Hi, Welcome back. A lot has gone on since we spoke last.
As you (in the US) know, Thanksgiving is coming. Someone asked me once what they call Thanksgiving here in Scotland. Someone else said “Thursday.”
Anyway, Anne and I thought it would be fun to make some pumpkin pie for our weekly Guild meeting at the church. Just to share a little of our culture.
So, we set out to get some pumpkin pie filling and pumpkin pie spice and make some pumpkin pies. It was Halloween. There were pumpkins everywhere! Piece of cake!
We started looking in the local Co-Op store for a nice can or 2 of pumpkin pie filling. All we got were vague looks. Then we moved on to Buckie, a larger Co-Op store. Same looks. 
So, I told Anne that I would just buy the pumpkin and make my own filling. She (ever the optimist) went on and on about the mess it makes and how hard it is to do and how it never tastes good… In fact, she even declared that she wasn’t going to scrape pumpkin off the ceiling. Pish-Tosh, I said. (Whatever that means.)
So, I bought a small pumpkin. I cut in half and put the pieces, cut side up, in the oven on 180 ° C (that’s 350° F) and baked them till they were soft enough that my knife would go through the rind..
Then, I took them out of the oven and used a large spoon to scrape out all the seeds and icky, stringy stuff into a colander. (If you have ever carved a Halloween pumpkin, you know what I mean by icky, stringy stuff.) Then I peeled the pumpkin and cut the pulp up into pieces and put them back in the oven until they were soft enough to mash. Mashed them and put them into a plate to cool.
I separated the seeds from the icky stringy stuff, rinsed them and put them in the colander to drain and dry. Not wanting to waste anything, I decided to toast the seeds for a healthy, tasty snack.
By that time I was ready for a nap, jut like now. So, I’ll say “Bye” for now and continue this later. (The story does get better. After all, if they don’t eat pumpkin pie, I’ll bet they don’t have pumpkin pie spice.)