Pumpkin Pie Peril.

My main claim to fame as a cook happened many years ago, when during a dinner party, one of the ladies began to cry, and sobbed that however hard she tried she would never be able to make such good pastry.* It has been all downhill since then.
Luckily, since marrying Mas I only cook if necessary, as he loves to do it.

As usual we planned to have friends over for a Thanksgiving meal, Mas would make the starter and main course, and I would bake pumpkin pies. The day before Thanksgiving we roasted the pumpkin.

I think last year I cheated on the pastry, but decided to do it properly this time, and make the sweet spicy pastry that is so fragile it has to be rolled between floured sheets of greaseproof paper, and then very carefully placed into an inverted flan dish.

Things got rather tense in the kitchen when I discovered that I had made the pastry too fragile, and that the flan dishes were the wrong size. At this point Mas made himself scarce and beat a hasty retreat.

Eventually the two pies were placed into the oven and left to cook. Looking at them a little later, I found that the top flan dish had cracked and was leaking into the bottom pie which had puffed up and stuck to the oven rack above it, and the top got torn off as I removed it from the oven. I resolved never to make another pumpkin pie at this point.

* possibly one glass too many of wine.