Who knew it was so difficult to find a healthy recipe for pumpkin pie? No crazy ingredients. I already take crazy meds to help manage my bi-polar. Just simple home-baked goodness. As it turned out, finding the formula was not so easy. 

It’s Thanksgiving week, and my mom has asked me to bring a pie. One of my food budget rules is never buy ingredients to make a specific recipe. I try to keep a pantry and fridge stocked with healthy staples and then find or create recipes that use what I already have.

I was thrilled to find a pie pumpkin for $2.99 at Village Market a couple of weeks ago. I’ve made pumpkin pie from scratch before, but I needed a recipe that would use what I currently have in the kitchen.

It took me over an hour of scouring the internet to find something delicious, simple and adaptable with ingredients and tools I have on hand.

The following ingredients for one scrumptious, made-from-scratch pumpkin pie filling are adapted from The Gracious Pantry:

1 pie pumpkin
1/4 + 1/8 cup honey
2 egg whites
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated ginger (you can use 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger instead, I just happened to have fresh)
Dash cloves
Dash pepper
3/4 cup milk

1. Wash the pumpkin and break off the stem. Use a sharp knife to slice the pumpkin in half. Bake it, flesh side down, at 400 degrees for 30-40 minutes. Let it cool. Clean out the seeds and pulp. Put the pumpkin flesh in a blender, a few scoops at a time, and puree until smooth. Set aside 1 cup pureed pumpkin for the pie.

(Three-for-one-deal: save the extra pumpkin puree for bread or soup. Save the seeds for roasting in the oven. Save the skin in a freezer bag where you can stockpile other veggie scraps to make homemade stock.)

2. For the rest of the pie instructions, go to the original recipe here. It’s simple. Only 4 steps.

Easy as pie.