butternut pie

That's good as anything else I've seen. And I just watched fifteen videos on pumpkin, sweet potato and butternut squash pie.

That makes me, like, a total expert.

They all say the same things. 

Every single one of them uses pre-made pie shells. It's just not important to any of them to make their own.

And all of them use the same spices. Except one woman uses only nutmeg and she kept adding it. Three extra times. It was funny. She was using pre-ground nutmeg that day and hers lost its flavor in storing.

And only one woman used ginger.

Cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, none used a pinch of clove.

Vanilla extract, lemon extract, butter extract, but none used real lemon or lemon zest. None added orange or orange zest.

They roasted their sweet potatoes to concentrate the flavor and they boiled or microwaved the butternut squash. 

They all used sugar and brown sugar, salt, butter and eggs.

They all kept it to a paste, a slurry of varying viscosities, some very thin and runny and others thick as mud. Whatever the thickness, the egg caused it to set.

None of them added any extraneous items. And that made me imagine a pie combination. A mad pie combination that's everything that you like all at once with this type of squash filling holding it together. Throughout one of these pies, little chunks of diced apple or pear, raisins and pecans or walnut, cranberries or Craisins plumped up with rum. Perhaps oatmeal or chocolate. Or layers of various squashes.

I think pineapple chunks floating around in there would be nice. Or on top. Or in a layer.

I imagined cheesecake versions of all these type pies and I visualized mousse versions in differing types of shells, graham cracker crust or mixed versions using ground animal crackers or ground ginger snaps. 

It seems to me a billion varieties await exploration. 

And then I thought, what's the deal with pie shells anyway? A pile of any of this kind of mixture with a pie shell type cookie would be very nice 

And I really like sweet potato just as it is, baked to incredibly deep sweetness with any of these things, or all of these things, sprinkled on top. 

No sweet potato pie video for you!

They're all rather dull. 

Ok fine. My arm hurts. Stop twisting already. Uncle!

This woman is sweet as pie. I'd like to introduce her to whole nutmeg that you scrape yourself.

Chefs do not use bottled lemon juice. They're against it. For they are lemon elitists.

And I wonder why none of the home cooks ran their mixture through a sieve since they're so concerned about plant fibers.

I learned this is mostly an African-American thing. Is this culture appropriation? If it is, then thank you. Thank you everybody for sharing.