broke it directly into the bowl. No way to take it out. I was thankful my family found it funny.
I always say, only half-jokingly, that sweet potatoes make for better pumpkin pie than pumpkins do.
The good cheese causes me to have vivid dreams.
That’s why you break eggs into a separate bowl. (Also, to make it easier to remove eggshell bits, or if making omelets, to strain out a fetus in a fertilized egg.) I say this from long experience using farm eggs.
Stranger
We avoid having a rooster if possible.
My gf’s family had never experienced sweet potato pie. I was so happy introducing them all to something they really liked. Sweet potato pie is now a part of their/our thanksgiving tradition.
Domestic chickens can (very occasionally) exhibit parthenogenesis, albeit generally (if ever) viable.
Stranger
We maintain our hens into old age. When they stop producing eggs (henopause) some have such a drop in estrogen levels that background testosterone manifests. These geriatric hens will mount other hens, display aggression, and “crow”, a really bad crow.
Made tonight, although my plating and sides are absent as I still feel the suck. Note, I think this treatment (halved apples, cored, roasted until soft in airfryer, served with an herbed, pan roasted porkchop) with a drizzle of sauce of your choice would be a perfect way to have pork chop and apples.