It being nearly Thanksgiving, and thus nearly time for all the Thanksgiving food, it’s time for me to admit that there is one classic Thanksgiving dish I cannot stand. Pumpkin pie. I like pumpkin just fine when it’s in other things (bread, scones, brownies with chocolate chips swirled in), but in a pie, it’s just wrong. I can stomach about one or two small bites if I must, but the texture – all squishy and squirmy – just doesn’t work for me.

However, when I saw this recipe for Chocolate Pumpkin Pie, I was intrigued despite my usual pumpkin pie aversion. After all, there are few desserts that cannot be improved by the addition of chocolate, and the combination of pumpkin and chocolate has already proven to be quite delicious (the pumpkin brownies mentioned above would be one marvelous example of that). Plus, I have all that remaining canned pumpkin to use up, and I had all the other ingredients already in the cupboard, and best of all, I have two offices full of people to foist this on, since one of the key necessities of trying out a new recipe is to have a group of willing (or perhaps unsuspecting) people to consume it.

One of these will be accompanying Richard to work tomorrow; the other will come into my office with me.

They smell really good – a mix of chocolate and pumpkin and spice. Here’s hoping they taste as good as they smell.

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On an entirely unrelated note, for the past hour or so Rosemary has been hunkered down in the kitchen, staring intently at the bottom of the dishwasher. Richard got down on his hands and knees with a flashlight and found nothing. We tried removing her. Either she is taking the oh-so-not-remotely-amusing-to-anyone-but-the-cats game of Made You Look one heck of a lot further than cats usually do, or there is some kind of critter lurking behind the dishwasher. I am sure I don’t have to say which option *I’m* fervently hoping is the right one. Shudder.