Wednesday’s food

A couple of memorable occasions food-wise today.

The first was my first-ever taste of pumpkin pie. Our American colleague had canned pumpkin brought over from Seattle to make it with, which he duly did, and brought into work for sharing.

It looked orange, and like pictures of pumpkin pies that I’ve seen. Everyone in the line of people coming out of the kitchen was oooo’ing and aaaaah’ing and telling me how good it was.

Ummmm, I didn’t like it. I had a couple of mouthfuls, with and without the suggested whipped cream accompaniment but I just couldn’t face it. I ‘fessed up and spoke to Jiff-the-baker about it and tried to explain myself. All I could think of to say was that it tasted too pumpkiny – well d’uh – it’s pumpkin pie! It did have spices and was sweet but perhaps I just associate pumpkin so much with a savoury taste that at 10.30am my craving for sweetness with my coffee wouldn’t let me disassociate from what pumpkin is to me. He seemed OK with the feedback. I think. No-one else said they didn’t like it. I’m not sure about his response though … “That’s OK. I’m making pumpkin cheesecake next – you’ll like that.” …. uh oh ….

Oh, that’s right, the second food thing for Wednesday. Tried out a recipe from one of my River Cafe cookbooks involving tomatoes, pancetta, cream and pasta seeing as we had all that in the cupboards. I was not expecting such a scrumptious creamy sauce that we figured out was a fabulous homemade version of a pottled Frescarini sauce. Mmmmm.