I’m an American studying in Britain this semester, and a housemate who had never tried pumpkin pie before asked me to bake one. I e-mailed my mom for the recipe and went to the supermarket to get the ingredients. Apparently, they don’t have canned pumpkin over here, so I bought the next best thing: an actual pumpkin. I used Google to find out how to convert my pumpkin into pumpkin purée. I halved and seeded the pumpkin, scraped out its innards, and baked it in the oven for ninety minutes. Sure enough, I got basically the same stuff that you would buy in a can in America, but I’d made it myself. It doesn’t sound like much, but it was quite a trial for me. It cost me £2.80 for a pumpkin, it took me 150 minutes to prepare and bake it, and I burned my little finger in the process, but it was well worth it for the satisfaction I felt at the end. Tomorrow I’ll try actually baking the pie!