The Adventure of Pumpkin Pie Making in Latvia
or It’s a good thing I’m a science teacher
Yes, another adventure. How to make a pumpkin pie in Latvia. Bob and I invited several Fulbrighters for a Thanksgiving Pot Luck in Latvia. We held our celebration on Saturday the 24th since Thursday was a work day for everyone here. My contribution in the manner of traditions was to bake a pumpkin pie. Well, first we needed to find all the ingredients. Cream was no problem since Latvia has fine dairy products…but there was nothing to resemble Crisco which I always use to make my pie crust. I even considered buying a crust but after reconnoitering in Stockman’s, the most anglophile department store, I could only find pizza crust, puff pastry crust and a pre-made graham cracker crust….none of which would do. Finally we (it took two of us) found a block of Eve…”for baking and cooking”….80% fat so I tried a practice crust with some apples in it for filling. I had a flan pan for the crust and used a wine bottle for a rolling pin. Next of course for the big day was to make the pumpkin pie filling. No canned pumpkin or squash…..or spices in the grocery store…so off to the Central Market. We found squash…so of course …we had to cook it up and try it out weeks before the big day. In our dictionary we could find cinnamon (malts kanelis) and cloves (krustnaglina) but no luck finding ginger….we did consider going to the book store to look it up in a more complete dictionary and then Bob noticed ginger root (ingvars) on one of our shopping trips so by combining that with “malts” for ground we were on our way. We found both ginger and cloves at the large central market at a stall that was full of bins and bags of spices. Of course this meant we had to communicate our needs to the sales person both for the item and the amount, in grams, that we desired. Fortunately, she let us see and smell the powders to be sure we were purchasing the spices we needed. The next step was to make the conversions to use my tried and true pie recipe, (which Tina provided from home via skype) and get out the scale to weigh the ingredients. Fortunately our apartment came with a conversion chart. The cup of sugar was equal to 8 oz which equals 250 g and the cup of flour 5 oz equals 150 g….who knows what a cup of pureed squash equals so I estimated and yes two eggs were just two eggs. I found an ml measuring cup for the cream, the balance to measure grams and of course the conversion chart for oven temperatures which are marked on the stove as C degrees…..The pie was delicious and I felt a real sense of accomplishment. As one of our friends says “things take longer in Latvia”
or It’s a good thing I’m a science teacher
Yes, another adventure. How to make a pumpkin pie in Latvia. Bob and I invited several Fulbrighters for a Thanksgiving Pot Luck in Latvia. We held our celebration on Saturday the 24th since Thursday was a work day for everyone here. My contribution in the manner of traditions was to bake a pumpkin pie. Well, first we needed to find all the ingredients. Cream was no problem since Latvia has fine dairy products…but there was nothing to resemble Crisco which I always use to make my pie crust. I even considered buying a crust but after reconnoitering in Stockman’s, the most anglophile department store, I could only find pizza crust, puff pastry crust and a pre-made graham cracker crust….none of which would do. Finally we (it took two of us) found a block of Eve…”for baking and cooking”….80% fat so I tried a practice crust with some apples in it for filling. I had a flan pan for the crust and used a wine bottle for a rolling pin. Next of course for the big day was to make the pumpkin pie filling. No canned pumpkin or squash…..or spices in the grocery store…so off to the Central Market. We found squash…so of course …we had to cook it up and try it out weeks before the big day. In our dictionary we could find cinnamon (malts kanelis) and cloves (krustnaglina) but no luck finding ginger….we did consider going to the book store to look it up in a more complete dictionary and then Bob noticed ginger root (ingvars) on one of our shopping trips so by combining that with “malts” for ground we were on our way. We found both ginger and cloves at the large central market at a stall that was full of bins and bags of spices. Of course this meant we had to communicate our needs to the sales person both for the item and the amount, in grams, that we desired. Fortunately, she let us see and smell the powders to be sure we were purchasing the spices we needed. The next step was to make the conversions to use my tried and true pie recipe, (which Tina provided from home via skype) and get out the scale to weigh the ingredients. Fortunately our apartment came with a conversion chart. The cup of sugar was equal to 8 oz which equals 250 g and the cup of flour 5 oz equals 150 g….who knows what a cup of pureed squash equals so I estimated and yes two eggs were just two eggs. I found an ml measuring cup for the cream, the balance to measure grams and of course the conversion chart for oven temperatures which are marked on the stove as C degrees…..The pie was delicious and I felt a real sense of accomplishment. As one of our friends says “things take longer in Latvia”