Thanks to everyone who sent along birthday wishes and pumpkin pie recipes last week! We tried one with fresh pumpkin–using 1 medium sugar pumpkin–and another with canned pumpkin:

I preferred the taste of the canned pumpkin pie, but you can’t get into the spirit of the season without going through the ritual of scraping out all the stringy goo from the real thing. Unfortunately, my picky daughter didn’t like either pie. But her baby brother loved both servings so much that he smeared them all over his face, his onesie, the kitchen floor, the couch…

At the suggestion of several readers, I used this recipe for the no-crust pie and this one for the fresh pumpkin pie. Yum.