Happy Thanksgiving!

I know it's not until tomorrow, but as I don't have the day off work here, this seemed as good a time as any to make my pumpkin pie!  In past years I've made pumpkin pie actually from pumpkin (I know...) as you can't get tins here, but Dave and I were in Cardiff a few months back and found this shop that sold tinned pumpkin so Dave bought me two tins at an exorbitant price...

I therefore had to use the recipe on the back of the tin, but made a few changes: The crust I obviously had to make from scratch as I've never seen frozen crusts here like you can get in the States.  I tried a new technique from Hugh FW who admits that he nicked it off Elizabeth David -- instead of rolling out the crust (which I hate doing) you just press it into the plate -- and it worked!  Wouldn't work for a top crust obviously, but for something like this...

Duck eggs (from Bridget) instead of hen.  Cinnamon and cloves ground from whole so fresher and more flavourful.  Couldn't get evaporated milk so made my own by simmering twice the quantity I needed for much longer than the internet recipes say it takes until it reduced...  And it is SO yummy!!!  How long will it take me to eat the whole pie???

In various other news, we decanted some of the apple brandy -- and that's yummy too!

First frost Sunday night -- good thing we pulled the last of the root veg out beforehand!

I also made some lovely mayonnaise this evening with a duck egg yolk, Blodyn Aur rapeseed oil, and some mustard which is giving it that lovely colour -- delicious with the leftover roast chicken that I made on Sunday to go with the veg!

And of course, waste not, want not -- I've also got a lovely chicken broth out of it which will be the base of all sorts of future meals...

Mystery vegetable of the day...

Before I get to last night's supper and the mystery vegetable of the week...

I had one of these the other week, and I photographed it and meant to post it here, but can see that I didn't, and no idea where the photo went to...  But handily, I had another one yesterday morning!  I know I've had plenty of double-yolked chicken eggs in the past (must be jinxed on the photo front this morning because I've just gone trawling through the blog looking for an old photo of a double-yolked chicken egg and can't find one!!!), but has anybody ever seen a double-yolked duck egg before?  They can't be that uncommon if I've had two in the last month or so...

This one you have to look really hard at -- but see the rainbow in the middle of the cloud?  Was walking up the bridge yesterday morning when I spotted this -- beautiful weather, unseasonably mild, blue skies with the occasional fluffy white cloud -- not really where you expect to see rainbows, is it?!

And now for the veg -- can you guess what it is?  This is fresh out of the ground (after I washed the soil off):

Then they've been boiled and skinned just like I'd do with their more conventional cousins...

And this is what I did with them -- it's sort of a take on borscht, but made with cod (caught yesterday morning in Burry Port) instead of beef, and then because I've got this lovely albino beetroot (yes, you heard right -- tastes like beetroot but doesn't bleed red everywhere!) I put that in and I used the tops as well instead of cabbage -- yum!